Immigration

Indians reached pre-Columbian Cuba in three waves of settlers, followed by the arrival of the Caribs, whose settlement was aborted by the coming of the Spaniards. The initial Spanish population was soon depleted by emigration to new conquests, particularly Mexico. In the 17^th and 18^th centuries it was augmented by fugitives from the foreign occupation of other territories, notably Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Florida. The entry of French fleeing the revolution in Haiti and the United Sates acquisition of Luisiana was facilitated by the Real Cédula of 1817, which allowed free entry of any foreign white Roman Catholic. The African slave trade became numerically significant in the late 18^th century. Sixty years later it was being supplemented by the importation of Chinese indentured laborers. Soon there were campaigns to promote white immigration. On the eve of World War, I immigration was running at 37,000 a year, almost equaling the 40,000 annual excess of births over deaths, but an important proportion of this was of Haitian and other West Indian Black people for the sugar plantations. After the war, immigration jumped to 80,488 in 1919 and 340,241 in 1920, remaining above 80,000 a year of the rest of the 1920s. Lebanese and many European Jews migrated to Cuba during this period. The Depression of the 1930s brought a plunge to 12, 1219 in 1930 and only 1,892 in 1932, to remain below 4,000 a year for the rest of the decade. Cuba’s post-World War II history has been one of net outward migration, which zoomed from 4,000 in 1948 to 38,000 in 1960, 68,000 in 1961 and 66,000 in 1962, and several hundred thousand since then.