Cuba's population is multiethnic, reflecting its complex colonial origins. Intermarriage between diverse groups is widespread, and consequently there is some discrepancy in reports of the country's racial composition: whereas the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami determined that 62% of Cubans are black, the 2002 Cuban census found that a similar proportion of the population, 65.05%, was white. In fact, the Minority Rights Group International determined that "An objective assessment of the situation of Afro-Cubans remains problematic due to scant records and a paucity of systematic studies both pre- and post-revolution. Estimates of the percentage of people of African descent in the Cuban population vary enormously, ranging from 34% to 62%".
Ethnoracial groups
Cuba
Cuba | Ethnoracial groups
Afro-Cubans The Ciboney Taíno people. f Canarian, Catalan, Andalusian, Galician, and other Spanish people. Other prominent immigrant groups included French, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Dutch, Greek, British, Irish and U.S. citizens. Canarian, Catalan, Andalusian, Galician, etc.
when was the last time a hurricane hit tampa bay area
user
1921
assistant
which areas did it effected?
user
Cuba, Pasco County, Manatee County and Sarasota County.
assistant
who ruled the first place?
user
Communist Party of Cuba
assistant
which ethnic groups immigrated here?
user
During the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, large waves of Canarians, Catalans, Andalusians, Castilians, and Galicians immigrated to Cuba. Between 1901 and 1958, more than a million Spaniards arrived in Cuba from Spain; many of these and their descendants left after Castro's Communist regime took power. One further significant ethnic influx was from various Middle Eastern ethnic groups, and many Jews in particular. An autosomal study from 2014 found the genetic makeup in Cuba to be 72% European, 20% African, and 8% Native American with different proportions depending on the self-reported ancestry (White, Mulatto or Mestizo, and Black). According to this study Whites are on average 86% European, 6.7% African and 7.8% Native American with European ancestry ranging from 65% to 99%.
White Latin Americans | Cuba
During the 18th, 19th and early part of the 20th century, large waves of Canarians, Catalans, Andalusians, Castilians, and Galicians emigrated to Cuba. Also, one significant ethnic influx is derived from various Middle Eastern nations. Many Jews have also immigrated there, some of them Sephardic. Between 1901 and 1958, more than a million Spaniards arrived to Cuba from Spain; many of these and their descendants left after Castro's communist regime took power. In 1958, it was estimated that approximately 74% of Cubans were of European ancestry, mainly of Spanish origin, 10% of African ancestry, 15% of both African and European ancestry (mulattos), and a small 1% of the population was Asian, predominantly Chinese.
White people | Cuba
In various places around the world, minority ethnic groups represent lineages of ancient human migrations in places now occupied by more populous ethnic groups, whose ancestors arrived later. For example, the first human groups to inhabit the Caribbean islands were hunter-gatherer tribes from South and Central America. Genetic testing of natives of Cuba show that, in late pre-Columbian times, the island was home to agriculturalists of Taino ethnicity. In addition, a relict population of the original hunter-gatherers remained in western Cuba as the Ciboney people.
Relict | Human populations
Immigration and emigration have played a prominent part in Cuba's demographic profile. Between the 18th and early 20th century, large waves of Canarian, Catalan, Andalusian, Galician, and other Spanish people immigrated to Cuba. Between 1899–1930 alone, close to a million Spaniards entered the country, though many would eventually return to Spain. Other prominent immigrant groups included French, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Dutch, Greek, British, and Irish, as well as small number of descendants of U.S. citizens who arrived in Cuba in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Cuba | Immigration
According to the previous censuses, the Chinese were counted as white. The ancestry of Cubans comes from many sources: During the 18th, 19th and early part of the 20th century, large waves of Spanish immigrants from Canary Islands, Catalonia, Andalusia, Galicia, and Asturias emigrated to Cuba. Between 1820 and 1898, a total of 508,455 people left Spain, and more than 750,000 Spanish immigrants left for Cuba between 1899 and 1930, with many returning to Spain. There are 139,851 Spanish citizens living in Cuba on January 1, 2018. The Slave trade brought Africans to Cuba during its early history: Between 1842 and 1873, 221,000 African slaves entered Cuba.
Demographics of Cuba | Ancestral origins
Canary Islanders were viewed by other Spanish-Cubans as superstitious but also hard-working. Some of Haiti's white population (French) migrated to Cuba after the Haitian War of Independence in the early 18th century. Also, minor but significant ethnic influx is derived from diverse peoples from Middle East places such as Lebanon and Palestine. There was also a significant influx of Jews, especially between the World Wars, from many countries, including Sephardi Jews from Turkey and Ashkenazi Jews from Poland, Germany and Russia. Other Europeans that have contributed slightly include Italians, Germans, Swedes and Hungarians. Many Chinese also settled Cuba as contract laborers and they formerly boast the largest Chinatown in Western Hemisphere as most Chinese Cubans left for Florida.
Cuban Americans | Ancestry
A 2014 study found that, based on ancestry informative markers (AIM), autosomal genetic ancestry in Cuba is 72% European, 20% African, and 8% Indigenous. Around 35% of maternal lineages derive from Cuban Indigenous People, compared to 39% from Africa and 26% from Europe, but male lineages were European (82%) and African (18%), indicating a historical bias towards mating between foreign men and native women rather than the inverse.
Cuba | Ethnoracial groups
Cuba's population is multiethnic, reflecting its complex colonial origins. Intermarriage between diverse groups is widespread, and consequently there is some discrepancy in reports of the country's racial composition: whereas the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami determined that 62% of Cubans are black, the 2002 Cuban census found that a similar proportion of the population, 65.05%, was white. In fact, the Minority Rights Group International determined that "An objective assessment of the situation of Afro-Cubans remains problematic due to scant records and a paucity of systematic studies both pre- and post-revolution. Estimates of the percentage of people of African descent in the Cuban population vary enormously, ranging from 34% to 62%".
Cuba | Ethnoracial groups
Following the Cuban Revolution, small numbers of Americans, mostly communists, began migrating to Cuba. In the 1980s, there was an organized group of Americans who called themselves the Union of North American Residents. They consist of nearly 30 expatriates, some members of the US Communist Party while others are leftist writers or English teachers. Many American fugitives have taken refuge in Cuba. Some of them remain on the FBI's Most Wanted List, and most were members of radical leftist organizations, Puerto Rican separatist groups and Black nationalist organizations (most notably the Black Panther Party) who fled to the country to escape U.S.
