Photo credit: NBS News
According to numbers compiled by a Cuban economist and demographer, Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos, the island’s population fell by 18% between 2022 and 2023.
El Pais reports that dozens of people are fleeing Cuba. People fly from Havana airport to Nicaragua daily, trying to escape the country’s collapse. Three years ago, there was talk that Cuba was seeing the most significant migratory wave in its history. Although the authorities have not released official data concerning the country’s population, a new study has revealed the actual toll of the island’s exodus.
A 49-year-old Havana resident, Valia Rodriguez, said, “I have never seen so many people emigrating as I am right now. Of course, any Cuban will love to go. I would, for example. If I had the means, I would go, because in this country, with this government, one can’t live. And I’ll tell you something else: if I hadn’t recently given birth, I would have left because the situation is unsustainable.”
Although emigration in Cuba took off in 2021, official reports and government data describe a population of just over eleven million still living there. However, that figure is from the past.
Albizu-Campos is a researcher from the Christian Center of Reflection and Dialogue. He worked for 30 years at the Center for Demographic Studies of the Cuban Economy. Given the need for up-to-date official numbers, he used the electoral roll from the February 13, 2013, elections, which register people aged 16 and over and is based on the last census conducted in the country in 2012.
He explained that although censuses are usually carried out every 10 years, the next one will not occur on the island until 2025 because of the current crisis. To count the population aged between zero and fifteen, he used data from Cuba’s Statistical Yearbook.
He dates the beginning of the present exodus to the beginning of October 2021, which was a peak of the current migratory wave. That was the period when the number of Cubans who reported at the US-Mexico border multiplied. He also references the 738,680 Cubans who arrived in the United States between October 2001 and April 2024 after receiving immigrant visas.
Between 2021 and now, the Cuban migratory exodus has far exceeded previous mass departures. An accumulation of chaos and bad decisions convinced Cubans to start fleeing the country. Unfavorable economic conditions, economic sanctions by the Trump administration and a pandemic that forced the closure of borders worldwide all affected Cuba’s fundamental industry, tourism, and the growing lack of medicine and collapse of the health system.
In general, an environment of instability and political fracture led to the most prominent citizen protest in 2021. The situation convinced many Cubans to depart, suggesting things would not get any better soon.
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