Cubans

Cubans (Spanish: cubanos) are the citizens and nationals of the Republic of Cuba, as well as members of the Cuban diaspora who identify culturally or ethnically as Cuban, irrespective of their current citizenship.

Cuba's resident population stood at approximately 9.7 million at the end of 2024, according to preliminary figures released by the Oficina Nacional de Estadística e Información (ONEI). According to the ONEI, the country's population has been undergoing a sustained decline driven by the combined effect of significant emigration and a negative rate of natural increase. Independent demographic analyses suggest that the actual resident population may be lower than official figures indicate, owing in part to an underestimation of emigration to destinations other than the United States.

Outside the island, the United States hosts by far the largest Cuban community, estimated at approximately 2.9 million people of Cuban origin in 2024, concentrated primarily in Florida—notably in the Miami metropolitan area—as well as in Texas, California, New Jersey, and New York City. Spain constitutes the second-largest Cuban diaspora community, with smaller populations present in Brazil, Italy, and Uruguay. — sub-Saharan Africans transported to the island through the transatlantic slave trade, and the pre-Columbian indigenous peoples, chiefly the Taíno and Ciboney. A significant, though demographically contested, share of Cubans carries mixed ancestry from all three groups, not as a product of recent admixture but of centuries of intermarriage accumulated across many generations. While Afro-Cubans and Cubans of Spanish descent have endured as distinct ethnocultural units, no equivalent indigenous-descended group survived the catastrophic demographic collapse of the sixteenth century; Taíno ancestry nonetheless persists in the Cuban population at the genetic level, as evidenced by mitochondrial DNA studies. Cuban Spanish, a variety of Spanish, is the native language of virtually all Cubans on the island and remains widely spoken among a large proportion of the diaspora.

History

The population of Cuba prior to European contact consisted primarily of the Taíno and Ciboney peoples, with smaller groups of Guanahatabey inhabiting the island's westernmost regions. Spanish colonization, initiated following Christopher Columbus's arrival in 1492, resulted in the catastrophic decline of the indigenous population through epidemic disease, forced labor, and violence.

To sustain the plantation economy that emerged in the eighteenth century—centered above all on sugar cultivation—the Spanish colonial administration oversaw the large-scale forced importation of enslaved Africans. By the mid-nineteenth century, Cuba had become one of the largest slave societies in the Western Hemisphere, with Africans and their descendants constituting a substantial portion of the island's population, drawn from numerous West and Central African societies, including Yoruba-, Fon-, and Kongo-speaking peoples.

Spanish settlers—both Iberian-born peninsulares and American-born criollos—completed the colonial demographic triad. The prolonged and coerced cohabitation among these groups, along with the cultural exchange it engendered, gave rise to a syncretic society whose religious practices, music, and social customs reflected multiple origins. The Cuban ethnologist Fernando Ortiz described this process as transculturation—a term he coined to denote the mutual transformation of cultures in sustained contact—and identified it as a defining characteristic of Cuban civilization.

By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a distinct creole consciousness—often articulated under the rubric of Cubanidad—had begun to emerge among the island's non-peninsular population. This developing identity was shaped by the plantation economy, by the growth of Havana as a cosmopolitan urban center, and by the proliferation of cultural forms that drew simultaneously on African, Spanish, and residual indigenous influences, including the danzón, the décima, the syncretic religious practices associated with Regla de Ocha, and the mutual-aid and ritual societies of the Abakuá. The emergence of a distinctly Cuban cultural identity developed alongside the political tensions of colonial society, including resentment of Spanish trade restrictions, the contradictions of a slaveholding creole elite seeking greater autonomy, and the gradual emergence of abolitionist sentiment.

The articulation of Cuban national identity as an explicit political project reached a decisive stage during the independence struggles of the second half of the nineteenth century. The Ten Years' War (1868–1878), initiated in part by creole planters such as Carlos Manuel de Céspedes—who freed his own slaves at the outset of the insurgency—placed questions of race and inclusion at the center of the emerging nationalist movement. The figure of José Martí, the leading ideologue of Cuban independence, gave the movement its most influential theoretical expression. In essays including Nuestra América (1891) and Mi raza (1893), Martí argued that racial divisions were incompatible with the construction of a free republic and that Cuban identity itself constituted the basis of national unity. The Cuban War of Independence (1895–1898) gave material form to this vision: the mambí insurgent armies were notably multiracial in composition, and Afro-Cuban officers—most prominently Antonio Maceo, known as the "Bronze Titan"—achieved prominence at the highest levels of command. The war's conclusion, however, brought not sovereignty but American military intervention and a prolonged period of U.S. occupation and political oversight, which significantly shaped the subsequent development of Cuban national identity.