Americans in Cuba | Migration history
The first wave of French immigrants to arrive in Cuba were fleeing the Haitian Revolution and the new governmental administration of Haiti after independence was declared. This immigration reached its peak between 1800 and 1809, when more than twenty-seven thousand French of all social classes arrived in the eastern part of Cuba. Many of them emigrated to the city of Santiago de Cuba, which had neither sidewalks nor paved streets, and lacked drinking water, supplies and dwellings for the refugees. The newcomers soon recognized the favorable conditions the new land presented. Initially, they worked in the port, and traded with the Catalans who had settled in Santiago.
French immigration to Cuba | First wave of migration
Hernan Cortes and his crew of soldiers and sailors used Cuba as a launching point for the conquest of the Aztec Empire. Cuba-born individuals began arriving during the colonial era and have continued into the post-independence era. Many arrived fleeing from the chaos caused by the Cuban War of Independence. Fidel Castro and his followers used Mexico as a launching point for the Cuban Revolution. The majority of modern Cuban migrants have been exiles or refugees fleeing from the Communist regime in Cuba. Both countries share the Spanish language; their historical origins are common (part of the Spanish Empire). As of 2012, there were 14,637 Cuban-born individuals registered with the Mexican government as living in Mexico.
Cuban Mexicans | Migration history
As compared to most other Latin American countries at the time, a very large percentage of the Cuban population were Spaniards or their descendants; the native Taíno and Ciboney peoples had mostly disappeared in Cuba early in the colonial period.
History of Cuban nationality | Spanish colonial period
Before the arrival of the Spanish, Cuba was inhabited by two distinct tribes of indigenous peoples of the Americas: the Taíno (including the Ciboney people), and the Guanahatabey. The ancestors of the Taíno migrated from the mainland of South America, with the earliest sites dated to 5,000 BP. The Taíno arrived from Hispaniola sometime in the 3rd century A.D. When Columbus arrived, they were the dominant culture in Cuba, having an estimated population of 150,000.
Cuba | Pre-Columbian era
Central and Eastern European influence was mostly during the Cold War years and immigration from the British Isles was mostly to Havana and Pinar del Rio Province. There is a small remnant of Jewish communities and there are also diverse Levantine peoples, mainly Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrians.
Cubans | White or European, Criollo
An autosomal study from 2014 has found the genetic ancestry in Cuba to be 72% European, 20% African and 8% Native American.
Ethnic groups in Latin America | Cuba
Cubans of European origin reached a peak of 74.3% or 3,553,312 of the total population in 1943. Most recently, those self-identified as white made up 64.1% of the total population, according to the 2012 census. They are predominately the descendants of early Spanish settlers, along with other Europeans including the Germans, English, French and Italians arriving later but in smaller numbers. However, after the mass exodus (particularly to the United States) resulting from the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the number of white Cubans actually residing in Cuba diminished. The majority of white Dominicans are descendants from the first European settlers to arrive in Hispaniola and have ancestry of the Spanish and French who settled in the island during colonial times, as well as the Canary Islanders, Portuguese who settled in the 17th and 18th centuries.
European emigration | Caribbean and Central America
Researcher Jorge Duany claims the majority of exiles were urban, middle-aged, well-educated, light-skinned, and white-collar workers, who emigrated primarily did so for religious, or political reasons. He also claims that while the first emigrants left because they were old Bastianos, those after left because of disillusionment with the new government and because economic reforms and nationalizations of American companies had harmed their professions. Researchers Irving Louis Horowitz and Jaime Suchlick have claimed about half of those who emigrated were blue collar workers and many of those were agricultural workers and fishermen. They also proposed many left because of Cuba's new rationing system and mandatory military service.
Golden exile | Demographics
The first ethnic Koreans to arrive in Cuba came from Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula in search of a better life. In 1905, 1,033 Koreans set sail on a cargo ship from Incheon to Yucatán. Upon arrival, instead of the riches they had promised, all they found was the most menial type of labor. They were sold to 22 landlords and became sugarcane and hemp (henequen) cutters, toiling from sun-up till sundown in the dry and harsh tropical sun. Most of them settled there as field hands. On May 25, 1921, three hundred of them immigrated to Cuba from Mexico, hoping for better living conditions, but found them just as lamentable The Koreans' arrival coincided with a generally favorable economy in Cuba mostly due to sugar but soon sugar prices dropped drastically and there was no work.
Koreans in Cuba | History of migration
While Arabic culture first came to Cuba through Spanish colonization, namely in the architecture and language, the Arab communities migrated to the island in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century. Many of the immigrants were economically motivated, but other elements including civil unrest and famine resulted in the emigration from their home countries. Most Arabs settled in Havana, with a significant number in Holguín and Santiago de Cuba, where they began establishing their businesses and institutions. The neighborhood today known as Los Sitios, near Centro Habana and Habana Vieja, was home to nearly 25% of Cuba's Arab community during the migration periods of the early twentieth century.
Arab Cubans | History
Of the Taínos the number of people claiming descent have not been formally recorded. Most, however, live on the eastern part of the island. Additionally, many North American Indians living in Spanish missions in Georgia and Florida were evacuated to Spanish Cuba along with the fleeing Spanish settlers following the loss of Spanish Florida. As a result, descendants of the Calusa, Tequesta, Timucua and other now-extinct indigenous peoples of Florida are now assimilated into the mainstream Cuban population. The total population in the official 1953 Census was 5,829,029 people. Intermarriage between diverse groups is so general as to be the rule.
Cubans | Amerindian
The European heritage of Cubans comes primarily from one source: the Spaniards (including Canarians, Asturians, Catalans, Galicians and Castilians). The native white population are nearly all descendants of the Spaniards and most non-white Cubans also have Spanish ancestry.
Spanish immigration to Cuba | Immigration waves
At 824 people, Cuban Americans make up 0.1% of Baltimore's population, as of 2010. Cubans began arriving in Baltimore in the 1960s and were among the first Latino immigrants to the city. These early Cuban immigrants were predominantly middle-class and anti-Castro. 1980 saw a second wave of immigration from Cuba. Most were outcasts, mainly poor and uneducated and many being former prisoners.
