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 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. The population of Cuba descends primarily from three groups: Spanish settlers and immigrants – drawn largely from Andalusia, Galicia, Asturias, and the Canary Islands — 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...