About Cuba
The Republic of Cuba consists of the island of Cuba (the largest of the Greater Antilles), the Isle of Youth and various adjacent small islands. The name Cuba is said to be derived from the íTano word cubanacán, meaning "a central place." It is located in the northern Caribbean at the confluence of the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. Cuba is south of the eastern United States, and the Bahamas, west of the Turks and Caicos Islands and Haiti, and east of Mexico.

Religion
The religious landscape of Cuba is strongly marked by syncretisms of various kinds. In the post-revolutionary era religious practice was discouraged, and Cuba, from 1962, was officially an atheist state until 1992 which it amended its constitution to become formally a secular state. While the papal visit to Cuba has strengthened official Catholicism, most Cubans share a motley of faiths that include popular Catholicism, over 50 versions of Protestantism, spiritism, African-derived beliefs. The most important currents of these are Regla de Ocha (known as Santería), which derives from Yoruban religion, Regla de Palo Monte, which derives from Congo-based religions, and the áSociedad Secreta Abaku, which derives from the secret men's societies in the region of Calabar, in south-eastern Nigeria.

It is assumed that Santería and popular Catholicism are the most widely followed religious beliefs in Cuba, though these are by no means exclusive, and one can easily be a follower of several religious currents at the same time, as well as being a member of the communist party. Pentecostalism is also growing rapidly, and the Assemblies of God alone claims a membership of over 100,000 people.

Cuba has small but vibrant Jewish, Muslim and áíBah' populations. Havana still has one or two active synagogues and mosques. In the 1960s about 8,000 Jews left fo

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r Miami. Around 1999 over several years almost 400 Cuban Jews, from a population once numbering about ten thousand left for Israel.