Cuba is the Caribbean’s largest and least ‘touristy’ islands.

In 1959 a young revolutionary, Fidel Castro, seized power for the Communists. The cigar smoking, long bearded dictator has been in power ever since. Throughout the ‘60s US anti-Communist hatred and paranoia was at its height and the Soviet Union only added heat to the situation by supporting Cuba and supplying it with nuclear weapons. All this came to a head in 1962 with the Cuban missile crisis; a nuclear standoff between Cuba and the USA, which is said to be the closest the world has ever come to a nuclear conflict.

In the years that followed Cuba exported its own brand of Communism to revolutionaries across Latin America and Africa, while the USA responded by giving its support to the countries’ dictators.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cuban economy has struggled to keep much of the population out of poverty.

A photograph taken of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara has become a cult classic. The image has been used on t-shirts, banners and posters around the world. The Church of England even used a Che Guevara style poster of Jesus to advertise the Church!

An English advertising agency was taken to court by the photographer who took the iconic picture, when they tried to use it to promote Smirnoff vodka. The photographer felt that the association with alcohol would be a slur to Guevara’s “immortal memory”.

During the ‘90s there has been rapid church growth and many churches are filled with young people despite the fact that Cuba’s communist ideals have opposed Christianity for 40 years.

After being closed for 25 years the Cuban Bible Society reopened in 1990. Since then one million Bibles have been printed in Cuba and as many have been legally imported and sold.

Over one million Cubans have fled the country – either to escape Communism or poverty. Most of these refugees try to settle in the United States. Unfortunately both the USA and Cuba have attempted to use refugees as political weapons – either to make themselves look good, or the other country look bad.

For many years Christians faced imprisonment and discrimination under Communist rule. In the last ten years this persecution has really reduced (although it has not stopped completely). Pray for complete freedom for Christians in Cuba.

Cuba used to have the lowest rate of church attendance for any country in the West. 80% of the population still do not have any real connections with a church.

The Cuban government support spiritism, communicating with spirits and the dead, as being part of Cuba’s ‘cultural’ heritage. As many as 3 million people are followers of spiritism or voodoo cults.