The Cuban Republic established in 1902 inherited both the egalitarian ideals of the independence movement and the racial inequalities of the colonial period. The official republican ideology was grounded in Martí's concept of raceless nationalism, yet historians have argued that this universalist framework often discouraged autonomous Afro-Cuban political mobilization by portraying race-based advocacy as contrary to national unity. The Partido Independiente de Color, founded in 1908 to advocate for Afro-Cuban political representation, was outlawed under the Morúa Amendment of 1910; its armed protest in 1912 was met with military suppression in which thousands of Afro-Cubans were killed. Nonetheless, the Afrocubanismo cultural movement of the 1920s and 1930s—associated with figures including the poet Nicolás Guillén, the novelist Alejo Carpentier, and Ortiz himself—reasserted the African dimension of Cuban culture as fundamental to national identity. At the same time, the pervasive economic, political, and cultural influence of the United States contributed to the development of a reactive nationalism through which many Cubans increasingly defined their collective identity in opposition to American dominance. National identity was increasingly reframed in terms of revolutionary commitment and socialist internationalism. The ideal of the hombre nuevo (new man), theorized by Che Guevara in his 1965 essay El socialismo y el hombre en Cuba, emphasized collective sacrifice, socialist construction, and anti-imperialism. This anti-imperialist identity was projected internationally through Cuba's military and civilian interventions in Africa and Latin America, most notably in Angola, where Cuban forces supported the MPLA government against UNITA and South African forces between 1975 and 1991, and in Ethiopia, where Cuba intervened on behalf of the Derg during the Ogaden War of 1977–1978. These interventions were presented by the Cuban government as expressions of Third-Worldist solidarity and as continuations of anti-colonial struggle, drawing explicitly on Cuba's historical experiences of colonialism and slavery and on Martí's anti-imperialist legacy. The revolution's emphasis on a unitary, state-centered national identity simultaneously marginalized political dissent and contributed to the formation of a substantial emigrant diaspora, particularly in the United States, whose members developed competing interpretations of Cuban identity rooted in exile and opposition to the revolutionary state.

File:Enumerators, city of Habana.jpg|Cuban enumerators for the 1899 census of Havana.

File:Royal Palm Hotel (Havana), entrance.jpg|Royal Palm Hotel Havana, entrance. c. 1930

File:Cuban transport.jpg|Public transportation in Cuba during the Special Period (1991–2000)

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Demographics of Cuba

Census data

thumb|250px|Census enumerators in the city of Havana, 1899.

The Cuban Census of 2012, conducted between 15 and 24 September of that year by the National Office of Statistics and Information (Oficina Nacional de Estadísticas e Información, ONEI), remains, as of 2026, the most recent completed national population census on the island. Cuba follows a decennial census cycle; but has been postponed on multiple occasions — first to 2025, then to 2026 — owing to the country's severe economic crisis and the logistical constraints it has produced. ONEI conducted a census rehearsal in the municipality of Santa Cruz del Norte, Mayabeque, in November 2025 in preparation for the 2026 census; the full results had not been published as of mid-year. The demographic data presented in this section accordingly reflect conditions recorded in September 2012; subsequent changes are summarised in the subsection below.

According to the 2012 census, Cuba's resident population stood at 11,167,325 inhabitants, of whom 5,570,825 were male and 5,596,500 female, yielding a sex ratio of 995 males per 1,000 females. This figure represented a slight decline from the 11,177,743 inhabitants recorded in the 2002 census — the first intercensal population decrease since the independence wars — attributable to a total fertility rate below replacement level and a negative migration balance. The most populous municipalities at the time of the census were Havana (2,106,146 inhabitants), Santiago de Cuba (506,037), Holguín (346,195), Camagüey (323,309), and Santa Clara (240,543).

