Cuban Americans, or Cuban-Americans, are people of Cuban descent living in the United States. They are the third largest Hispanic group in the country (3.5 percent of all Hispanics). 70% of these people live in South Florida, because of its geographic proximity to Cuba. The largest Cuban center in the United States has traditionally been Miami, where Cubans make up 34.1% of the population. Although Mexicans are the largest Hispanic group in the country, Cubans come first in Miami, with Hispanics making up an absolute majority in Miami, up to 70% of the population in 2010.
Some cities in Florida have a record 60% of their population of Cubans. Westchester is in first place with 65.9 percent of Cubans.
The second largest Cuban center is New York City and its suburbs (141,250 people).
According to the 2012 Census, there are 1,957,557 people of Cuban descent (0.63% of the population) in the United States. 85% of them consider themselves white.
Most Cuban Americans belong to the Roman Catholic Church, but some also practice traditional African rituals, particularly santeria.
Cubans brought with them their own cuisine (particularly Cuban bread), music and fashion, and founded a number of cigar factories.
Refugees who left their homeland after the revolution (1959) and supported “anti-Castro” sentiments make up a significant proportion of Cubans in the United States. As of 1958, there were only 125,000 Cubans in the United States. The main destination for refugees has traditionally been Miami. In the 1990s, with the introduction of the “wet feet, dry feet” policy (denying refugees arriving by sea and accepting those arriving by land), refugees began arriving across the Mexican border into Texas. As a consequence, the Cuban community in Houston grew significantly.
Puerto Rico has also become a major arrival point for refugees in recent years.
The Cuban Americans are mainly supporters of the Republican Party, thus expressing their dissatisfaction with the failure of the Bay of Pigs operation (1961); the political émigrés and their descendants directly blame Kennedy, the Democratic president, for the lack of air support for the operation.
At the same time, a new phenomenon has emerged in recent years: a very large proportion of Cuban youth support Democratic President Barack Obama. Among older people, his support is much lower.
There are five Cubans (four Republican and one Democrat) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and three from Florida are Cubans. Three of the senators are of Cuban descent (Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Robert Menendez).
The median income of Cubans per household per year is $36,671, which is high for Hispanics but lower than for non-Hispanic whites. 25% have a college degree, which is also higher than the average for Latinos, but lower than for whites (30%).
Cuban immigrants are also very active in the struggle to overthrow the Castro regime. For this purpose, in 1981, the Cuban-American National Foundation was created in Florida, uniting emigrants from the island. The head of this foundation, Jorge Mas Canosa, headed the Presidential Council for Television and Radio Broadcasting to Cuba under Reagan, as well as the government commission “for a free Cuba”. In addition, Radio Martí began broadcasting to Cuba in 1990, totaling more than 1,200 hours per week.