The European heritage of Cubans comes primarily from one source: the Spaniards (including
Genetics. An autosomal study from 2014 found the genetic ancestry in Cuba to be 72% European, 20% African and 8% Amerindian.
The original inhabitants of Cuba were the indigenous Ciboney and other Arawak speaking groups.
Cubans themselves are, as recent DNA studies prove, partially Africans. But Cuba's expression of African culture evolved primarily as a mechanism of existential survival and adaptation for the African men and women that experienced slavery, dehumanization, and racism on the island for 350 years.
From the 1500s, Spanish colonizers brought about 8,000 Africans, largely from West Africa, to Cuba as slaves, to work the sugar plantations. By 1838, at their peak, there were nearly 400,000 slaves on the island. As their numbers increased, so did the tons of sugar Cuba produced.
Although Afro-Cubans can be found throughout Cuba, Eastern Cuba has a higher concentration of Afro-Cubans than other parts of the island and Havana has the largest population of Afro-Cubans of any city in Cuba. Recently, many native African immigrants have been coming to Cuba, especially from Angola.
When Christopher Columbus first arrived in Cuba in 1492, he discovered an island already inhabited by three different groups of indigenous peoples: the Taínos, the Ciboneys, and the Guanajatabeyes. Currently, scholars estimate that there were between 50,000-300,000 indigenous people occupying the island at the time.
In 1511, Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar set out from Hispaniola to form the first Spanish settlement in Cuba, with orders from Spain to conquer the island. The settlement was at Baracoa, but the new settlers were greeted with stiff resistance from the local Taíno population.
Cuba had been a colony from 1492 until 1898 when the United States took over the territory in the Spanish–American War. Many Cubans have ancestry dating back from Spain. Many Spaniards escaped the first Spanish Civil War and went to Cuba, and other countries, around 1820–1825.
Conversely, by using the Y chromosome in men, we found that 81.8% of Cubans are descendants of European fathers, 17.7% of African fathers and 0.5% of indigenous fathers (the latter discovered in the Caribbean for the first time, two men who are probably Taíno descendents).
Two out of 132 male samples belonged to East Asian haplogroup O2, which is found in significant frequencies among Cantonese people and is found in 1.5% of the Cuban population. In the 1920s, an additional 30,000 Chinese arrived; the immigrants were exclusively male.
While today the official number of Chinese-born Cubans in Cuba has decreased to just below 150, the number of Chinese-descendants in Cuba may well number in the hundreds of thousands given the presence of large numbers of Chinese in early periods of Cuban history.
However, many people today identify as Taíno or claim Taíno descent, most notably in subsections of the Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Dominican nationalities. Many Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Dominicans have Taíno mitochondrial DNA, showing that they are descendants through the direct female line.
The Government of Cuba treats U.S. citizens born in Cuba as Cuban citizens and may subject them to a range of restrictions and obligations.
Dissatisfied with the corrupt and inefficient Spanish administration, lack of political representation, and high taxes, Cubans in the eastern provinces united under the wealthy planter Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, whose declaration of independence in October 1868, the Grito de Yara (“Cry of Yara”), signaled the beginning ...
Under the Spanish commander, Capt. Gen. Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau (nicknamed El Carnicero, “the Butcher”), Cubans were herded into so-called “reconcentration areas” in and around the larger cities; those who remained at large were treated as enemies.
Cubans sought freedom from Spain and the right to govern themselves to improve their lives economically and socially. Initially the United States stayed out of the conflict in Cuba.
Representatives of Spain and the United States signed a peace treaty in Paris on December 10, 1898, which established the independence of Cuba, ceded Puerto Rico and Guam to the United States, and allowed the victorious power to purchase the Philippines Islands from Spain for $20 million.
Classic Taíno (Taíno proper) was the native language of the Taíno tribes living in the northern Lesser Antilles, Puerto Rico, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and most of Hispaniola, and expanding into Cuba.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND. Cristóbal Colón (Christopher Columbus) claims the New World. On 27 October 1492 Columbus sighted Cuba, he named the island Juana.
Havana, like the rest of Cuba, is populated mostly by people of Spanish ancestry, with a large minority of Blacks and mulattoes, whose ancestors were slaves. There are few mestizos, as in many other Latin American countries, because the Indian population was virtually wiped out in colonial times.
OMB defines "Hispanic or Latino" as a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race.
A significant number of Afro-Cubans as well as biracial Cubans speak Haitian Creole. Haitian Creole is the second-most spoken language as well as a recognized one in Cuba, with approximately 300,000 speakers – about 4% of the population.