Fertility rate and natural population change

Cuba has not reached replacement-level fertility since 1977 — though some official Cuban sources, such as the country's 2017 report to the UN Commission on Population and Development and the Statistical Health Yearbook 2022, place the definitive fall below the threshold of 2.1 children per woman in 1978 —, placing it among the earliest and most prolonged cases of sub-replacement fertility among developing economies.

The total fertility rate (TFR) fluctuated between 1.41 and 1.54 children per woman during the 2021–2023 triennium well below the replacement threshold of 2.1. In 2024, registered live births totalled 71,358 — the lowest annual figure in 65 years —, with a crude birth rate of 7.2 per 1,000 inhabitants, producing a natural decrease of 56,740 persons as well as high rates of female school enrolment and women's participation in the labour market, which together produced a demographic transition characteristic of high-income societies without the corresponding level of economic development. and had increased to approximately 42.5 years in the 2025–2026 period according to the 2024 revision of the World Population Prospects by the United Nations Population Division. This figure contrasts markedly with the regional median age for Latin America and the Caribbean, which stood at approximately 31 years in 2024 according to the ECLAC.

Excluding Puerto Rico by virtue of its status as an unincorporated territory — whose median age, at approximately 46.7 years, exceeds that of the island — Cuba is the sovereign country with the highest median age in the Americas, ahead of Canada (~40.6 years) and the United States (~39.1 years). This places Cuba in a demographic profile comparable to that of France (~42–43 years) and other Western European nations with advanced economies. In 2024, approximately 25.7% of Cuba's resident population was aged 60 or over, the highest proportion in Latin America and the Caribbean.

This demographic profile — the product of historically low fertility rates, relatively high life expectancy, and the disproportionate emigration of young adults — is typically associated with high-income economies. Cuba's advanced median age, coexisting with a comparatively low per capita income, constitutes a structurally anomalous demographic condition: among countries whose median age exceeds forty years, Cuba ranks among those with the lowest incomes, though figures for Cuban GDP are not reported by the International Monetary Fund and available estimates vary considerably depending on the methodology employed.

Sex distribution

According to the 2012 census, the sex distribution of the Cuban population was nearly balanced, with 5,570,825 males and 5,596,500 females, corresponding to a sex ratio of 995 males per 1,000 females. At the close of 2024, ONEI recorded a ratio of 974 males per 1,000 females (4,808,909 males and 4,939,098 females), evidencing a measurable shift in the sex balance relative to the 2012 census.

thumb|right|alt=Population pyramid of Cuba for the year 2026.|Population pyramid of Cuba, 2026.

The migratory wave that began in 2021 has been characterised by a high proportion of women, accentuating a trend towards the feminisation of migration that, according to the academic literature, has been consolidating within Cuban emigration since the 1990s and reached unprecedented magnitude during the period 2021–2024. Approximately 56–57% of Cuban emigrants in the recent period were women — 56.6% according to the accumulated historical stock per UN data, and approximately 57% according to estimates of outgoing flows for 2022–2023 — as reported in the United Nations International Migrant Stock and in analyses by economist and demographer Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos published through the Cuba Capacity Building Project at Columbia Law School. With regard to age structure, approximately 77% of the emigrant contingent was of working age, with estimates ranging between the 15–59 age bracket — used in Albizu-Campos's calculations, ONEI confirmed that by the close of 2023 the contingent of women of childbearing age (15–49 years) had decreased by 304,717 persons relative to the preceding reference calculation, with more than 70% of that loss concentrated in the 15–39 age group.

This dynamic has altered not only the size of the population but also the relative balance between the sexes — reflected in the decline of the masculinity ratio from 995 to 974 between 2012 and 2024 — and the age composition of the population of reproductive age, with direct consequences for the total fertility rate

The population classified as white descends primarily from Peninsular settlers and immigrants, with a particularly notable presence of individuals from Andalusia, the Canary Islands, Asturias, and Galicia — regions whose imprint is still evident in the island's culture, speech, and toponymy.

The black population derives primarily from the Sub-Saharan Africans introduced as enslaved people during the Atlantic slave trade, which reached its greatest intensity between the late eighteenth century and the mid-nineteenth century, and in which individuals from the Yoruba, Fon, and Bantu peoples predominated, among other groups from West and Central Africa.

