A look at Cuban emigration in the light of the new tendencies (II). (Picture: panorama.com.ve)
Following the same controversial issue, exciting for many; for others, we might say that Cuba is not an exception. The condition of being a small and underdeveloped country, near a great power, built by migratory currents, brought about – more than a century ago- that the United States were the main destination of our emigration. Other countries have admitted Cubans since then.
Since the coming up of our nationality, and the beginning of the independence wars, exile was an inseparable part in the life of many of the Cuban fighters for freedom. Artists have promoted and represented Cuban culture up to our present time. Examples are José María Heredia, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Pablo Lafargue, Wilfredo Lam, Alejo Carpentier, and some other emigrants of all time. For others, it also meant economic security.
It is surprising that already in 1780, the United States registered twelve-thousand Cuban immigrants, and in 1890, twenty thousand. For the year 1910, the figure reached forty-thousand Cuban immigrants; between 1930 and 1950, 33,145 persons immigrated in the United States, and between 1950 and 1958, emigrated 50,950 persons.1*
No wonder, these figures increased, because the United States were changing-with the pass of time-into “the promised land.” In Cuba, struggles for independence were growing. In the last years of the time that we are referring to, out of the island left, with the same frequency, those wanted by the dictatorship; such as those who foresaw changes not according with their political and economic interests.
After the revolutionary triumph of 1959, a special migratory policy on the part of the North American imperialism towards Cuba developed. It aimed at emptying down the country of its human capital so much needed. Specialists on the matter studied this situation very well, to transform the nature, the volume and the Cuban migratory flow. 2*
Because of this situation, already in 1959 immigrated in the United States 74,000, people bound fundamentally to Fulgencio Batista’s regime. Among them, there were also, middle-class people, owners of large states, professionals, and some others of the same nature (without any migratory requirement). This immigration had particular characteristics concerning the aggressive relation, which they had against the Cuban Revolution, right from the beginning of the triumph.
“This wave was headed mainly against this country. It modified substantially the composition, aspirations, objectives, and traditional political behavior of the great majority of Cubans of that epoch. A part of those first immigrants suddenly subordinated their acting to the political aims of the United States to destroy us.” 3*
“Between 1959 and 1960, 150,000 persons (many of them in an underground way) left the country. Their parents took them out through the so-called Peter Pan Program, between 1961 and 1962: They were about 14,000 children.” 4*
“In the years from 1965 to 1973, more than 250,000 people immigrated in the United States, that is considered the largest migratory throng” 5*. In 1990 one-million, 43 thousand 932 persons were registered in the census on population and housing of that country, and in the year 2000, one million 241 thousand, 685 persons. “Cubans represented in that year 0, 4% of the population of US, and 4, 0 percent of the Spanish- American living in that territory.” 6*
The amount of Cubans who emigrated between 1959 and 1999 towards other countries of the world, rose to one million 79 thousand persons, some 130 thousand of them live in different Latin American countries. Some 37 thousand Cubans live in the rest of the world; for example, Canada, and some of the former Eastern European countries, as Russia, more than one-thousand Cubans.
Because of what we have said before, in the year 2002, there was a population in Cuba living abroad of more than one million 400 thousand persons. About 900 hundred persons -from said figure- immigrated in different places in the last forty years. 7*
Bibliographic references:
1- Source: http://www.lanic.utexas.edu/-sela/AA2K2/ESP/cap/N65/cap65-0.htm.
2- Gerald E.Poyo: “The Cuban Exile Tradition in the United States: Patterns of Political Development in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries”, in Cuba, culture and national identity, Union Editions, Havana, 1995, p. 78: While not all Cubans arrived in this country as political exiles, these were those who traditionally dominated the political speech. In the Nineteenth Century, Cubans in the exile worked to destroy the Spanish rule in their homeland; during the Twentieth Century, the exiles of the fifties often attacked what they considered a corrupted republic, and after 1959, they shared the purpose of overthrowing the Communist Revolution. These common purposes not only served as the focal point for the organization of communities; but also, they have provided the Cuban concentration in the United States – in a different degree – with many of the reasons for their existence (…). Not all Cubans arrived in the United States ready for participating a priori in activities of the exile; but, as the communities organized themselves to promote the engagement of the emigration; or, at least, to assure the acknowledgement of a prevailing exile culture. The majority got to admit that definition.”
3- Source: Robaina, Roberto. (Minister of Foreign Affairs). Relations between the country and emigration. Present status and perspectives. Conference “The Nation and Emigration”. April 22, 23 and 24, Havana, Cuba, 1994.
4- Source: López Blanch, Hedelberto. Drawing screens: the Cuban emigration in the United States. Havana: Editorial Plaza Mayor, 2001. p. 26.
5- Source: López Blanch, Hedelberto. Drawing screens: the Cuban emigration in the United States. Havana: Editorial Plaza Mayor, 2001. p. 27.
6- Source: http://www.lanic.utexas.edu/ – sela/AAK2/ESP/cap/N65/cap65-0.htm
7- Source: http://www.lanic.utexas.edu/- sela/AA2K2/ESP/cap/N65/cap65-0.htm
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A look at Cuban emigration in the light of the new tendencies (I)
Translated by: Reinaldo Fernández
