Cuba: Race relations in Cuba, early 20th century. Santiago de Cuba, 1927. A horse sits on a black man while affluent white people look smilingly on.

The population of Cuba has very complex origins and intermarriage between diverse groups is general. There is disagreement about racial statistics. The Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami says that 62% is black, whereas statistics from the Cuban census state that 65.05% of the population was white in 2002.

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'.

Cuba has a sizable number of Asian people who comprise 1% of the population. They are primarily of Chinese descent, followed by Filipino, Koreans and Vietnamese people. They are descendants of farm laborers brought to the island by Spanish and American contractors during the 19th and early 20th century. Afro-Cubans are descended primarily from the Kongo people, as well as several thousand North African refugees, most notably the Sahrawi Arabs of Western Sahara under Moroccan occupation since 1976.

Copyright:

Supplier: CPA Media Co. Ltd.

Photographer:

Moisés Hernández Fernández

Credit:

Pictures From History