Ethnic groups in Baltimore | Cubans
In 1511, Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar set out with three ships and an army of 300 men from Hispaniola to form the first Spanish settlement in Cuba, with orders from Spain to conquer the island. The settlement was at Baracoa, but the new settlers were to be greeted with stiff resistance from the local Taíno population. The Taínos were initially organized by cacique ("chieftain") Hatuey, who had himself relocated from Hispaniola to escape the brutalities of Spanish rule on that island. After a prolonged guerrilla campaign, Hatuey and successive chieftains were captured and burnt alive, and within three years the Spanish had gained control of the island.
Spanish immigration to Cuba | Early settlement
In the last half-century, several hundred thousand Cubans of all social classes have emigrated to the United States. In the immediate aftermath of the Cuban Revolution, an initial exodus (1959–1962) of little more than 200,000 people left Cuba, where the Cuban government had begun to nationalize industry and implement Soviet-style policies. Many people headed to Miami, the American city nearest to the island. The initial wave were mostly connected to the Fulgencio Batista oligarchy who had been stripped of their property and privilege. The convenience to New York, economic potential, family connections, the possibility of home ownership, and a chance to replant a tight-knit community may have been the initial attraction for emigres who were forced to flee.
Havana on the Hudson | First wave
The government would quickly label exiles who left as "racists", discouraging Afro-Cubans to also emigrate. These conditions caused the majority of those who emigrated to be either upper or middle class, white, and catholic. Many middle class emigrants were often professionals that were tied to American companies that were nationalized. Many of the emigrants that would leave believed they would be returning soon to Cuba, believing the U.S. would soon intervene and overthrow the Fidel Castro government. Some of those exiled in the United States would organize a militant resistance to the Fidel Castro government.
Golden exile | 1959 - 1960
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Cuban government created immigration laws that invested more than $1 million into recruiting Europeans into Cuba to whiten the state. High participation of blacks in independence movements threatened white elitist power and when the 1899 census showed that more than of Cuba's population was colored, white migration started to gain support. Political blanqueamiento began in 1902 after the U.S. occupation, where migration of "undesirables" (i.e. blacks) became prohibited in Cuba. Immigration policies supported the migration of entire families. Between 1902 and 1907, nearly 128,000 Spaniards entered Cuba, and officially in 1906, Cuba created its immigration law that funded white migrants.
Blanqueamiento | Cuba
The Yucatecans, the largest Mexican community on Cuban soil, are distributed in Havana, Pinar del Río, and Matanzas. This community arrived in Mexico from the Spanish colonial period, as slaves were brought to the island to work the sugar plantations. Many other Yucatecans came during the Caste War in the nineteenth century. Migration from the Yucatán decreased in the twentieth century. The majority of the Korean diaspora in Cuba are descendants of immigrants from Yucatán.
Mexican immigration to Cuba | Yucatecans
As part of the middle class, some Jews were made to serve in forced labor camps in the 1960s, but they were not targeted as an ethnic group by Castro's government.
History of the Jews in Cuba | History
Political discontent led to the 1959 Cuban Revolution, which caused the beginning of massive Cuban-American immigration. Those factors combined to create in Cuba an atmosphere that was, according to scholar Aviva Chomsky, "ripe for revolution," which Castro exploited to gain power. In the immediate wake of the revolution, emigration started with the most affluent classes. Although many pro-Batista corrupted government officials were among those first exiles, it was soon followed by thousands of disenchanted middle-class Cubans of all ethnicities.
Freedom Flights | Previous emigration
According to a 2001 national census which surveyed 11.2 million Cubans, 1.1 million Cubans described themselves as Black, while 5.8 million considered themselves to be "mulatto" or "mestizo" or "javao" or "moro". Many Cubans still locate their origins in specific African ethnic groups or regions, particularly Yoruba, Congo and Igbo, but also Arará, Carabalí, Mandingo, Fula and others, as well as a small minority of people who migrated in from surrounding Caribbean countries like Haiti and Jamaica. An autosomal study from 2014 has found out the genetic ancestry in Cuba to be 72% European, 20% African and 8% Native American.
Afro-Latin Americans | Cuba
After the Cuban revolution led by Fidel Castro in 1959, a Cuban exodus began as the new government allied itself with the Soviet Union and began to introduce communism. The first Cubans to come to America after the revolution were those affiliated with former dictator Fulgencio Batista, next were Cuba's professionals. Most Cuban Americans that arrived in the United States initially came from Cuba's educated upper and middle classes centered in Cuba's capital Havana. This middle class arose in the period after the Platt Amendment when Cuba became one of the most successful countries in Latin America. Between December 1960 and October 1962 more than 14,000 Cuban children arrived alone in the U.S.
Cuban Americans | Post-1959 revolution (1959–present)
After the Cuban revolution led by Fidel Castro in 1959, a Cuban exodus began as the new government allied itself with the Soviet Union and began to introduce communism. From 1960 to 1979, tens of thousands of Cubans left Cuba, with the vast majority coming from Cuba's educated, landowning upper class. Operacion Pedro Pan developed when children arrived in Miami and were met by representatives of Catholic Charities. The children were then sent to live with relatives, foster homes, orphanages, or boarding schools. In order to provide aid to the immigrants, the United States Congress passed the Cuban Adjustment Act in 1966.
Cuban immigration to the United States | Cuban exile to Miami (1953–1959)
While U.S. born Cuban Americans moved out of their enclaves, other nationalities settled there.
Cuban immigration to the United States | Immigration policy
The ancestry of Cuban Americans is primarily from Spaniards and Black Africans, as well as more distant ancestry from among the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean and those of Florida. During the 18th, 19th and early part of the 20th century, there were waves of Spanish immigration to Cuba (Castilians, Basques, Canarians, Catalans, Andalusians, Asturians and Galicians). Canarians immigrated to many countries along the Caribbean from Louisiana to Venezuela. But Cuba was the Latin American culture most influenced by the emigration of Canary Islanders (they developed the production of sugar in Cuba), and Cuban Spanish is closest to that of the Canary Islands.
Cuban Americans | Ancestry
However, after the Cuban revolution, due to a combination of factors, mainly mass exodus to Miami, United States, a drastic decrease in immigration, and interracial reproduction, Cuba's demography has changed. As a result, those of complete European ancestry and those of pure African ancestry have decreased, the mulatto population has increased, and the Asian population has, for all intents and purposes, disappeared. The Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami says the present Cuban population is 38% white and 62% black/mulatto. The Minority Rights Group International says that "An objective assessment of the situation of Afro-Cubans remains problematic due to scant records and a paucity of systematic studies both pre- and post-revolution.
