The census moment

By La Saeta

HAVANA – The girl or boy who was born one minute past midnight on September 15 will not appear on the national inventories. The non-citizen will have to wait for another exercise of that nature, devised to gather dependable statistics not only on the number of inhabitants but also to learn details about various social events in his/her life. The home will have the greatest importance.

The exercise will deliver data of a demographic nature. We shall see exactly how many we are right now. The last census established that Cuba had 11 million 242,628 inhabitants. That means almost twice the number of citizens who, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, populated the archipelago of the Greatest Antilles.

But with the drop in the birth rate and the visible aging of the population, the figures may be surprising at the end of this exercise, which will be compiling data until Sept. 24.
Whatever the results, the survey could facilitate the socio-economic strategies that, fast or slow, are on their way.

We should learn exactly about the precise conditions of the homes and human locations by provinces and municipalities, about the results of domestic migration or emigration abroad, about purchasing power, about the changes created by the openings that, though limited, have an effect on people, about the repercussion of the political and administrative divisions made in recent decades, which presumably are linked to economic indicators in specific zones.

Just one example. Most of the old sugar mills likely do not have the same number of area residents as in the past, not even the mills that were recently rehabilitated during the campaign to revitalize that industry, which almost disappeared some years ago.

However, the population density in areas of Matanzas like Varadero, or the special development centers in Mariel or Cienfuegos almost surely has increased.

It is possible that Havana – province and city – will have a greater number of inhabitants. We’ll see if it has withstood the sporadic invasions that motivated a song that was popular for a while, if it stays at 2 million 141,000 or if that number changes, upward or downward.

Many wonder if women continue to exceed the number of men nationwide, because some data suggest that one of the demographic problems that will soon have a bearing is not having the number of females needed for “the replacement,” which is the name given by specialists to the gender balance needed to guarantee a balanced reproduction.

As a well-known television hosts keeps saying (some times insistently and absurdly), once we have the results at hand we’ll be able to draw our own conclusions.