Cubans - Ancestry

Ancestry

The majority of the ancestry of White Cubans comes from Spaniards. 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 which immigrated include: English, Scots, Russians, Poles, Portuguese, Romanians, Italians, Greeks, French, Germans and Irish. There is a small remnant of a Jewish community. There is also significant ethnic influx from diverse Middle Eastern peoples, especially Lebanese, Palestinians, Turks, and Syrians.

Afro-Cubans compose 10.08% to 23.84% of the population. Their origins are mainly Kongo, a Central African people. (However, the dominant tradition in the Afro-Cuban syncretic religion of Santería is Yoruba; further, the greeting in Santería of 'salaam aleikum' points to Arabic influence from North Africa.)

Cubans of East Asian/Oriental origins make up 1.02% of the population. They are mostly of Chinese, Japanese or Korean origins.

Of the Taínos few remain. Some American Indians from the United States settled in Cuba in the 19th century (notably Cherokee, Choctaw and Seminole). There are no exact figures on their current descendants.

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.

Cuba's birth rate (9.88 births per thousand population in 2006) is one of the lowest in the Western Hemisphere. Its overall population has increased continuously from around 7 million in 1961 to over 11 million now, but the rate of increase has stopped in the last few decades, and has recently turned to a decrease, with the Cuban government in 2006 reporting the first drop in the population since the Mariel boatlift. Immigration and emigration have had noticeable effects on the demographic profile of Cuba during the 20th century. Between 1900 and 1930, close to a million Spaniards arrived from Spain.

Since 1959, over a million Cubans have left the island, primarily to Miami, Florida, where a vocal, well-educated and economically successful exile community exists (Cuban-American lobby). The emigration that occurred immediately after the Cuban Revolution was primarily of the upper and middle classes that were predominantly white, thus contributing to a demographic shift along with changes in birth rates and racial identifications among the various ethnic groups.