Contingent of Exiles and Refugees from Cuba to South Florida

The people of Florida argon expressing the have that the state has absorbed enough, with influxes of both Cubans and Haitians over the past iv decades. South Florida has long been a point of destination for refugees fleeing the economical and political problems of the Caribbean and Latin America. The send-off wave came in planeloads of Cubans on "freedom flights" in the 1960s and 1970s. They were followed by the Mariel boatlift of 1980 bringing 125,000 refugees. Thousands more fled the Sandinista reign in Nicaragua, with a massive influx in 1988 and 1989. The result has been a strain on Florida's already overtaxed accessible services (DeGeorge 48A, 48E).

In many ways, the period of the Mariel boatlift was also a period of attitudinal change in Florida. The Cuban refugees prior to that beat had been largely invited, and their anti-Castro stance fit with that of the people of Florida. Many of the refugees brought in 1980 on the Mariel boatlift were Cuban criminals, however, and this contributed to a shift in normal perception. Castro at the time made the following statement:

Those that atomic number 18 leaving from Mariel are the scum of the country--antisocials, homosexuals, drug addicts, and gamblers, who are welcome to leave Cuba if any country will have them (Portes and Stepick 21).

A Cuban-American official in Miami who remote Castro agreed in many respects:

Mariel destroyed the public figure of Cubans in the United States and, in passing, destroyed t

Portes, Alejandro and Alex Stepick. City on the Edge. Berkeley: University of California, 1993.

In fact, the labels affixed to the marielitos by both the Castro government and the Cuban leaders in Florida created discrimination which made it very rough for these modern refugees to make their way in their new surroundings. At the same time, native white South Floridians saw these new refugees as a group to be firmly opposed (Portes and Stepick 21-23).

he image of Miami itself for tourism. The marielitos are mostly Black and mulattoes of a color that I haver saw or believe existed in Cuba. They don't have social networks; they roam the streets desperate to return to Cuba" (Portes and Stepick 22).

The Cuban community in Florida has become a major political bloc to be courted by candidates. The Cuban community is for the most part very conservative in its politics. The Cubans have had a major influence on the political course of Florida as a whole, and on the national scene the Cubans have attained a virtual veto over change in U.S. impertinent policy with reference to relations with Cuba. No American hot seat has been willing to pay the political price of normalizing relations with Cuba (Allman 310-311).

The entire tone of the city, the way people looked and talked and met one another, was Cuban. The very image the city had begun presenting of itself, what was then its newfound glamour, its "hotness". . . was that of prerevolutionary Havana, as comprehend by Americans. There was even in the way women spiffed up in Miami a definable Havana look. . . (Didion 52).

There are numerous suggestions that the Cuban culture in South Florida is in many places the dominant culture. The Anglos in the region have ne'er fully understood the way the Cubans view their lives in America, for from the first the Cubans had the attitude that their stay would be temporary. They have seen assimilation as a doubtful goal as they dreamed of reversive to their homeland and casti
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