The original inhabitants of Cuba were the indigenous Ciboney and other Arawak speaking groups.
The original inhabitants of Cuba were the indigenous Ciboney and other Arawak speaking groups.
Genetics. An autosomal study from 2014 found the genetic ancestry in Cuba to be 72% European, 20% African and 8% Amerindian. This study was of Cubans in Cuba, not the Cuban exile community in United States or other parts of the world, who may have different genetic profiles.
The Taíno were a historic indigenous people of the Caribbean, whose culture has been continued today by Taíno descendant communities and Taíno revivalist communities.
Those Taíno not put to the sword or worked to death fell victim to smallpox, influenza and measles, against which they had no defence. Within 100 years of Columbus' landfall, virtually the entire indigenous population – heavily concentrated in the fertile lowlands of eastern Cuba – had perished.
Yet Cuba remained one of Spain's two colonies in the New World. (The other was Puerto Rico.) It was governed from Madrid much as it had been governed since it was first occupied and settled by the Spaniards in 1511.
Popular history holds that shortly after Christopher Columbus arrived to the Caribbean in 1492, the Arawakan-speaking Native people known as the Taíno were completely destroyed by slavery, European disease, starvation, and war.
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.
The European heritage of Cubans comes primarily from one source: the Spaniards (including Canarians, Asturians, Catalans, Galicians, Andalusians, and Castilians). The native white population are nearly all descendants of the Spaniards and most non-white Cubans also have Spanish ancestry.
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.
The official language of Cuba is Spanish or Cuban Spanish, a form of Caribbean Spanish , that the vast majority of Cubans speak.
As of January 14, 2013, all Cuban government-imposed travel restrictions and controls have been abolished. Since that date, any Cuban citizen, with a valid passport, can leave the country at will, without let or hindrance from the Cuban authorities.
Taíno words are still used for municipalities throughout Puerto Rico; such as Utuado, Mayagüez, Caguas, and Humacao, among others.
In appearance the Taino were short and muscular and had a brown olive complexion and straight hair. They wore little clothes but decorated their bodies with dyes. Religion was a very important aspect of their lives and they were mainly an agricultural people although they did have some technological innovations.
Chinese Cubans (Spanish: chino-cubano) are Cubans of full or mixed Chinese ancestry who were born in or have immigrated to Cuba. They are part of the ethnic Chinese diaspora (or Overseas Chinese).
About Hispanic Origin
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.
Ancestry. The ancestry of Cuban Americans is primarily from Spaniards and Africans, as well as more distant ancestry from among the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean and those of Florida.
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.
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.
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.
Santería is an Afro-Caribbean religion, and more specifically an Afro-Cuban religion. In Cuba it is sometimes described as "the national religion", although it has also spread abroad.
Consequently, Cuban immigration to the U.S. has a long history, beginning in the Spanish colonial period in 1565 when St. Augustine, Florida was established by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, and hundreds of Spanish-Cuban soldiers and their families moved from Cuba to St. Augustine to establish a new life.
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.
the colors express the essence of bronze color from natural pigment. The Tainos were known by this distinct bronze coloration of the skin.
The ethnic groups of Cuba are to a large degree informed by the history of the island. As mentioned above, there are four main ethnic groups: white Cuban, Mulatto, Mestizo, and Afro-Cuban.