The indigenous peoples, principally of Taíno origin, largely disappeared during the first decades of colonisation as a result of violence, disease, and forced labour. Although no communities of unmixed Amerindian descent are recorded today, genetic studies point to the persistence of traces of that ancestral heritage in segments of the present population.

To these principal streams are added, on a smaller scale, the descendants of Chinese workers who arrived under contract during the nineteenth century and those of immigrants from the Arab Levant, whose presence on the island consolidated between the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth.A considerable proportion of Cubans carry mixed lineages combining, in varying proportions and across multiple generations, Spanish, African, and indigenous heritage.

{|class="sort wikitable" style="font-size: 90%"

|+ Cuban census data and ethnic demographics

! colspan="1"|Year

! colspan=2|White / %

! colspan=2|Mulatto/<br />Mestizo / %

! colspan=2|Black / %

! colspan=2|East Asian (Amarillo) / %

! Total

| 1774||align=right||| 56.2|| colspan="6"| / 43.8 || 171,620

| 1861||align=right| ||56.8 || colspan="6"| / 43.2 || 1,396,530

| 1899 ||align=right|||67.9 || align=right||| ||align=right||| ||align=right||| || 1,572,797

| 1943

| 74.3

| 15.6

| 9.7

| 0.4

| 4,778,583

| 2002

| 7,271,926

| 65.0

| 2,658,675

| 24.86

| 1,126,894

| 10,08

| 112,268

| 1,02

| 11,177,743

| 2012

| 64.1

| 26.6

| 9.3

| -

| 11,167,325

Source.

Main ancestral and ethnic origins of the Cuban population

Pre-Columbian peoples

Cuba does not include an indigenous self-identification category in its official population surveys (Oficina Nacional de Estadística e Información, ONEI), meaning that Amerindian ancestry can only be quantified through genetic studies.

At the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492, Cuba was inhabited by at least three distinct indigenous groups.

thumb|right|250px|The Barrientos family, headed by an indigenous-descended woman from Baracoa, Cuba, and a Spanish ex-soldier, 1919.

Guanahatabey

The Guanahatabey were the earliest documented inhabitants, archaic hunter-gatherers settled in the western tip of the island from approximately 4000 BC, whose language shows no demonstrable relationship to Taíno or any other documented language of the Arawakan family.

Ciboney

The Ciboney (or Siboney), a Western Arawakan group, inhabited the central and western parts of the island. Although various sources describe them as the most geographically widespread group at the time of contact, their status as the most numerous is a matter of academic debate, given that the Taíno maintained higher-density settlements in the east.

Taíno

The Taíno, an Arawakan people originating from the South American lowlands and possessing a more advanced level of technological development than the preceding groups, occupied primarily the eastern and central parts of Cuba and were the first group contacted by Columbus when he landed on the island's eastern shores on 28 October 1492. Estimates of the pre-contact indigenous population range from approximately 60,000 to 600,000, with the most recent academic estimates clustering toward the lower end of that range.

The Taíno were organised in villages under hereditary leaders called caciques, practised the cultivation of maize and cassava, and developed a material culture whose imprint persists in contemporary Cuba: words such as tabaco, hamaca, and canoa, as well as numerous toponyms — among them Havana, Camagüey, and Baracoa — derive from the Taíno language.

Spanish conquest and demographic collapse

The Spanish conquest of Cuba, initiated under Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar from 1511 onwards, brought about the near-total destruction of the indigenous population within a few decades. The encomienda system — regulated by the Laws of Burgos of 1512 and their supplementary ordinances of 1513 — subjected Taíno and Ciboney communities to forced labour, principally in gold mining and agricultural production, under conditions that contemporaries such as Bartolomé de las Casas characterised as lethal. Las Casas documented the Massacre of Caonao (c. 1513), claiming in his account that several thousand indigenous people perished; this figure has been questioned by subsequent historiography, which notes the chronicler's tendency toward hyperbole in his numerical estimates.

To the violence of conquest were added successive epidemics — including one that struck Hispaniola in 1493 prior to the permanent colonisation of Cuba, smallpox (1518–1519), and measles — which caused catastrophic mortality among populations with no prior herd immunity. Survivors fled to mountain refuges or were confined to indigenous towns, one of which, Guanabacoa, is today a municipality of Havana. By the mid-sixteenth century, official Spanish records indicated that barely any identifiable indigenous communities survived, and the prevailing academic consensus for much of the twentieth century held that Cuba's Taíno had disappeared as a distinct population within one or two generations of contact.

