The first National Atlas of Cuba: Rediscovering the early 20th century country

Summary

This article examines the first National Atlas of Cuba, Atlas de Cuba, published in 1949 by the Institute of Geographical Exploration at Harvard University, and uses it to rediscover the country in the early twentieth century. The atlas was edited by Cuban geographer Gerardo Canet with the close collaboration of Hungarian-born cartographer Erwin Raisz, a pioneer of physiographic mapping. Inspired by Salvador Massip, Canet undertook the project during a five-year stay at Harvard, supported by a Guggenheim fellowship. The atlas presents 34 themes in 64 pages, organized into groups covering the country's history, physical geography, social conditions (standard of living, health, social composition, government), and national economy. A distinctive feature is its rich combination of maps with photographs, charts, and textual explanations, intended not only for specialists but also for the general public. This early multimedia approach reflects a fusion of Raisz's delicate drawing and physiographic style with Canet's desire to make a wide range of data accessible and visually attractive. The article also reconstructs the authors' biographies and professional relationship, noting that Raisz's physiographic method had already been applied to a map of Cuba in 1929, beginning a thirty-year connection with Cuban geography. After the atlas, Canet returned to Cuba and became an active geographer and cartographer, producing maps for historical and geographical works such as Leví Marrero's Geography of Cuba and Ramiro Guerra's Guerra de los Diez Años. However, after he and his wife opposed the government and emigrated to the United States in 1961, Canet's works, including the atlas, were deliberately ignored and omitted by official Cuban media and institutions, though never formally banned. Generations born after 1959 had little access to his contributions; the atlas remained in the National Library, accessible only to authorized researchers. The data it contains provide a fairly complete picture of Cuba before 1959, including details avoided in official discourse for more than fifty years. Therefore, the author argues that reading this atlas allows us to rediscover an early twentieth-century Cuba in all its positive and negative dimensions, and to recognize a forgotten masterpiece of mid-twentieth-century Cuban cartography. The article thus combines historical narrative, cartographic analysis, and political context to recover the significance of Atlas de Cuba and its authors.