EMIGRATION

Apart from the loss of much of its early population to the conquests of Mexico, the Spanish Main, and Florida, and the departure of occasional wealthy Cubans pursuing business opportunities in the United Sates, Cuba’s first population exodus was the movement of cigar workers to Tampa, Ocala, Jacksonville, and Key West in the 1850s. The first large-scale emigration occurred during the Ten Year’s War – refuge was sought in a number of other Caribbean and circum-Caribbean lands, in the United States (particularly New York, Philadelphia and Boston), and Europe.  By the war’s end there were 100,000 Cubans abroad.  Some 10,000 of these émigrés were in Florida, over a thousand of them in Key West.  Emigration continued on a small scale until Cuba became independent, only to revive in the political turbulences of the 1910s, and 1920s. In the 1930s those who had fled Machado returned, replacing those who had too strongly supported him.  By 1940 central Miami had a Cuba colony of 1,100, strengthened in the 1950s, by those fleeing persecution by Batista, and by businessmen distrustful of the stability of his regime.  Fidel Castro’s overthrow of Batista produced a new cycle.  What began as a stickle soon after the Revolution of 1959, became a veritable flood of migrants up until 1962, three quarters of them going to the United States, especially southern Florida, and most of the rest to Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Spain, and Venezuela.  The US federal government established a reception center and provided for temporary care while encouraging relocation throughout the United States.  Although Miami received the largest numbers, New Jersey, New York, and Puerto Rico were also major destinations.  Restrictions were then placed on emigration, briefly lifted to permit the massive airlift negotiated between the Cuban and US governments for 1965.  By 1971 migration to the United States alone had amounted to 7 percent of Cuba’s 1960 population.  Another US-Cuban agreement resulted in the so-called Mariel Boatlift (1980).  In 1994 the US agreed to accept 20,000 Cubans per year in return for Castro restraining any illegal migration out of Cuba.  By 1996 over 1.5 million Cubans had left the island, and in mid-1999 illegal migration to the US continued.