Revision of the total extinction narrative

This thesis has been substantially revised by ethnographic and genetic research conducted since the 1980s. Nineteenth-century observers — among them the British abolitionist David Turnbull during his stay in Havana in 1838–1840 and the Spanish naturalist Miguel Rodríguez Ferrer, whose principal work on Cuba was published in 1876 on the basis of fieldwork conducted between 1840 and 1861 — described communities in Guanabacoa, El Caney, and the foothills of the Sierra Maestra displaying signs of indigenous ancestry, though such testimonies reflect the racial categories of their era and do not constitute genealogical or genetic verification.

The most rigorous work was initiated in 1989 by José Barreiro, a Cuban-born scholar and then associate director of research at the National Museum of the American Indian of the Smithsonian Institution, in collaboration with the historian of Baracoa Alejandro Hartmann Matos. Their ethnographic research estimated that at least 5,000 individuals with identifiable indigenous ancestry survived in Cuba, while hundreds of thousands might carry partial indigenous ancestry. The community of La Caridad de los Indios, in the mountains southwest of Baracoa, is the most frequently cited in academic literature as the one that best preserves Taíno cultural continuity — including traditional agricultural practices, construction techniques, and oral tradition — within a predominantly mixed-race population. In 2018, the Smithsonian Institution returned to this community bone fragments of seven Taíno individuals removed nearly a century earlier by American archaeologist Mark R. Harrington.

It is essential to note that the evidence of indigenous survival in Cuba pertains almost exclusively to cultural practices and partial genetic ancestry, not to biologically "pure" populations by any genealogical criterion. All communities identified as Taíno descendants are predominantly mixed-race, with Spanish and African ancestry. Indigenous identity was moreover historically suppressed: Spanish colonial authorities actively persecuted it for the purpose of extinguishing indigenous land rights — the last land claim was rejected by courts in 1850 — and its stigmatisation led many families to conceal their ancestry for generations.

Genetic evidence of Amerindian ancestry

Several genomic studies confirm the persistence of significant indigenous ancestry in the Cuban population, with a markedly asymmetric distribution with respect to sex and geography.

The largest-scale autosomal study, conducted by Marcheco-Teruel et al. (2014) and published in PLOS Genetics with a sample of 1,019 individuals from all Cuban provinces, estimated mean island-wide autosomal Amerindian ancestry at approximately 8% (compared to 72% European and 20% African), while the estimate based on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) rose to 34.5%. This marked asymmetry — indigenous ancestry traceable almost exclusively through the maternal line — is consistent with colonial-era dynamics, in which unions occurred between indigenous women and European and African men, while male indigenous lineages were effectively eliminated by the conquest and epidemics. The same study recorded a pronounced geographical variation: the eastern provinces of Granma (15%), Holguín (12%), and Las Tunas (12%) showed the highest rates of autosomal Amerindian ancestry, which coincides with the historical distribution of Taíno settlement.

Comparative studies of mtDNA in the Caribbean document high frequencies of Amerindian lineages in former Spanish colonies, while they are practically absent in territories of French and British colonisation, reflecting the differing colonial policies of each power and their different reliance on enslaved African labour. An analysis of ancient DNA from Ciboney individuals from Cuban archaeological sites confirmed the affinity of their mitochondrial lineages with Arawakan populations from South America.

Indigenous Florida refugees

The Amerindian demographic legacy of Cuba received a secondary contribution from indigenous refugees from northern Florida, displaced following the transfer of Spanish Florida to Britain under the Treaty of Paris of 1763. During the colonial period, groups such as the Timucua, Calusa, Tequesta, and Apalachee had maintained close ties with Cuba, particularly with Havana; the Calusa conducted regular canoe-borne trade with the city from around 1600. These populations had already been drastically reduced by epidemics and raids by British-allied groups before 1763: by the 1720s, the once-numerous Timucua had been reduced to fewer than 40 individuals.

