Excerpt from Census of Cuba, 1900 In presenting the statistics of the census of Cuba, the municipal district, as the principal administrative and political minor civil division, has been selected as the census unit. That the significance of the data may be better understood, it has been thought advisable to present a brief outline of the framework of municipal and provincial govern ment as it existed when the census was taken. Under the laws of Spain a municipality is the legal association of all persons who reside in a municipal district, and is represented by a municipal council as a financial administrative corporation. A municipal district is the terri tory under the administration of a municipal council. Municipal dis tricts are established, increased, diminished, annexed to other munici pal districts, wholly or in part, or abolished, by the military governor of the island, as the lawful successor of the governor-general. They correspond, in a measure, to American counties or townships, and as prerequisites to their establishment must contain not less than inhabitants, a territory proportioned in extent to the population, and be able to meet the obligatory municipal expenses. Municipal districts differ in area, and each forms part of a judicial district and of a province, but can not belong to different jurisdictions of the same order. There are 6 provinces, 31 judicial districts, and 132 municipal districts in the island. To facilitate the administrative service, each municipal district is divided into subdistricts and the latter into wards (barrios), depending on the number of residents in the subdistricts. For political purposes the subdistricts are further divided into electoral districts and the latter into electoral sections. As far as practicable, ward limits are arranged so that the wards shall have approximately the same population, but every part of the municipal district must form, or be included in, a ward, no matter what its population may be. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.