Atlas de Cuba

Summary

Gerardo Canet, with the collaboration of Erwin Raisz, compiled the Atlas de Cuba, published by Harvard University Press in 1949. The 64-page volume, prepared at Harvard's Institute of Geographical Exploration and issued in cooperation with the Cuban Ministry of Agriculture, covers physical geography (climate, hurricanes, oceanography, geology, geomorphology, soils, vegetation), human and economic geography (population, social composition, government, education, tourism, agriculture, sugar, tobacco, minerals, industries, communications, imports and exports) and history. In the introduction Canet states that the atlas aims at a living picture of Cuban geography rather than the static graphic report of a given moment typical of official and commercial atlases, organizing the material around the questions of what the facts are, what the fundamental problems are, and what their effects and remedies may be—arguing, for instance, that Cuba's dependence on the fluctuating United States sugar market makes crop and industrial diversification advisable. The accompanying colored map uses color to suggest land types, its symbols chosen from a series of flights over the island and the analysis of numerous color aerial photographs.