White people | Cuba
While only a quarter of the population were engaged in agriculture, commercial activities were much more robust than before.
French immigration to Cuba | Second, third and fourth waves of migration
Thus migrated more than 40,149 in the first decade, encouraged by U.S. immigration facilities at the time and more than 43,400 by the end of the 30s. Subsequently, the flow of Cubans to the United States fluctuated, due to both the domestic situation in the 40s and 50s in Cuba, and U.S. immigration policies, plus intermittent anti-immigrant sentiment. Cuban Migration in those years included, in addition to workers, a small mass of the population who could afford to leave the country and live abroad. The U.S. was considered a favored destination by the Cuban bourgeoisie and the middle classes of society, to send their children to school, take vacations and bring some of their capital to establish small and medium-sized businesses.
Cuban Americans | Other early waves (1900–1959)
Cuba enumerated people by race since 1774 to the most recent official census in 2012.
Race and ethnicity in censuses | Cuba
Cuban immigration to the United States, for the most part, occurred in two periods: the first series of immigration of Cuban Americans from Argentina to the United States resulted from Cubans establishing cigar factories in Tampa and from attempts to overthrow Spanish colonial rule by the movement led by José Martí, the second to escape from Communist rule under Fidel Castro following the Cuban Revolution. Massive Cuban migration to Miami during the second series led to major demographic and cultural changes in Miami. There was also economic emigration, particularly during the Great Depression in the 1930s. As of 2018, there were 1,343,960 Cubans in the United States.
Cuban immigration to the United States | Introduction
Several hundred have since emigrated to Israel.
History of the Jews in Cuba | Introduction
Most heritage comes from Canarians, Asturians, Galicians and Castilians. The native white population are nearly all descendants of the Spaniards.
Spanish diaspora | Cuba
These "Cuban Taíno" established chiefdoms concentrated in Oriente Province, though they established settlements as far west as Havana Province. However, the Cuban Taíno never established an island-wide political structure as existed in Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. Classic Taíno migration from Hispaniola to Cuba increased after Spanish contact, with many Taíno leaving to escape the Spanish incursion. Notably, Hispaniola Taíno chief Hatuey fled to Cuba with most of his people; he remained there until the Spanish captured and executed him. Following the Spanish conquest of Cuba in 1511 under Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, the population of all native groups declined precipitously until they had disappeared as distinct groups by the end of the century.
Ciboney | History
Although Afro-Cubans can be found throughout Cuba, Eastern Cuba has a higher concentration of Afro-Cubans than other parts of the island and Havana has the largest population of Afro-Cubans of any city in Cuba. Recently, many native African immigrants have been coming to Cuba, especially from Angola. Also, immigrants from Jamaica and Haiti have been settling in Cuba, most of whom settle in the eastern part of the island, due to its proximity to their home countries, further contributing to the already high percentage of blacks on that side of the island. The percentage of Afro-Cubans on the island increased after the 1959 Cuban revolution led by Fidel Castro due to mass migration from the island of the largely white Cuban professional class.
Afro-Cubans | Demographics
In the 1920s an additional 30,000 Cantonese and small groups of Japanese also arrived; both immigrations were exclusively male and there was rapid intermarriage with white, black and mulato populations. The CIA World Factbook Cuba, in 2008, claimed a population of 114,240 Chinese-Cubans, with only 300 being pure Chinese. In the study of genetic origin, admixture and asymmetry in maternal and paternal human lineages in Cuba, thirty-five Y-chromosome SNPs were typed in the 132 male individuals of the Cuban sample. The study does not include any people with some Chinese ancestry. All the samples were White and Black Cubans. Two out of 132 male sample belong to East Asian Haplogroup O2, which is found in significant frequencies among Cantonese people, is found in 1.5% of the Cuban population.
Afro-Asians | Cuba
These people had migrated north along the Caribbean island chain. The Taíno and Siboney were part of a cultural group commonly called the Arawak, who inhabited parts of northeastern South America prior to the arrival of Europeans. Initially, they settled at the eastern end of Cuba, before expanding westward across the island. The Spanish Dominican clergyman and writer Bartolomé de las Casas estimated that the Taíno population of Cuba had reached 350,000 by the end of the 15th century. The Taíno cultivated the yuca root, harvested it and baked it to produce cassava bread. They also grew cotton and tobacco, and ate maize and sweet potatoes.
History of Cuba | Pre-Columbian history
75% of whites are over 80% European and 50% are over 88% European According to a study in 2011 Whites are on average 5.8% African with African ancestry ranging from 0% to 13%. 75% of whites are under 8% African and 50% are under 5% African A study from 2009 analysed the genetic structure of the three principal ethnic groups from Havana City (209 individuals), and the contribution of parental populations to its genetic pool. A contribution from Indigenous peoples of the Americas was not detectable in the studied sample.
White Latin Americans | Cuba
Cuban immigration also continues with an allotted number of Cubans (20,000 per year) provided legal U.S. visas. According to a U.S. Census 1970 report, Cuban Americans as well as Latinos lived in all fifty states. But as later Census reports demonstrated, the majority of Cuban immigrants settled in south Florida. A new trend in the late 1990s showed that fewer immigrants arrived from Cuba than previously. While U.S.-born Cuban Americans moved out of their enclaves, other nationalities settled there. In late 1999, U.S. news media focused on the case of Elián González, the six-year-old Cuban boy caught in a custody battle between his relatives in Miami and his father in Cuba.
Cuban Americans | Immigration policy
Before the Louisiana Purchase and the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, Spanish Florida, and when divided during British occupation, East Florida and West Florida, including what is now Florida and the Gulf Coast west to the Mississippi River were provinces of the Captaincy General of Cuba (Captain General being the Spanish title equivalent to the British colonial Governor). Consequently, Cuban immigration to the U.S. has a long history, beginning in the Spanish colonial period in 1565 when St. Augustine, Florida was established by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and hundreds of Spanish-Cuban soldiers and their families moved from Cuba to St. Augustine to establish a new life.
