• by Leonardo Padura
• Tuesday, June 30, 2009
• Inter Press Service

For years the Cuban population has been undergoing a decline that is now, according to specialists, "evident and pronounced", and it will continue to decrease unless there is a shift in the three crucial areas that affect demographic growth: mortality, emigration, and birth rate, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a dozen languages.

In this article, Padura writes that there are a few features that Cuba shares with the countries of the North: an ageing population, and a low birth rate (1.5, the lowest in Latin America) that makes it impossible to maintain or increase the population. The reasons for this are complex. Cuba has a highly educated population in which many opt not to have children or to have few, and there is easy access to birth control and abortion. Economic hardship is also a factor in couples' decision to limit family size: salaries are not enough to live off, housing is difficult if not impossible to come by, and the extra expenses of having a baby, even just food and clothing, can simply be too much.

Whatever the reasons, the fact that the number of Cubans is growing ever smaller, even if we are not in immediate danger of extinction, fills me with a deep sorrow. Perhaps it will happen one day, though I cannot imagine a future world in which we Cubans will be like dinosaurs, or worse, like the Huns or the Phoenicians, collapsed peoples, such that when the song Guantanamera is played, with its verses of Jose Marti, you will hear some say: "Listen to the music and the words: it's a song by those nice folks who call themselves Cubans. Too bad they don't exist any more, isn't it?"

(*) Leonardo Padura Fuentes is a Cuban writer and journalist. His novels have been translated into a dozen languages and his most recent work, La neblina del ayer, won the Hammett Prize for the best crime novel written in Spanish for 2005.

//NOT FOR PUBLICATION IN CANADA, CZECH REPUBLIC, IRELAND, POLAND, THE UNITED STATES, AND THE UNITED KINGDOM//

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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