Cuba empties: Exodus of more than one million people leaves an aging population

Cuba is going through the biggest migration wave in its history. More than one million people have left the island since the Castro regime stepped up its repression in mid-2021 to quell protests against what is the worst economic crisis since Cuba left Spanish sovereignty. Already with a low birth rate fees , the departure of young people, with a slight majority of women, is leading the Caribbean nation to a pronounced aging that will negatively affect any future development.

The warning voice has been given by the Castro regime itself, which is not at all inclined to offer demographic references. In July 2024, the deputy head of the National Statistics and Information Office (ONEI), Juan Carlos Alfonso Fraga, exposed before the deputies of the Cuban Parliament the decrease of 10.1% of the effective population of the island with respect to December 2020. This left Cuba below 10 million people, a number "similar to what Cuba registered sometime in 1985" and which the country surpassed to reach 11.3 million inhabitants in the early 2010s. Since then, the total population began to decline due to a fertility rate that had been below replacement level for some time.

To this aging process has been added, due to the severe economic crisis and political repression, a migratory wave that surpasses all others experienced in the sixty years of communism. Without yet fully including the effect of this last depopulation, the UN Economic and Social Affairs department estimates that by 2100 Cuba's population could reach a little less than 6 million people in an intermediate scenario (in the worst scenario it would fall below 4 million).

The Cuban government refuses to give concrete figures on the recent massive outflow of citizens, claiming that until they have been out of the country for two years, they are still considered residents. This forces researchers to collect data from the receiving countries and to draw their own models. The conclusion of Cuban demographer and economist Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos is that in reality only 8.62 million people reside on the island, pointing to an 18% decrease in population between 2022 and 2023. Thus, more than one million people would have left Cuba since 2021, a Issue that is in line with the number of Cubans registered in the United States and, to a lesser extent, in other countries.

In Cuba, censuses are carried out every ten years, but since the last survey 12 years have passed, and a census planned for 2024 has been postponed. According to ONEI's deputy chief, the government is ready to carry it out in 2025, after a delay that he attributes to "external aggressions" and "internal problems". Cuba empties and the regime weakens.

Migratory waves

The present exodus of Cubans is the latest in a series of highly dramatic migratory episodes. After the flight of Fulgencio Batista in the early morning of January 1, 1959, a wave of people close to the dictatorship also fled the island to Trujillo's Dominican Republic, Salazar's Portugal or Franco's Spain. This first flow and the one that followed in the first months of the Revolution gave way to an exodus that, although continuous throughout the Castro regime, peaked in 1965, 1980 and 1994, in addition to the record figures reached since 2021.

In 1965, Fidel Castro announced the opening of a maritime corridor through which boats of Cubans coming from the United States could travel to the island to pick up their relatives in the port of Boca de Camarioca. This was the first massive departure from the island; during the 42 days that the corridor remained open almost 3,000 people traveled from that point north of Matanzas to the United States, where they were received as asylum seekers. Two daily flights were also implemented between Havana and Miami. What was known as the 'Camarioca Exodus' took place between September 28 and November 15, 1965; it ended after a agreement between the governments of the United States and Cuba, by means of which the maritime corridor was closed and what was called the 'Freedom Flights' were opened.

For eight years (1965-1973), the 'Freedom Flights' took off from Havana to Miami twice a day, five days a week, and carried some 300,000 people. This was the largest refugee airlift operation, with an estimated $12 million budget , and largely shaped Florida's Cuban-American community.

In 1980, between April 15 and October 31, the exodus of the "Marielitos", so called because they left the port of Mariel, took place. This crisis began with the assault on the Peruvian Embassy, the largest case of asylum and refuge under diplomatic protection in history. The episode began with isolated cases of asylum seekers forcibly entering the Peruvian diplomatic compound since August 1979. Despised by the regime and seeking a way out of the island, on April 1, 1980, several Cubans crashed a state bus into the embassy, triggering a shootout that left one dead and Fidel Castro's advertisement to let them leave: "they can leave the country if they want to", he said angrily.