Cuban Americans | Early migrations
Cubans of East Asian origins made up 1.02% of the population. They are mostly of Chinese (especially Cantonese), Japanese or Korean origins. The Chinese population in Cuba is descended mostly from indentured laborers who arrived in the 19th century to build railroads and work in mines. After the Industrial Revolution, many of these laborers stayed in Cuba because they could not afford return passage to China.
Cubans | Asian
Other results show that between 1902 and 1931, 780,400 (60.8%) were from Spain, 197,600 (15.4%) from Haiti, 115,600 (9.0%) from Jamaica and 190,300 (14.8%) other countries.
Spanish immigration to Cuba | Early 20th Century
Some 5,000 immigrants from the U.S. came to Cuba during the late 19th century to escape the discrimination present at the time. Another, albeit smaller wave of Chinese immigrants, also arrived during the 20th century, some as supporters of the communist cause during the Cuban revolution and others as dissidents escaping the authorities in China. There were almost no women among the nearly entirely male Chinese "coolie" population that migrated to Cuba (1%). In Cuba, some Indian (Native American), mulatto, black and white women engaged in sexual relations or marriages with Chinese men, with marriages of mulatto, black and white women being reported by the Cuba Commission Report.
Chinese Cubans | History
In Cuba immigrants opened mom-and-pop shops, peddled, and gradually adopted Spanish while still speaking Yiddish, settling into Latino life in La Habana Vieja. In the early part of the century, many Jewish immigrants worked in the Cuban garment industry. More than 94% left during and after the 1959 revolution. As her family was among those who left Cuba, Behar intertwines her personal thoughts and feelings with her professional, analytical observations of the current society.
Ruth Behar | "An Island Called Home"
Similar to any other group who has migrated to the United States for whatever reasons, Cubans have also arrived sharing their customs and has helped the nation to be further diverse. “Cuban Americans make up less than 1 percent of the U.S. population, but they are among the most successful and politically active of recent immigrants.” Cuban refugees were always welcome with open arms until the 1990s. President Bill Clinton “reacted by doing what no U.S. president had ever done - he ordered a halt to the special treatment of Cuban refugees. For more than thirty years, a succession of presidents had dispensed unprecedented financial aid to those fleeing Cuba.” These new arrivals of refugees were labeled as “los marielitos” as they arrived in large numbers.
New diaspora | Today
Between 1780 and 1867, over 780 000 slaves were brought to Cuba. This was more than all the rest of Spanish America combined. Slavery was leaned upon heavily by the owners of the highly profitable sugar plantations. By 1886, people of colour – the majority being ex-slaves – made up 1/3 of the population of Cuba. The issue of integration was a complex and highly contentious issue. Rights were hard to come by for many former slaves and also for those who lived and worked in rural communities. Emancipation was a slow process that started in 1868 and continued until 1886.
History of Cuban nationality | Integration of former slaves
Thus migrated more than 40,000 in the first decade, encouraged by U.S. immigration facilities at the time and more than 43,000 by the end of the 30s. Subsequently, the flow of Cubans to the United States fluctuated, due to both the domestic situation in the 40s and 50s in Cuba, and U.S. immigration policies, plus intermittent anti-immigrant sentiment. Cuban migration in those years included persons who could afford to leave the country and live abroad. The Cuban population officially registered in the United States for 1958 was around 125,000 people, including descendants. Of these, more than 50,000 remained in the United States after the revolution of 1959.
Cuban immigration to the United States | Immigration to the Northeast (1900–1958)
As more Cubans began emigrating during the Cuban exile the idea of Cuban identity began to expand to those outside Cuba and the idea of being Cuban took on a racialized definition.
Cuban identity | Introduction
Several other small waves of Cuban emigration to the U.S. occurred in the early 20th century (1900–1959). Most settled in Florida and the northeast U.S. The majority of an estimated 100,000 Cubans arriving in that time period usually came for economic reasons (the Great Depression of 1929, volatile sugar prices and migrant farm labor contracts), but included anti-Batista refugees fleeing the military dictatorship, which had pro-U.S. diplomatic ties. During the '20s and '30s, emigration from Cuba to U.S. territory, basically comprised workers looking for jobs, mainly in New York and New Jersey. They were classified as labor migrants and workers, much like other immigrants in the area at that time.
Cuban Americans | Other early waves (1900–1959)
In the 2012 Census 64.1% or 7,160,399 self-identified as white. Based on genetic testing the average European, African and Native American ancestry found in those self-reporting to be "blanco (White)" 89.3% were fully "European", 6.7% had some "African" ancestry and 4% had "Native American or Other" ancestry. The majority of the European ancestry comes from Spain. During the 18th, 19th and early part of the 20th century especially, large waves of Canary Islanders, Galicians, Asturians and Catalans emigrated from Spain to Cuba. Other European nationalities with significant influx include: English, French, Germans, Irish, Italians, Poles and Scots. Europeans with lesser influx were Greeks, Portuguese, Romanians and Russians.
Cubans | White or European, Criollo
Thousands of Cuban settlers also immigrated to Louisiana between 1778 and 1802 and Texas during the period of Spanish rule. Since 1820, the Cuban presence was more than 1,000 people. In 1870 the number of Cuban immigrants increased to almost 12,000, of which about 4,500 resided in New York City, about 3,000 in New Orleans and 2,000 in Key West. The causes of these movements were both economic and political, which intensified after 1860, when political factors played the predominant role in emigration, as a result of deteriorating relations with the Spanish metropolis. The year 1869 marked the beginning of one of the most significant periods of emigration from Cuba to the United States, again centered on Key West.
Cuban Americans | Early migrations
Another large wave (an estimated 125,000 people) of Cuban immigration occurred in the early 1980s with the Mariel boatlifts. Most of the "Marielitos" were people wanting to escape from economic stagnation. Fidel Castro sent some 20,000 criminals directly from Cuban prisons, as well as mentally ill persons from Cuban mental institutions, with the alleged double purpose of cleaning up Cuban society and poisoning the USA. Those people were labeled "unadmissible" by the US government, and with time, through many negotiations, have been returned to Cuba.
Cuban Americans | 1980s
Instead of blacks, slave traders looked for others sources of cheap labour, such as Chinese colonists and Indians from Yucatán. Another feature of the population was the number of Spanish-born colonists, known as "peninsulares", who were mostly adult males; they constituted between ten and twenty per cent of the population between the middle of the 19th century and the great depression of the 1930s.
