The Economy of Suffering

The end of World War II, which saw the United States promoted to the status of “superpower,” also saw the creation of a narrative in which the United States was not a racist empire but a savior and spreader of freedom to lesser nations (Espíritu 2006). We see this benevolent recasting not only in efforts to redeem the United States for war atrocities by painting war efforts as rescue missions, but the idea of U.S. benevolence is also prominently showcased in its “nations of immigrants” narrative (Espíritu 2006, 2014; Oxford 2008). Indeed, the inscription on the base of the Statue of Liberty, part of which reads, “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” provides a strong narrative of national benevolence and care about human suffering associated with the identity of the nation (Espíritu 2014, 93; Oxford 2008). That the United States could have the capacity to take on the world’s poor points to the nation’s wealth, strength, and dominance in the world. But as we know, the United States does not take in all the world’s tired and poor. Rather, it first ranks degrees of suffering to decide who is most worthy of inclusion. In this process, immigrants and refugees have had the burden of proving that they are indeed poor and needy and that they are the right type of immigrants who will eventually become good citizens (Espíritu 2006, 2014; Loescher 1986; Oxford 2008; Ticktin 2011).

As Yen Le Espíritu points out in the context of war, a narrative in which U.S. soldiers are always benevolent rescuers also requires some assumptions about the character of those rescued. Rescued “others,” such as the Vietnamese refugees of the Vietnam War, are the embodied evidence of the justness of the war (Espíritu 2006). The co-optation of “the rescued” is also problematic because along with being used to legitimize state violence, it perpetuates the subordinated positioning of the “other” (Ticktin 2011). As Miriam Ticktin argues, the humanity of those seeking care (such as asylum) from powerful nations often goes unrecognized unless they can prove they are “morally legitimate suffering bodies.” As such, they become subjects of care only as long as they remain disabled (Ticktin 2011, 4). Because of such conditions, an economy of suffering is born—for those seeking inclusion in the nation, suffering becomes an oddly desirable condition (Ticktin 2011). And since the United States rank orders suffering, it creates conditions wherein immigrants and minorities must vie for their place within a hierarchy of suffering. The tendency in the United States to rank suffering (and worthiness) is problematic not only because it obfuscates the fact that inequality is structurally enforced, but because the resulting hierarchies are anchored in a binary racial frame that holds conceptions of blackness (or unworthiness) as the extreme negative end and worthiness (whiteness or near whiteness) at the other. As such, the hierarchy makes (human) rights a zero-sum game.

Yet, the establishment of an identifiable “human rights regime” by the time of the Balsero crisis helped provide for disenfranchised groups a legitimized language for holding nations responsible for inattention to their suffering. In 1948, the United Nations drew up a document setting out the idea that human rights should be the concern of all nations and that nations should work together to ensure that human rights are universally protected. In 1994, the abolition of apartheid in South Africa would be a major milestone illustrating worldwide commitment to these aims. The end of apartheid, negotiated in part by Nelson Mandela, came also because of sustained pressure from various nations, including the United States, in the form of sanctions, among other pressures. For African Americans looking on at the victory in South Africa, the same human rights narratives used to argue against apartheid could be used to indict the United States for its continued disenfranchisement of African Americans. In the 1990s climate, Cubans too increasingly began to use the narrative of human rights in their political organizing to remind the United States of its obligation to work toward the defeat of Castro (García 1996). In reality, such narratives already underlay the designation of Cubans as being worthy of rescue in the first place. Throughout the 1980s, the Cold War efforts to fight communism had led to U.S. decisions to invite refugees from communist countries in Southeast Asia as well as continuing its open-door stance toward Cubans. Notwithstanding that such moves were less about care for these refugees than U.S. imperialist projects in these regions of the world, these decisions gave the message that political repression had a sort of value in terms of who was worthy of U.S. inclusion—political repression has been ranked higher than other forms of oppression in terms of how legitimate suffering is defined (Espíritu 2006, 2014). In the Cuban case, by deeming the Castro government more oppressive than others with the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, the United States had made Cuban suffering both desirable and normative. In the context of the circulating narratives about human rights, Cuban Americans ramped up this line of logic in their political organizing around their fight for Cuba and for their incoming Cuban compatriots (García 1996).