In 1763, a small number of indigenous refugees joined the Spanish exodus from St. Augustine, while a remnant population of Calusa descent — whose precise size is difficult to establish from available colonial sources, given the advanced state of tribal disintegration of that people by that date — was transported to Havana. These communities, already broadly integrated into Spanish colonial society, were rapidly absorbed into the general Cuban population, and their specific genetic contribution cannot be quantified independently of the considerably more dominant Taíno component.

White or European

thumb|right|250px|Cuban supervisors for the 1899 census.

thumb|A Cuban shoemaker in [[Old Havana]]

In the 2012 Census of Cuba, 64.1% of the inhabitants self-identified as white. Based on genetic testing (2014) in Cuba, the average European, African and Native American ancestry in those auto-reporting to be white were 86%, 6.7%, and 7.8%. The majority of the European ancestry comes from Spain. During the 18th, 19th and early part of the 20th century especially, large waves of Asturians, Galicians, Canary Islanders and Catalans emigrated from Spain to Cuba. Other European nationalities with significant influx include: Scots, Poles, French, Italians, English, Irish and Germans. Europeans with lesser influx were Russians, Romanians, Portuguese and Greeks. 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 as well as Levantine peoples, mainly Lebanesse and Syrians. Though there are other Whites or Europeans in Cuba, the majority of White or European ancestry comes from Spain.

Among the various European groups that contributed to the formation of Cuba's Spanish-descended population, Canary Islanders may have exerted one of the most significant demographic influences, owing to their early arrival, sustained migration, and extensive settlement within rural areas of the island. According to data presented by ExploreyourDNA, phylogenetic analysis using UPGMA clustering based on G25 coordinates indicates that the sampled White Cuban population (Cuban Blanco, n = 10) clusters most closely with populations from the Canary Islands among the European reference groups included in the analysis. Using averaged G25 coordinates to represent the European-ancestry component of the Cuban Blanco sample, the results show greater genetic affinity to Canarians than to mainland Iberian populations. This pattern is consistent with historical migration trends from the Canary Islands to Cuba, particularly from the 18th to the 19th centuries, when Canary Islanders (Isleños) were encouraged to settle as agricultural colonists and became heavily represented within the white population. Genetic studies of Canarians indicate that they carry a measurable proportion of North African–related ancestry (commonly estimated at approximately 17–30%), reflecting Guanche ancestry. Within the limitations of the sample size and methodology used, these findings suggest that the European genetic profile of White Cubans may more closely resemble that observed in the Canary Islands than that of the Iberian Peninsula overall.

Multiracial

thumb|Cuban children in the [[Pinar del Río Province (2012)]]

In the 2012 Census of Cuba, 26.6% (2.97 million) of the Cubans self-identified as mulatto or mestizo.

Black or African

The Afro-Cuban population was 9.3% in the 2012 Census of Cuba. Just about 1.3 million Cubans described themselves as black.

East Asian

Officially called amarilla (yellow in English) in the Cuban census, Cubans of East Asian origins made up 1.02% of the population in the 2002 Census of Cuba. They are primarily made up of ethnic Chinese who are descendants of indentured laborers who came in the 19th century to build railroads and work in mines. Historically, Chinese descendants in Cuba were once classified as "white".

Intermarriage between diverse groups is so frequent as to be the rule.

Arabs

Population changes

Cuba's birth rate (9.88 births per thousand population in 2006) is one of the lowest in the Western Hemisphere. Its overall population increased from around 7 million in 1961 to 11 million today, but the rate of increase slowed over time 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 migrated to the island.

Since 1959, over two million Cubans have left the island, primarily to Miami, Florida, where a vocal, well-educated and economically successful exile community exists.

Genetics

An autosomal study from 2014 found the genetic ancestry in Cuba to be 72% European, 20% African and 8% Amerindian. Cuban genealogy has become a rising interest for Cubans in the last 15 years.

A 1995 study done on the population of Pinar del Río, found that 50% of the Mt-DNA lineages (female lineages) could be traced back to Europeans, 46% to Africans and 3% to Americans. This figure is consistent with both the historical background of the region, and the current demographics of it. According to another study in 2008, regarding the geographical origin attributed to each mtDNA haplogroup, 55% of the sequences found in Cubans are of West Eurasian origin (namely, Europe and the Middle East) and 45% of African origin

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 North African haplogroup E1b1b1b (E-M81), is found at a frequency of 6.1%.