History of Cuba | Antislavery and independence movements
Between 30,000 and 80,000 Cubans are estimated to have died trying flee Cuba during this period. In the early years a number of those who could claim dual Spanish-Cuban citizenship left for Spain. Over the course of several decades, a number of Cuban Jews were allowed to emigrate to Israel after quiet negotiations; the majority of the 10,000 or so Jews who were in Cuba in 1959 eventually left the country. By the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cubans were living in many different countries, some in member countries of the European Union. Spain, Italy, Mexico, and Canada have particularly large Cuban communities.
History of Cuba | Emigration
The exodus of hundreds of workers and businessmen was linked to the manufacture of tobacco. The reasons are many: the introduction of more modern techniques of elaboration of snuff, the most direct access to its main market, the United States, the uncertainty about the future of the island, which had suffered years of economic, political and social unrest during the beginning of the Ten Years' War against Spanish rule. It was an exodus of skilled workers, precisely the class in the island that had succeeded in establishing a free labor sector amid a slave economy.
Cuban Americans | Early migrations
The first to emigrate after the revolution were those who were associated or worked for the old Batista regime. The U.S. embassy in Havana and consulate in Santiago would regularly grant visas to Cubans wishing to leave. By the middle of 1959 various new policies had affected Cuban life such as the redistribution of property, nationalization of religious and private schools, and the banning of racially exclusive social clubs. Those that began to leave the island were driven by them being negatively affected by new economic policies, their distaste with new national public schools, or anxiety over government supported racial integration.
Golden exile | 1959 - 1960
About one-fourth of Cubans are mulattoes. Whites have been the dominant ethnic group for centuries. Although mulattoes have become increasingly prominent since the mid-20th century, some mulattoes still face racial discrimination.
Mulatto | Cuba
Before the 1980s, all refugees from Cuba were welcomed into the United States as political refugees. This changed in the 1990s so that only Cubans who reach U.S. soil were granted refugee status under the "wet foot, dry foot policy". While representing a tightening of U.S. immigration policy, the wet foot, dry foot policy afforded Cubans a privileged position relative to other immigrants to the U.S. According to a U.S. Census 1970 report, Cuban Americans lived in all 50 states. But as later Census reports demonstrated, most Cuban immigrants settled in south Florida. A new trend in the late 1990s showed that fewer immigrants arrived from Cuba than previously.
Cuban immigration to the United States | Immigration policy
The first large group of Jews to settle in Puerto Rico were refugees fleeing German–occupied Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. The second influx came in the 1950s, when thousands of Cuban Jews (most of Eastern-European descent) fled after Fidel Castro came to power. The majority immigrated to Miami, Florida, but a sizable portion chose to establish and integrate themselves on the neighboring island because of Puerto Rico's cultural, linguistic, racial, and historic similarities to Cuba.
History of the Jews in Puerto Rico | Introduction
White people in Cuba make up 64.1% of the total population, according to the 2012 census, with the majority being of diverse Spanish descent. However, after the mass exodus resulting from the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the number of white Cubans actually residing in Cuba diminished. Today, the various records that claim to show the percentage of whites in Cuba are conflicting and uncertain; some reports (usually coming from Cuba) still report a similar-to-pre-1959 number of 65%, and others (usually from outside observers) report 40–45%. Despite most white Cubans being of Spanish descent, many others are of French, Portuguese, German, Italian, or Russian descent.
White Latin Americans | Cuba
Prior to the 1890s, suffrage had been granted uniquely to taxpayers (it was further expanded in 1895 and again in 1898 when all links between property and suffrage were severed). This back-fired, however, as it only provoked white elites who intensified their criticism directed at colonial policies. While white Cuban elites and their colonial administrators debated civil rights and public policy, black Cubans had already been showing initiative. The first step toward property rights came when farm owners allowed their slaves to own a pig. A pig could grow, accrue value, be sold for profit or consumed. Many people quickly seized upon the potential of this and began raising as many pigs as possible, even feeding them from their own rations to keep them growing.
History of Cuban nationality | Integration of former slaves
Land that had formerly grown sugar was now converted to growing henequen, and employed the Korean farmers as cutters. The Koreans, bringing their henequen-cutting skills from Mexico soon showed their good skills and productivity which allowed some to rise to specialized fieldwork and even become trainers and supervisors.
Koreans in Cuba | History of migration
According to a 2012 national census which surveyed 11.2 million Cubans, 1 million Cubans described themselves as Afro-Cuban or Black, while 3 million considered themselves to be "mulatto" or "mestizo". Thus a significant proportion of those living on the island affirm some African ancestry. The matter is further complicated by the fact that a fair number of people still locate their origins in specific native African ethnic groups or regions, particularly the Yoruba (or Lucumí; see Olukumi people), Akan, Arará and Kongo, but also Igbo, Carabalí, Mandingo, Kissi, Fula, Makua and others. A study from 2014 estimated the genetic admixture of the population of Cuba to be 70% European, 22% African and 8% Native American.
Afro-Cubans | Demographics
Spanish immigration to Cuba began in 1492, when Christopher Columbus first landed on the island, and continues to the present day. The first sighting of a Spanish boat approaching the island was on 28 October 1492, probably at Baracoa on the eastern point of the island. Christopher Columbus, on his first voyage to the Americas, sailed south from what is now the Bahamas to explore the northeast coast of Cuba and the northern coast of Hispaniola. Columbus found the island believing it to be a peninsula of the Asian mainland. In 1511, Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar set out with three ships and an army of 300 men from Santo Domingo to form the first Spanish settlement in Cuba, with orders from Spain to conquer the island.
Spanish diaspora | Cuba
Illicit migration is a continuing problem. Cubans attempt to depart the island and enter the US using homemade rafts, alien smugglers, direct flights, or falsified visas; Cubans also use non-maritime routes to enter the US including direct flights to Miami and overland via the southwest US/Mexican border, and islands adjacent to Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
Demographics of Cuba | Demographic statistics from the CIA World Factbook
Chinese immigration to Cuba started in 1847 when Spanish settlers brought in Cantonese contract workers to work in the sugar fields. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers were brought in from China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan during the following decades to replace the labor of African slaves. After completing 8-year contracts, the Chinese immigrants generally settled permanently in Cuba, where their descendants have since intermarried with local Cubans. Unlike that of Argentina and other Latin American countries, the overseas Chinese population of Cuba was once large, but the now-diminished Chinese Cuban community is today clustered around the largely dying "Barrio Chino" — called "Barrio Chino de La Habana" — on Calle Zanja, in Havana.
