Formerly named City of Havana, it is the present capital city of the Republic of Cuba and at the same time one of the fifteen Cuban provinces. Havana is the most crowed city in Cuba and the entire Caribbean island, with a population of more than two million people. The territory of the capital occupies the sixteenth place in extension between the provinces, with 726,75 square kilometers, representing 0.7 percent of the total surface of the country.
Founded in the spring of 1514, further south, under the name San Cristóbal de La Habana, Havana is the main center of political, economic and socio-cultural life of the nation being the headquarters of the government offices and the Cuban Communist Party , As well as the main cultural and scientific institutions of the country.
In 1982, its Historic Center was declared Patrimony of the Humanity by the UNESCO.
According to a law passed in August 2010 by the National Assembly of Cuba, that province retakes the name of Havana, officially eliminating the name of “City”, unnecessary after the disappearance of the homonymous province, approved by that same law . The city is divided administratively into 15 municipalities.
The tradition recognizes November 16th, 1519 as the date of foundation, when the Spanish conqueror Diego Velázquez – in name of the kings of Spain – established its third and definitive settlement, the present one.
Raised from an original population nucleus, Havana is the fusion of dissimilar localities. According to data provided by the National Bureau of Statistics (ONE), the province has 49 neighborhoods, 329 distributions and 36 population settlements, for a total of 414 space units or officially recognized localities.
Havana was elected on December 7, 2014 in Dubai, under the initiative New7WondersCities, as one of the seven wonder cities in the world to represent the global diversity of urban society.
The area of ??the former province of Ciudad de La Habana is located in the western part of the Republic of Cuba between latitudes 2 ° 58 ‘, 23 ° 10’ North latitude and 82 ° 30 ‘, 82 ° 06’ West longitude. It was the smallest of the provinces of Cuba although it constituted the most populated besides possessing the highest indexes of the whole country of density per square kilometer. It is connected to the north with the Strait of Florida, to the east and part of the south with the province of Artemisa and to the southwest and west with the province of Mayabeque.
Located in the area of ??the Havana-Matanzas Plain, its entire coastline is on the coast, where the bay of Havana is located; to the east are its beaches. Its hydrography is represented by the rivers Almendares, Martín Pérez, Quibú, among others and the reservoirs Bacuranao and Embalse Army Rebelde. Non-urbanized soils are predominant and they are reddish brown fersialitic and red ferralitic, in some coastal sectors there are manifestations of naked carso.
In the same historical area of ??the city, within the territories of the municipalities of Centro Habana, Habana Vieja, Regla, Guanabacoa and Habana del Este, lies Havana Bay, one of the most important ports of the Caribbean area, former center of organization of the goods that were sent to colonial Spain from the Caribbean colonies. Along its northern coast are located beaches of great beauty, standing out the Playas del Este located in the localities Guanabo, Bacuranao and Santa Maria del Mar in the municipality of Havana. In the south it has some limestone elevations in zones like Guanabacoa, San Miguel del Padrón, Arroyo Naranjo and Boyeros.
The City of Havana meets the definition of megapolis, according to data from the 2002 Census, the province had 2 201 610 people and in 2008 estimates, approximately 2 148 132 million, which is more than 20% of the population of the Republic which equates to a population density of 2 963.8 inhabitants per square kilometer. Currently two municipalities are considered super-populated in terms of absolute population, such as Diez de Octubre and Arroyo Naranjo, so the southern part of the city is home to the largest population. While the coastal municipality of Centro Habana encompasses the highest population density per square kilometer, according to data from the government of that municipality, there are 65 565.2 people per square kilometer, reason why in only 3.42 square kilometers live more than 160 Thousand inhabitants. In addition to these somewhat chilling data, the province has a floating population of over half a million people who, for different reasons, visit or live in it temporarily, which complicates the metropolitan demographic spectrum.
The autochthonous population is higher than the immigrant, more than 2/3: 1 501 368 people, for 68.45%, although residents from other places constitute an important figure: 702 242 inhabitants, for a 31.55 %. Of these, 47.43% come from the eastern region, 25.99 from the central and 25.78% from the western provinces.
Havana is the largest city in the Cuban context and in the Caribbean island area. As its metropolitan environment exceeds two million people and although it does not reach the level of “megacities” such as New York, Tokyo or Mexico City, which exceed ten million and some to twenty, in the Antilles there is no city higher populated than it and also because its dimensions: this capital city with its metropolitan environment although it is only the fourth part of the Isla de la Juventud, is superior in extension to the islands of Lesser Antilles than are constituent nations, with the exception of Trinidad and Tobago, Guadeloupe and Martinique, and even tiny states of the old continent are smaller than this city: Andorra, Luxembourg, San Marino, Vatican and Monaco. Havana is a big city.
Political-administrative organization
The Law 1304 of July 3, 1976, approved by the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Cuba, abolished the political-administrative division that existed, 6 provinces, 68 regions and 407 municipalities and sectional, and established a new one with 14 provinces and 169 municipalities. Havana was recognized then as one of the fourteen provinces of the country.
When we approach the theme of the capital, then we cannot homologate the province of Havana with the capital of the nation, which is Havana. Certainly this city is called the same as the province that is neighboring: Havana.
The present capital city – whose genesis is in the town of San Cristobal de La Habana, settled for the third and final occasion near the Bay of Havana, and that in its uncontrolled growth towards the west, south and east, other settlements were annexed between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, constitutes a large metropolitan urban nucleus. Some of the territories that integrate it had reached titles of city or town: Marianao, Guanabacoa, Regla. Others were typified as villages, villages or hamlets, remaining united to the city by means of new localities called neighborhoods, distributions or communities.
The Province of Havana is currently constituted by 15 municipalities:
Havana Vieja
Centro Habana
Plaza de la Revolución
Playa
Marianao
10 de Octubre
Cerro
Regla
San Miguel
Cotorro
Arroyo Naranjo
Guanabacoa
Boyeros
Habana del Este
La Lisa
They are interconnected by bus, as well as taxis, trains, etc. Each municipality has peculiarities for example: in Plaza this is the seat of government and fundamental ministries, besides being the financial district of the city, Playa is the embassy area.