In the days following April 4, 1980 and after negotiations between Castro and Ambassador Ernesto Pinto-Bazurco, more than 10,000 Cubans were received not as refugees but as "entrants" waiting for a safe-conduct that would allow them to leave the island. The Peruvian government refused to submit to the entrants and almost immediately the Mariel maritime bridge allowed 125,000 Cubans, among them the Peruvian embassy refugees, to leave the island for the United States, Canada, Costa Rica, Peru, Spain and Ecuador.

In 1994, during the Special Period after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Havana 'Maleconazo' pressured the regime to open the ports. This massive protest against economic measures and rationing originated on July 13, 1994 when 70 Cubans hijacked a boat that sank when it strayed from shore, causing 41 drownings (the accident may have been deliberately provoked by the Cuban coast guard). Mistrust of the government provoked several escape attempts, and on August 5, 1994, protests broke out against the police, the army and paramilitary groups. Fidel Castro initially urged his ranks to "defeat the stateless", but later opened the border: during this 'balsero' crisis almost 35,000 people left Cuba on improvised rafts.

This prompted the revision of the Cuban Adjustment Act during the Clinton Administration. Cuban migrants would be returned to the island or taken to third countries if intercepted in continental waters (wet feet) or would be allowed to enter the United States and apply for permanent residency program if intercepted on the coast (dry feet). This 'wet feet, dry feet' policy was in effect until its repeal in 2017 by Barack Obama and marked a shift in U.S.-Cuban immigration policies, which up to that point allowed Cubans intercepted, even in continental waters, to enter the United States. Some 31,000 rafters were detained at the Guantanamo base and after a legal battle in which their refugee status was debated, Bill Clinton announced on May 2, 1995, that they would be processed and allowed entry into the United States.

Great exodus

All these exoduses have been dwarfed by the current migration wave. As Albizu-Campos has highlighted, from October 1, 2021 and April 30, 2024, 738,680 Cubans arrived in the United States, basically through the Mexican border: there were 569,272 apprehensions of Cubans trying to enter illegally, who then passed through the eligibility system for asylum seekers; 78,308 admitted with migrant visas and 91,100 under the 'humanitarian parole' status. The numbers have climbed since the April 2024 cutoff made by the researcher. In addition, some 100,000 Cubans wanted to stay in Mexico and there were emigrants to other countries, such as Spain, where dual nationality situations make it difficult to count them.

Based on the number of Cubans who entered the United States and the count that on other occasions this direct migration to the U.S. has represented in the overall Cuban migration, Albizu-Campos extrapolates that the total number of Cubans who left the island between 2021 and 2024 is close to an estimated 1.79 million.

As a consequence of both emigration and the leave birth rate, Cuba is running out of young people. The ONEI recognizes that since 1977 Cuba has not reached the population replacement level, currently having a fertility rate of 1.6 children per woman, when the replacement rate is 2.1 children. In 2023, with far more deaths than births, the population growth rate was -0.36% according to the WHO. This is also affected by the progressive increase in female migration. It is estimated that 77% of the Cuban migrant population is between 15 and 49 years of age, and 56% of these are women. Female emigration is a symptom that reflects relatively safe and normalized ways of leaving the island.

The 'Economics of war' that Cuba has been maintaining has pushed part of the population to leave their homes in search of better living conditions. In addition to international migration, another effect is the migration within the island and the population decrease in some provinces. Havana, Holguin and Santiago de Cuba continue to be the most populated provinces, although the first one is below two million inhabitants and the other two below one million. Havana, however, is the one that, proportionally, has suffered the greatest decline; it is followed by Cienfuegos and Mayabeque. The provinces of Granma, Guantánamo and Santiago de Cuba have suffered less, but cases such as El Naranjo del Toa or Imías in Guantánamo show how the eastern part of the island suffers the most visible effects of depopulation.

Immigration to Cuba, comparatively very small, has also declined: in 1990 the foreign population was 0.33%; in 2020 it was 0.03% (1,312 men and 1,712 women). data. The list of countries of origin of immigrants is headed by Spain with 505 people, followed by Italy, Russia and Venezuela with 371, 343 and 245 respectively. Below 200 people are followed by the United States, Ukraine, Mexico and Germany.

Rationing, power cuts and the collapse of Economics are symptoms of a failed regime, and migration, a sample of discontent.