Poverty Also Drives Cuba’s East-West Internal Migration
Without housing, formal employment, and a ration book, these internal migrants are “illegal” in their own country.
HAVANA TIMES — Tens of thousands of Cubans are “illegal” in their own country, according to government standards—especially in Havana, the final stop for migrants arriving from the eastern part of the island who flee extreme poverty but lack the means to emigrate to the USA or anywhere else. Until yesterday, before the dismissal of Labor Minister Marta Elena Feitó, they were also invisible or labeled as “disguised beggars.”
The government attributes the recent intensification of this migratory phenomenon to “greater urbanization of society,” according to Antonio Ajas, director of the Center for Demographic Studies at the University of Havana, in comments published by the Communist Party daily Granma on July 13. According to Ajas, this is a natural trend in the country’s development process, in which more and more people leave rural areas to settle in urban zones—especially in Havana, the main recipient of this internal movement.
At first glance, Ajas’s explanation may seem reasonable: cities grow, towns empty, and the countryside ages. However, attributing this phenomenon to “growing urbanization” ignores the social, economic, and political context that drives it. This is not desired or planned migration born of progress; rather, it stems from poverty and a lack of opportunity that push many Cubans to abandon their hometowns in search of the bare minimum for survival. What Ajas describes as urbanization is in reality a desperate escape from poverty.
This reality has a face and a name, though not an official one. In Cuban popular language—especially in Havana—those who migrate from the eastern provinces are disparagingly called palestinos (“Palestinians”). The term—derived from the image of a displaced people without land or rights—has taken on a stigmatizing character. As noted in a publication by Acento, this phenomenon “is a consequence of institutional fragility in rural areas and the abandonment of the countryside, which pushes its inhabitants into a kind of contemporary nomadism.”
Unlike international migration, these Cubans move within their own borders but face similar restrictions: discrimination, lack of housing access, legal insecurity, and near-total invisibility in public policy. Many arrive in Havana with no place to live, no formal employment, no ration book, and in many cases, unable to legalize their stay due to the ongoing restrictions of the national residence registration system. They are citizens of their country but treated like intruders.
Adding to this is a legal barrier that exacerbates their vulnerability: regulations that prevent Cubans from other provinces from legally settling in Havana without explicit authorization. A 1997 decree imposes restrictions on changing residence to the capital, requiring a series of conditions that most eastern Cuban migrants cannot meet. This special permit system, inherited from territorial control mechanisms, turns Havana into a kind of restricted enclave within the country, where not all citizens can reside legally.
In a 2016 article, journalist Abraham Jimenez Enoa collected testimonies from several palestinos who had been deported:
“It’s me, your brother-in-law. Listen, yesterday at noon they arrested Junior. But don’t worry, he didn’t do anything; he was with me having lunch on Alfredo’s porch when a police patrol stopped in front of us and asked for our ID cards. They saw he was from Santiago de Cuba and arrested him.”
Every Friday, two buses would leave the capital—each with 45 seats—along with one train per month, to return these people to their home provinces.
The 1997 decree, still in force in practice, though not always strictly enforced, contradicts the Cuban Constitution itself. Article 52 guarantees every citizen the right to reside anywhere in the national territory. The paradox between constitutional law and decrees exposes a state that, instead of facilitating integration and equitable access to rights, imposes barriers that fuel exclusion.
Official figures confirm the scale of the issue. According to recent data from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI), Cuba’s population decreased by 307,961 people between 2023 and 2024, dropping to 9,748,007 inhabitants, although renowned economist and demographer Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos believes it has actually fallen to 8 million. Birth rates continue to decline, and the population is aging, over 25% of Cubans are older than 60. Meanwhile, more than 250,000 people emigrated abroad in 2024 alone. But what isn’t discussed enough is what’s happening within the country: a massive internal migration from the eastern and central provinces toward the west, with Havana as the near-mandatory destination.
Although Havana is also the main departure point for emigration abroad, it concentrates the bulk of internal migration. According to ONEI, only Havana and its metropolitan area maintain positive population growth figures—due precisely to this constant flow of internal migrants. Meanwhile, provinces like Las Tunas, Granma, Holguín, and Guantánamo are losing residents at an alarming rate. In many of these provinces, the exodus of young people threatens to make already fragile local economic and social projects unviable due to years of state disinvestment.
Yet this forced migration isn’t limited to rural-to-urban movement. As Ajas himself points out, there’s also rural-to-rural migration: farmers leaving unproductive land in their municipalities to relocate to areas with more available land or better conditions. This movement, though less visible, reflects a survival logic that has nothing to do with urban growth or modernization. It is simply the need to find a place where one can work and live with a minimum of stability.
Still, the state has yet to develop a clear policy for these internal migrants. The official discourse prefers to speak of “circularity,” “return,” or “engagement with the diaspora,” while ignoring those who, without ever leaving the country, remain in a legal and social limbo. There are no specific programs to welcome, legalize, or guarantee basic services to these people. For the palestinos, it becomes burdensome to access the rationed market quota, enroll their children in school, obtain employment, or even receive prenatal care. There’s also no serious strategy to revitalize the countryside beyond slogans about “food sovereignty.”
The case of the palestinos exposes a double abandonment: of their places of origin—emptied of opportunity—and that in their new destinations, where they are treated as second-class citizens. Rather than addressing this reality with the seriousness it demands, authorities present it as a “technical challenge” or a “natural process.”
But there’s nothing natural about tens of thousands of Cubans being forced to leave everything behind to start from scratch, without state support, without minimum guarantees, and burdened by stigma. This is not urbanization. This is, quite simply, forced displacement.
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.