Chinatowns in Latin America | Cuba
Haplogroup A2 is the main Native American haplogroup in Cuba (21.9% of the total sample), accounting for 67% of the Native American mtDNA gene pool. Regarding Y-chromosome haplogroups (male lineages), 78.8% of the sequences found in Cubans are of West Eurasian origin, 19.7% of African origin and 1.5% of East Asian origin. Among the West Eurasian fraction, the vast majority of individuals belong to West European haplogroup R1b. The African lineages found in Cubans have a Western (haplogroups E1, E2, E1b1a ) and Northern (E1b1b-M81 ) African origin. The "Berber" haplogroup E1b1b1b (E-M81), is found at a frequency of 6.1%.
Demographics of Cuba | Genetics
The number of Cubans of French ancestry remains unknown. In some historical works, the number of French emigrants to Cuba is reported to be over 60,000 during the Haitian Revolution. In those days the total population of Cuba was less than 1,000,0000 and the proportion of whites to blacks was about 50% whites and 50% blacks. This meant that 10–12% of whites were French refugees. On 1 May 2012, the number of registered residents in the French Consulate record was 534, two thirds of them residing in Havana. They were primarily officials of the French Embassy, the Alliance Française and their families, and French expatriates working for French companies operating in Cuba and their families.
French immigration to Cuba | Demography
After they Bay of Pigs failure, many middle class Cuban families sought escape from the newly communist Cuba in the United States. 1961 and 1962 were marked by full family Cuban immigration. Thus, many Cuban women found themselves in the United States as a result of their family. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the ability for Cubans to immigrate with their families became limited as a result of strained US-Cuba relations. This led to Cubans use of flotillas in order to make it to the southern coast of Florida.
Latina women and their migrations to the USA | History of Latina Migration
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Chinese men (Cantonese) engaged in sexual activity with white Cuban women and black Cuban women, and from such relations many children were born. (For a British Caribbean model of Chinese cultural retention through procreation with black women, see Patterson, 322-31). In the 1920s an additional 30,000 Cantonese and small groups of Japanese also arrived; both immigrant groups were exclusively male, and there was rapid intermarriage with white, black, and mulato populations. CIA World Factbook. Cuba. 2008. 15 May 2008. claimed 114,240 Chinese-Cuban coolies with only 300 pure Chinese.
Eurasian (mixed ancestry) | Cuba
French immigration to Cuba began in Cuba already in the eighteenth century, to be strengthened significantly since the nineteenth century. The majority of French people settled in eastern Cuba.
French immigration to Cuba | Introduction
There were almost no women among the nearly entirely male Chinese coolie population that migrated to Cuba. In Cuba some Indian (Native American), mulatto, black, and white women engaged in carnal relations or marriages with Chinese men, with marriages of mulatto, black, and white woman being reported by the Cuba Commission Report. 120,000 Cantonese 'coolies' (all males) entered Cuba under contract for 80 years. Most of these men did not marry, but Hung Hui (1975:80) cites there was a frequency of sexual activity between black women and these Asian immigrants. According to Osberg (1965:69) the free Chinese practice of buying slave women and then freeing them expressly for marriage was utilized at length.
Eurasian (mixed ancestry) | Cuba
However, many European immigrants did not stay in Cuba and came solely for the sugar harvest, returning to their homes during the off seasons. Although some 780,000 Spaniards migrated between 1902–1931, only 250,000 stayed. By the 1920s, blanqueamiento through national policy had effectively failed.
Blanqueamiento | Cuba
Jews have lived on the island of Cuba for centuries. Some Cubans trace Jewish ancestry to crypto-Jews, called Marranos, who fled the Spanish Inquisition. Early colonists generally married native women and few of their descendants, after centuries of residence, practice Judaism today. There was significant Jewish immigration to Cuba in the first half of the 20th century, as noted in other countries of Latin America. There were 15,000 Jews in Cuba in 1959, but many Jewish businessmen and professionals left Cuba for the United States after the Cuban revolution, fearing class persecution under the Communists. In the early 1990s, "Operation Cigar" was launched, and in the period of five years, more than 400 Cuban Jews secretly immigrated to Israel.
History of the Jews in Latin America and the Caribbean | Cuba
The Guanajatabey, Ciboney and Taíno peoples lived in Cuba in the 15th century; these were peaceful peoples and were organized in a primitive community. On October 27, 1492, the first European contact was made when Columbus was trying to sail to the Orient. Sebastián de Ocampo made the first circumnavigation of the island in 1509 and gave the name Carenas to what is now Havana Harbor. In the 1510 expedition of conquistador Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, the indigenous peoples led by Quisqueyano chief Hatuey resisted the Spaniards but were defeated and captured to be used as cheap manual labor. The colonizers saw the great possibilities of wealth from the continent and the island, which were gradually depopulated.
Chronology of Colonial Cuba | Arrival of colonizers
Haitian Creole and culture first entered Cuba with the arrival of Haitian immigrants at the start of the 19th century. Haiti was a French colony, and the final years of the 1791–1804 Haitian Revolution brought a wave of French settlers and their Haitian slaves to Cuba. They came mainly to the east, and especially Guantanamo, where the French later introduced sugar cultivation, constructed sugar refineries and developed coffee plantations. By 1804, some 30,000 French were living in Baracoa and Maisí, the furthest eastern municipalities of the province. Later, Haitians continued to come to Cuba to work as braceros (hand workers, from the Spanish word brazo, meaning "arm") in the fields cutting cane.
Haitian diaspora | Cuba
Differing views exist on to what extent Cubanidad can be claimed and to what degrees it exists for those who do not reside in Cuba, usually based on that persons relationship to life and family in Cuba. Cuban culture and people were formed from a mixture of indigenous people, African slaves, and European migrants. Most often residing in Cuba meant defining oneself in relation to the foreign power that controlled Cuba, such as the Spanish Empire. The origins of a Cuban identity can be traced to the earliest debates about Cuban self-determination, and expanded more greatly with the Cuban independence movement.
