In 1898 Cuba was a geopolitical aberration. Lying only 90 miles from the Florida keys, astride the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico, it was separated from Spain by the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. Yet Cuba remained one of Spain's two colonies in the New World. (The other was Puerto Rico.) It was governed from Madrid much as it had been governed since it was first occupied and settled by the Spaniards in 1511.
<span>Spanish-American War for Cuba's Independence. By the end of the 1800s, Spain had lost all of its New World colonies except Cuba and Puerto Rico. Many Cubans did not wish to be under Spanish rule, so they fled to Florida and other parts of the United States.</span>