Likewise, according to ExploreyourDNA using Phylogenetic Tree (UPGMA Clustering) and with the sample population of Cuban Blanco(n=10) which utilizes their G25 coordinates to sum up the averages of the European descent Cuban population, White Cubans are closest genetically to Canarians using the "Cuban Blanco(n=10)" sample. Thus demonstrating that within the sample size used of White Cubans, their closest genetic markers are Canarians who themselves have anywhere from 17-30% northwest African ancestry from their Guanche ancestors further illustrating that the White Cuban population is admixtured with North African genetics higher than is seen in the Iberian peninsula and instead closest to what it seen in the Canary Islands.

Cuban diaspora

The United States has the largest number of Cubans outside Cuba. As of 2024, the United States Census Bureau's American Community Survey showed a total population of 1,688,798 Cuban immigrants. As of 2015, 68% of Cuban-born residents of the United States have naturalized automatically losing their Cuban citizenship. Significant populations of Cubans exist in the cities of Hialeah and Miami in Florida (995,439 Cubans in this state in 2017) and in Texas (60,381), New Jersey (44,974), California (35,364), New York (26,875), and Illinois (22,541)

The second largest Cuban diaspora is in Spain. As of 2019, there were 151,423 Cubans in Spain. Smaller numbers of Cubans live in Brazil, Uruguay, Italy*, Mexico*, and Canada.

After the founding of the republic in 1902, a considerable migration (over 1 million) arrived from the Iberian Peninsula to the island, between them were more than a few former Spanish soldiers who participated in the wars, and yet it never created an obstacle for the respect and affection of Cubans, who have always been proud of their origins.

In December 2008, Spain began accepting citizenship applications from the descendants of people who went into exile after its brutal 1936-39 Civil War, part of a 2007 law meant to address the painful legacy of the conflict. This new Historical Memory Law has granted to more than 140,000 Cubans of Spanish ancestry the Spanish citizenship, and there were 143,048 Cubans with Spanish citizenship in Cuba and 93,004 in Spain on January 1, 2019.

Culture and traditions

thumb|upright|A woman smoking a cigar in [[Old Havana]]

The culture of Cuba reflects the island's influences from various cultures, primarily European (Spanish), Indigenous and African.

One of the most distinctive parts of Cuban culture is Cuban music and dancing, being well-known far outside the country. Well known Hispanic music styles such as mambo, salsa, rumba, cha-cha-chá, bolero, and son originated in Cuba. The origins of much of Cuban music can be found in the mix of Spanish and West African music, while American musical elements such as trombones and big band were also significant elements in the formation of Cuban music. Cuban literature includes some of the most well-known names of the islands, such as writer and independence hero José Martí in the late 19th century. More contemporary Cuban authors include Daína Chaviano, Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, Antonio Orlando Rodríguez, Zoé Valdés and Leonardo Padura Fuentes.

The Spanish language is spoken by virtually all Cubans on the island itself. Cuban Spanish is characterized by the reduction of several consonants, a feature that it shares with other dialects of Caribbean Spanish as well as the Canary Islands. Many Cuban-Americans, while remaining fluent in Spanish, use American English as one of their daily languages.

Religion

thumb|The [[Havana Cathedral]]

Cuba's prevailing religion is Roman Catholicism, although in some instances it is profoundly modified and influenced through syncretism. A common syncretic religion is Santería, which combined the Yoruba religion of the African slaves with some Catholicism; it shows similarities to Brazilian Umbanda and has been receiving a degree of official support.

The Roman Catholic Church estimates that 60 percent of the population is Catholic, with 10 percent attending mass regularly, while independent sources estimate that as few 1.5 percent of Catholics do so.

Membership in Protestant churches is estimated to be five percent and includes Baptists, Pentecostals, Seventh-day Adventists, Presbyterians, Episcopal Church of Cuba|Episcopalians, Methodists, Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and Lutherans. Other groups include the Greek Orthodox Church, the Russian Orthodox Church, Jehovah's Witnesses, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, Baháʼís, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Cuba is home to a variety of syncretic religions of largely African cultural origin. According to a US State Department report,

thumb|center|Coat of arms of Cuba