Intimate Relationship Behaviors of Cuban Male College Students‪.‬

The Latino population in the United States is the fastest growing immigrant population at this time. According to the United States Census Bureau (2001), there are 35.3 million Latinos living in the United States, accounting for 12.5 percent of the overall population. Estimates suggest that by the year 2050 the Latino population will make up 24 percent of the total population (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2001). The Latino population is extremely diverse, containing few universal characteristics. It has been suggested that the only common feature Latinos share is that they can trace their family heritage to one of the countries in Latin America (Massey, 1993). Other than that, they can be any race, speak English or Spanish (or both), migrate from twenty different countries, and be foreign born or native born to the United States (Driscoll et al., 2001). The term "Latino" was created by the U.S. Census Bureau to account for immigrants from Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Central America and South America (Driscoll et al., 2001). In the current study, the term "Latino" is used to match the definition provided by the U.S. Census Bureau; when speaking about a particular subgroup of the overall "Latino" population, country of origin is used to clarify. For the most part, Latinos reside within the largest and fastest growing cities/states (for example, Texas, California, New York, Florida) in the United States, but are slowly moving into more rural areas (U.S. Census, 2001). Of particular interest in the current study are immigrant males from Cuba currently attending higher education in Miami Florida. Cubans are the third largest Latino immigrant group with more than 50 percent of Cuban immigrants residing in Miami Florida (Grenier, 2006; Queralt, 1984).