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ARE CUBANS GOING EXTINCT ?

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HAVANA, May 27 2009 (IPS) - R. was born and raised in Havana and as part of the cultural formation he received there he is an ardent fan of the Industriales, the city’s baseball team, and he prefers mangos to apples. R. left Cuba when he was about 30, settled in Spain, married M., a young Spanish woman, and had a son, P., with her. The son is a native of Madrid, and because of this he roots for Real Madrid, and he devours apples. P. will never be a fan of the Industriales, nor will he feel what R. feels listening to Benny More or Celia Cruz sing, because P. is not Cuban.

The story of R. and his son P. is not exceptional. To the contrary, it has been played out countless times among the millions and millions of people who went into voluntary or involuntary exile or simply sought somewhere else to spend their days and so left their descendants a new country. In any case, and not because it is so common, the story of R. and P.ceases to be a tragedy of uprootedness and a struggle over the rupture of common references: R. and P. are merely individuals with two cultures, two ways of seeing life, two nationalities.

This story, one of many I know, including some involving members of my own family, has haunted me since the news began to circulate that we Cubans are, in essence, almost on the verge of extinction. And I, at least, cannot imagine a world without Cubans, without Cuban music, Cuban sports players, Cuban women, without those argumentative Cubans who even in the face of all evidence and logic continue to believe that they are the ones who are right. But the reality is that we Cubans are always fewer and fewer.

The Cuban population has been undergoing a decline for years that is now, according to specialists, “evident and pronounced”, and it will continue to decrease unless there is a shift in the three crucial areas that determine demographic growth: mortality, emigration, and birth rate.

Demographers have even shown that in the last three years the number of inhabitants on the island -a little more than eleven million- has dropped by 7,737 people, and they predict that ten years from now there will be 25,000 fewer Cubans in Cuba as the population ages, women have fewer children, and more and more people choose to leave. Indeed, the number of Cubans who emigrated in 2008 was the largest in the last four years. Whereas Latin America has an average growth rate of 1.3 percent, in 2006 Cuba registered a decrease of 0.04 percent.

There are a few features that Cuba shares with the countries of the North: an ageing population, thanks to the longevity of the people (17 percent of live past 60), and a low birth rate (1.5, the lowest in Latin America), which makes it impossible to maintain or increase the population. The reasons for this are complex.

To begin with, the Cuban population is highly educated; many opt not to have children, or to have few; and there is easy access to birth control and abortion. But economic hardship is also a factor behind couples’ decision to limit family size: salaries are not enough to live off, housing is difficult if not impossible to come by, and the extra expenses of having a baby, even just food and clothing, can simply be too much. In any case, although in 2008 there was a slight increase, Cuba’s birth rate has not been high enough to maintain its population since 1977 and, as was mentioned above, its demographic shrinkage is “pronounced”.

The very sensitive subject of emigration has particular features in Cuba, where it usually involves the young (and often young professionals seeking new possibilities) and a percentage of women who choose to marry foreigners (especially Spanish, Italians, and French) as a way out of economic, housing, and quality-of-life problems. The offspring of these couples are swelling the important list of people of Cuban “origin” who do not have the culture or nationality of their parent(s) and constitute a question mark in the number of present and future inhabitants of the island. The case of the young P. is one.

Whatever the reasons, the fact that the number of Cubans is growing ever smaller, even if we are not in immediate danger of extinction, fills me with a deep sorrow. Perhaps it will happen one day, though I cannot imagine a future world in which we Cubans will be like dinosaurs, or worse, like the Huns or the Phoenicians, vanished peoples, such that when the song Guantanamera is played, with its verses of Jose Marti, you will hear some say: “Listen to the music and the words: it’s a song by those nice folks who call themselves Cubans. Too bad they don’t exist any more, isn’t it?” (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Leonardo Padura Fuentes is a Cuban writer and journalist. His novels have been translated into a dozen languages and his most recent work, La neblina del ayer, won the Hammett Prize for the best crime novel written in Spanish for 2005.

 
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