Cubans in the context of "Cuban exodus"

The Taíno were the Indigenous peoples of the Greater Antilles and surrounding islands. At the time of European contact in the late 15th century, they were the principal inhabitants of most of what is now The Bahamas, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and the northern Lesser Antilles. The Lucayan branch of the Taíno were the first New World people encountered by Christopher Columbus, in the Bahama Archipelago on October 12, 1492. The Taíno historically spoke an Arawakan language. Granberry and Vescelius (2004) recognized two varieties of the Taino language: "Classical Taino", spoken in Puerto Rico and most of Hispaniola, and "Ciboney Taino", spoken in the Bahamas, most of Cuba, western Hispaniola, and Jamaica. They lived in agricultural societies ruled by caciques with fixed settlements and a matrilineal system of kinship and inheritance. Taíno religion centered on the worship of zemis. The Taíno are sometimes also referred to as Island Arawaks or Antillean Arawaks. Indigenous people in the Greater Antilles did not refer to themselves originally as Taíno; the term was first explicitly used in this sense by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1836.

Historically, anthropologists and historians believed that the Taíno were no longer extant centuries ago, or that they gradually merged into a common identity with African and Hispanic cultures. Scholarly attitudes to Taíno survival and resurgence began to change around the year 2000. Many people today identify as Taíno and many more have Taíno descent, most notably in Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Dominica. A substantial number of Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Dominicans have Indigenous mitochondrial DNA, which may suggest Taíno descent through the direct female line, especially in Puerto Rico. While some communities describe an unbroken cultural heritage passed down through the generations, often in secret, others are revivalist communities who seek to incorporate Taíno culture into their lives.

Captain General Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau, 1st Duke of Rubí, 1st Marquess of Tenerife (17 September 1838 – 20 October 1930) was a Spanish Army officer and colonial administrator who served as the Governor-General of the Philippines and the Governor-General of Cuba, and later as the Minister for War. He is infamous for the brutality with which he executed his assignment to supress an 1897 rebellion in Cuba through a policy of mass-reconcentration, which is estimated to have killed between 170,000 and 400,000 Cubans, significantly influencing United States interests in declaring war on Spain.

The Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act or NACARA (Title II of Pub. L. 105–100 (text) (PDF)) is a U.S. law passed in 1997 that provides various forms of immigration benefits and relief from deportation to certain Nicaraguans, Cubans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, nationals of former Soviet bloc countries and their dependents who had applied for asylum. As these Central Americans overwhelmed the U.S. asylum program in the mid-1990s, their cases were left for NACARA to address.

The legislation was authored by Cuban-American Florida Congressman Lincoln Díaz-Balart and was included as part of the D.C. Appropriations Act for FY 1998.

Cuban Americans (Spanish: cubanoestadounidenses or cubanoamericanos) are Americans who trace their ancestry to Cuba. The word may refer to someone born in the U.S. of Cuban descent or to someone who has emigrated to the U.S. from Cuba. Cuban Americans are the third largest Hispanic American group in the United States.

Many metropolitan areas throughout the United States have significant Cuban American populations. Florida (1,621,352 in 2023) has the highest concentration of Cuban Americans in the United States. Over 1.2 million Cuban Americans reside in Miami-Dade County (home to 52 percent of all Cuban immigrants in the U.S.), where they are the largest single ethnic group and constitute a majority of the population in many municipalities.

The Freedom Tower (Spanish: Torre de la Libertad) is a building in Miami, Florida. It was designed by Schultze and Weaver and is currently used as a contemporary art museum and a central office to different disciplines in the arts associated with Miami Dade College. It is located at 600 Biscayne Boulevard on Miami Dade College's Wolfson Campus.

On September 10, 1979, Freedom Tower was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. On October 6, 2008, it was designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark for its role in hosting Cubans as they fled communist Cuba for Florida following the 1959 Cuban Revolution. On April 18, 2012, the AIA's Florida Chapter placed the building on its list of Florida Architecture: 100 Years. 100 Places as the "Freedom Tower/Formerly Miami News and Metropolis Building".

Cuban nationality law is regulated by the Constitution of Cuba, currently the 2019 Constitution, and to a limited degree upon Decree 358 of 1944. These laws determine who is, or is eligible to be, a citizen of Cuba. The legal means to acquire nationality and formal membership in a nation differ from the relationship of rights and obligations between a national and the nation, known as citizenship. Cuban nationality is typically obtained either on the principle of jus soli, i.e. by birth in Cuba; or under the rules of jus sanguinis, i.e. by birth abroad to a parent with Cuban nationality. It can also be granted to a permanent resident who has lived in the country for a given period of time through naturalization.

Hispanic and Latino are ethnonyms used to refer collectively to the inhabitants of the United States who are of Spanish or Latin American ancestry (see Hispanic and Latino Americans). While many use the terms interchangeably, for example, the United States Census Bureau, others maintain a distinction: Hispanic refers to people from Spanish-speaking countries (including Spain but excluding Brazil), while Latino refers people from Latin American countries (including Brazil but excluding Spain and Portugal). Spain is included in the Hispanic category, and Brazil is included in the Latino category; Portugal is excluded from both categories. Every Latin American country is included in both categories, excluding Brazil.

Hispanic was first used and defined by the U.S. Federal Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) Directive No. 15 in 1977, which defined Hispanic as "a person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central America or South America or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race." The term was formed out of a collaboration with Mexican-American political elites to encourage cultural assimilation into American society among all Hispanic/Latino peoples and move away from the anti-assimilationist politics of Chicano identity, which had gained prominence in the preceding decades through the Chicano Movement. The rise of Hispanic identity paralleled an emerging era of conservatism in the United States during the 1980s.