page_title: White people
section_title: Cuba
hierarchical_section_title: White people / Census and social definitions in different regions / Cuba
caption_attribution_description: Silvio Rodríguez cantando en la Plaza de Mayo. Buenos Aires. Argentina. 25 de mayo de 2004. foto oficial
context_page_description: White people is a racial classification and skin color specifier, used mostly and exclusively for people of European and Western Eurasian descent; depending on context, nationality, and point of view. The term has at times been expanded to encompass persons of Middle Eastern and North African descent, persons who are often considered non-white in other contexts, and at times excluded people of Southern European descent. The usage of "white people" or a "white race" for a large group of mainly or exclusively European populations, defined by their light skin, among other physical characteristics, and contrasting with "black people", Amerindians, and other "colored" people or "persons of color", originated in the 17th century. It was only during the 19th century that this vague category was transformed in a pseudo-scientific system of race and skin color relations.
  The concept of a unified white race did not achieve universal acceptance in Europe when it first came into use in the 17th century, or in the centuries afterward. Nazi Germany regarded some European peoples such as Slavs as racially distinct from themselves.
context_section_description: White people in Cuba make up 64.1% of the total population according to the 2012 census with the majority being of diverse Spanish descent. However, after the mass exodus resulting from the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the number of white Cubans actually residing in Cuba diminished. Today various records claiming the percentage of whites in Cuba are conflicting and uncertain; some reports (usually coming from Cuba) still report a less, but similar, pre-1959 number of 65% and others (usually from outside observers) report a 40–45%. Despite most white Cubans being of Spanish descent, many others are of French, Portuguese, German, Italian and Russian descent. During the 18th, 19th and early part of the 20th century, large waves of Canarians, Catalans, Andalusians, Castilians, and Galicians emigrated to Cuba. Also, one significant ethnic influx is derived from various Middle Eastern nations. Many Jews have also immigrated there, some of them Sephardic. Between 1901 and 1958, more than a million Spaniards arrived to Cuba from Spain; many of these and their descendants left after Castro's communist regime took power.
  In 1958, it was estimated that approximately 74% of Cubans were of European ancestry, mainly of Spanish origin, 10% of African ancestry, 15% of both African and European ancestry (mulattos), and a small 1% of the population was Asian, predominantly Chinese.  However, after the Cuban revolution, due to a combination of factors, mainly mass exodus to Miami, United States, a drastic decrease in immigration, and interracial reproduction, Cuba's demography has changed. As a result, those of complete European ancestry and those of pure African ancestry have decreased, the mulatto population has increased, and the Asian population has, for all intents and purposes, disappeared.
  The Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami says the present Cuban population is 38% white and 62% black/mulatto. The Minority Rights Group International says that "An objective assessment of the situation of Afro-Cubans remains problematic due to scant records and a paucity of systematic studies both pre- and post-revolution. Estimates of the percentage of people of African descent in the Cuban population vary enormously, ranging from 33.9 per cent to 62 per cent".
  According to the most recent 2012 census, Cuba's population was 11,167,325.
caption: Nueva Trova and Latin Protest music icon Cuban musician Silvio Rodríguez.
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