Blurred Borders: Transnational Migration between the Hispanic Caribbean and the United States

CHAPTER SEVEN: Beyond the Rafters: Recent Trends and Projections in Cuban Migration

Beyond the Rafters Recent Trends and Projections in Cuban Migration In chapter 6, I argued that the contemporary Cuban diaspora is best understood from a transnational perspective. Here I focus on the Cuban exodus since the 1990s because it exemplifies many recurring themes in transnationalism , including the migrants’ efforts to remain in touch with their relatives back home through remittances, family visits, and telephone calls.1 Furthermore, more Cubans have come to the United States since 1989 than during any other period since the 1959 revolution. It is therefore instructive to trace the basic contours of this wave and forecast its probable course in the second decade of the twenty-first century. In 1989 Cuba entered its worst economic crisis in contemporary history. During the 1990s the island’s annual average economic growth rate was −1.9 percent. Between 1989 and 1993 Cuba’s gross domestic product (GDP) plunged by 39.4 percent. Between 1994 and 1999 the island’s economy recovered modestly (growing at an annual average of 3.4 percent). During the first decade of the twenty-first century, the Cuban government reported an average growth of 5.6 percent per year (after changing the calculation method to include subsidized social services such as health care and education ). By these measures it took fifteen years for the Cuban economy to return to its 1989 levels (González-Corso 2007; Mesa-Lago 2007). In 2009 the government estimated that the island’s economy grew by merely 1.4 percent (Weissert 2009). During this time Cuba lost its preferential commercial relations with the former Soviet Union and the socialist countries of Eastern Europe, organized 7 beyond the rafters 154 around the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON), which represented about 85 percent of Cuba’s foreign trade in 1989. Nonetheless, the Cuban economy would probably have undergone a crisis even without the dismantling of the Soviet Union and COMECON. The Cuban economy faced serious structural problems since the mid-1980s, such as a growing external debt, lack of export diversification, reliance on imported oil, inefficiency of state enterprises, and low productivity. (For analyses of recent economic trends in Cuba, see Brundenius 2009; Domínguez, Pérez Villanueva, and Barberia 2004; González Núñez 2002; Mesa-Lago 2007; Monreal and Carranza Valdés 2000; Pérez López 2006; Vidal Alejandro 2009.) The Special Period in Peacetime (as Fidel Castro officially branded the crisis in 1990) has hampered the well-being of the Cuban population. Among the consequences of the crisis were the severe deterioration of nutrition , transportation, and housing; the declining value of wages (particularly in Cuban pesos); and the rising cost of living (increasingly dependent on access to U.S. dollars). Between 1989 and 1993 per capita caloric intake fell from 3,052 to 2,099 calories per day. During this time, adult Cubans lost an average of twenty pounds, and 19 percent of the population remained undernourished in 1998 (Office of Global Analysis 2008: 16; Uriarte 2002: 21). Moreover, the unemployment rate reached a high of 7.9 percent in 1995; many public services (especially health care and education) were curtailed; social inequality (by class, race, and region) intensified; the informal sector (particularly self-employed workers) expanded; and the disjuncture between scarce jobs and a highly skilled labor force produced an enormous waste of human capital (Brundenius 2000). In addition, the U.S. embargo or blockade2 worsened Cuba’s economic situation. In 1996 the U.S. Congress approved the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act, or Helms-Burton Act, which threatened to sanction foreign companies trading with Cuba. On the one hand, essential articles, especially foodstuffs, medical supplies, and fuel, became scarcer on the island. Many of these products, such as cereals and fertilizers, could be imported from the United States at lower costs than from other countries. On the other hand, the disappearance of the protected Soviet market, together with diminished international prices for sugar, contracted Cuba’s exporting capacity. The U.S. embargo has made it difficult for Cuba to find new outlets for its traditional products, such as sugar, tobacco, nickel, and citrus fruits. During the 1990s Venezuela and China only partially compensated for beyond the rafters 155 the loss of Cuba’s trading partners. The Cuban government estimates that the blockade cost US$236.2 billion between 1962 and 2008 (Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores 2009). This chapter assesses the impact...