Cuban identity | Introduction
Chinese immigration to Cuba started in 1847 when Chinese (Cantonese and Hakka) contract workers were brought to work in the sugar fields, bringing the religion of Buddhism with them. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers were brought in from mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan during the following decades to replace and/or work alongside African slaves. After completing eight-year contracts or otherwise obtaining their freedom, some Chinese immigrants settled permanently in Cuba, although most longed for repatriation to their homeland. Havana's Chinatown (known as "Barrio Chino de La Habana") is one of the oldest and largest Chinatowns in Latin America.
Chinese Cubans | History
Many Cubans currently continue attempts to emigrate to the United States In total, according to some estimates, more than 1 million people have left Cuba, around 10% of the population. Between 1971 and 1998, 547,000 Cubans emigrated to the United States alongside 700,000 neighboring Dominicans, 335,000 Haitians and 485,000 Jamaicans. Since 1966, immigration to the United States was governed by the 1966 Cuban adjustment act, a United States law that applies solely to Cubans. The ruling allows any Cuban national, no matter the means of the entry into the United States, to receive a green card after being in the country a year.
Criticism of communist party rule | Freedom of movement
At the end of the 19th century, American Jewish businessmen and war veterans began to settle on the island. They engaged in import and export as well as sugar and tobacco farming. In 1904, they founded Union Hebrew Congregation and in 1906 a Jewish cemetery was established. In the early 20th century, Sephardi Jewish immigrants from the Ottoman Empire began to arrive and in 1914, they established their own community organization, Union Hebrea Shevet Achim. Most of the Sephardi immigrants arrived poor and turned to peddling or managed to build small businesses. In 1920, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe began arriving.
History of the Jews in Cuba | History
Several other small waves of Cuban emigration to the U.S. occurred in the early 20th century (1900–59). Most settled in Florida and the northeast U.S. The majority of the 100,000 Cubans came for economic reasons due to (the Great Depression of 1929, volatile sugar prices, and migrant farm labor contracts). Others included anti-Batista refugees fleeing the military dictatorship, which had pro-U.S. diplomatic ties. During the '20s and '30s, emigration basically comprised workers looking for jobs, mainly in New York and New Jersey. They were classified as labor migrants and workers, much like other immigrants in the area at that time.
Cuban immigration to the United States | Immigration to the Northeast (1900–1958)
[[Category:American people of Cuban descent|*]] [[Category:Lists of American people by ethnic or national origin]] [[Category:Lists of Cuban people|Americans]] [[Category:Lists of American people of Latin American descent]] [[Category:Lists of people by ethnicity]]
List of Cuban Americans | References
This is a list of notable Cuban Americans, including immigrants who obtained American citizenship and their American descendants. [[File:Danny Valencia cropped.jpg|thumb|130px|right|[[Danny Valencia]]]]
List of Cuban Americans | Introduction
For Cuban-Americans please see List of Cuban Americans
List of Cubans | Additional lists
White people in Cuba make up 64.1% of the total population according to the 2012 census with the majority being of diverse Spanish descent. However, after the mass exodus resulting from the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the number of white Cubans actually residing in Cuba diminished. Today various records claiming the percentage of whites in Cuba are conflicting and uncertain; some reports (usually coming from Cuba) still report a less, but similar, pre-1959 number of 65% and others (usually from outside observers) report a 40–45%. Despite most white Cubans being of Spanish descent, many others are of French, Portuguese, German, Italian and Russian descent.
White people | Cuba
The entire population of Crimean Tatars (200,000) that remained in their homeland Crimea was exiled on 18 May 1944 to Central Asia as a form of ethnic cleansing and collective punishment on false accusations. At Diego Garcia, between 1967 and 1973 the British Government forcibly removed some 2,000 Chagossian resident islanders to make way for a military base today jointly operated by the US and UK. Since the Cuban Revolution over one million Cubans have left Cuba. Most of these self-identified as exiles as their motivation for leaving the island is political in nature. At the time of the Cuban Revolution, Cuba only had a population of 6.5 million, and was not a country that had a history of significant emigration, it being the sixth largest recipient of immigrants in the world as of 1958.
Exile | Nation in exile
Cuban exiles would come from various economic backgrounds, usually reflecting the emigration wave they were a part of. Many of the Cubans who would emigrate early were from the middle and upper class, but often brought very little with them when leaving Cuba. Small Cuban communities were formed in Miami and across the United States and populated with small Cuban owned businesses. By the Freedom Flights many emigrants were middle class or blue-collar workers, due to the Cuban government's restrictions on the emigration of skilled workers. Many exiled professionals were unlicensed outside Cuba and began offering their services in the informal economy.
Cuban exile | Economics
A small percentage of Afro-Cubans left Cuba, mostly for the United States, (particularly Florida), where they and their U.S.-born children are called Cuban Americans, Hispanic Americans and African Americans. Only a few of them resided in nearby Spanish-speaking country of Dominican Republic and the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico.
Afro-Cubans | Demographics
Post-revolution Cuba has been characterized by significant levels of emigration, which has led to a large and influential diaspora community. During the three decades after January 1959, more than one million Cubans of all social classes — constituting 10% of the total population — emigrated to the United States, a proportion that matches the extent of emigration to the U.S. from the Caribbean as a whole during that period. Prior to 13 January 2013, Cuban citizens could not travel abroad, leave or return to Cuba without first obtaining official permission along with applying for a government issued passport and travel visa, which was often denied.
Cuba | Emigration
Demographics of Cuba
Outline of Cuba | Demography of Cuba
Most were brought to Havana but others were brought to Cuba as farmers of sisal, sugarcane, and fodder in the provinces of Pinar del Río, Matanzas and Camagüey.
Mexican immigration to Cuba | History
Haitian Creole and culture first entered Cuba with the arrival of Haitian immigrants at the start of the 19th century. Haiti was then the French colony of Saint-Domingue, and the final years of the 1791–1804 Haitian Revolution brought a wave of French settlers fleeing with their Haitian slaves to Cuba. They came mainly to the east, and especially Guantánamo, where the French later introduced sugar cultivation, constructed sugar refineries and developed coffee plantations. By 1804, some 30,000 Frenchmen were living in Baracoa and Maisí, the furthest eastern municipalities of the province. Later, Haitians continued to come to Cuba to work as "braceros" (Spanish for "manual laborers") in the fields cutting cane.
Afro-Cubans | Haitian-Cubans