The Cienfuegos newspaper 5 de Septiembre mentions the figures published in the independent press, without giving credit
14ymedio, Havana, 12 April 2024 –The immigration stampede faced by Cuba is no secret to anyone, not even to the official press, which this Friday published an unusual article on the subject. The Cienfuegos newspaper 5 de Septiembre lashes out at the authorities for the “scarce public data” about the exodus and even alludes to figures published by the independent press, although it progressively lowers the tone by attributing all the evils to the blockade*.
According to the newspaper, the data to which it has had access “indicate that today more than 11% of the Cuban population is outside the Island. Counting the migratory wave unleashed from 2021 to date, the press reports indicate that in a period of 18 months, about 400,000 Cubans were intercepted at the U.S. border.”
The real figure, about 425,000, has been disseminated by the independent press, which the official newspaper avoids mentioning and which has a precedent: the number of femicides recorded by observatories and independent media in 2023, which was cited by Periódico 26 as coming from “unofficial sources.”
The data “indicate that today more than 11% of the Cuban population is outside the Island.”
To the illegal entries through the southern border of the United States are added, in addition to those who migrated to other countries such as Spain or Mexico and the more than 69,000 Cubans approved for humanitarian parole in the United States in only the first year of that program’s operation, figures that the official newspaper does not mention either, since it prefers to focus on the “emotional damage” of migration.
“Apart from the worrying scenario that derives from such figures for the fate of the nation, we are actually talking about something more than numbers. Every digit is our parents, siblings, cousins, uncles,