Still, in spite of the prominence of “human rights” as a political narrative, U.S. internal racial issues belied a strong contradiction. Since the 1980s, the United States had begun rolling back the civil rights victories meant to help African Americans, such as affirmative action and programs designed to fight poverty (Lipsitz 2006; Steinberg 1995). In the early 1990s, under George Bush Sr.’s leadership, it continued with these efforts. The continued power of anti-black racism in the United States was also made overt in the 1991 beating of Rodney King, an African American male, by four white police officers in Los Angeles, California. That the beating was captured on film for all to see served as a “wake-up call” for a nation perceiving itself to be getting closer and closer to a postracial society. In 1994, the country was still reeling from this event, as well as from the aftermath of the notorious 1992 Los Angeles Riot, which was in response to the acquittal of the officers involved. At the same time, while the increasing diversity of the nation due to immigration had been cited by some as evidence of the nation’s growing racial tolerance, there was also a profound backlash. The economy had shifted after the deindustrialization of the 1970s, and during the 1980s and 1990s, there was increasing demand for low-skilled labor. Yet at the same time, anti-immigrant sentiments rose, as evidenced by the 1994 passage of Proposition 187, a bill seeking to deny undocumented immigrants in California social services and education, and by the proliferation of nativist discourses in the public and media as society reacted to the growing presence of Latinos (Lipsitz, 2006; Santa Ana 2002). The continued opposition to African American civil rights gains and the backlash against immigration illustrate that while liberal democracies claim to care about human rights and refugee protection, human rights codes end up becoming difficult to implement as humanitarian goals become incompatible with other national interests. Public concerns about national security and the impact of incoming refugees and immigrants on limited local health and social services can turn political leaders against those seeking care from powerful nations (Greenhill 2010; Stedman and Tanner 2003).

The contradictions inherent in the United States’ national myth recur in the contradictory treatment of Cuban and Haitian boat people. As African Americans and Cuban Americans looked at the inconsistencies in foreign policy decisions as well as local racial politics in 1994, it became increasingly clear that the United States was not fully on the side of African Americans nor of Cuban Americans. Still, the contradictory treatment of the Haitians and Cubans seeking U.S. refuge was the basis for contentions between Miami Cubans and African Americans during the Balsero crisis as human rights became a zero-sum game. In the next sections, I discuss three primary contradictions in relation to the Cuban and Haitian influx that framed these local opinions: shifts in foreign policy that differentiated previous waves of Cuban exiles from the incoming Balseros; the differential mainstream views of Marielitos and Balseros; and the differential immigration policy and views of the mainstream public with regard to Haitians and Cubans.

The Morality of Citizenship in El Nuevo Herald

The United States’ new policy moves reawakened the “us versus them” or “reactive ethnicity” impulse that stimulated Cuban unity during Mariel (Portes and Stepick 1994). Rallying to support their compatriots, Miami Cubans staged mass protests.⁷ El Nuevo Herald, which by 1994 had become an independent paper led by Cuban writers and editors and had become more accepted as the voice of Cuban Americans (Soruco 1996), supported such actions by taking on the function of a sounding board for frustrated Cuban Americans. Functioning much like today’s social media, the Herald acted as an advocate for Cuban Americans and refugees in many ways—including things like providing lists of names of arriving refugees, soliciting help, and allowing people to make pleas for help finding their relatives. Thus, in contrast to the marked ambivalence the paper exhibited in its depictions of the Marielitos in 1980, the Herald depicted overwhelming support of the Balseros.⁸ The positive reports are primarily human-interest stories with a sympathetic focus on individuals’ lives and stories reporting on community efforts to help the newcomers. The stories describe the separation of family members, the anguish of the search for their relatives, and the joys of family reunification.

A popular sentiment among Cuban Americans, expressed in El Nuevo Herald, was the idea that the United States had turned its back on them and their cause. The United States’ actions were framed as a moral failure that privileged “national interests” over human lives:⁹

Almost overnight, the alliance between Washington and the anti-Castro Cubans began to unravel. In the same way that the drama in Cuba is reaching a critical stage, the nation that has taken in so many Cuban immigrants looks as if it’s closing its doors, pockets, and heart.¹⁰

The Cuban critique pointed out that nothing had changed in Cuba to make Cubans less worthy of asylum—Castro was still in power. What had changed were U.S. interests, not the reality of Cuban suffering. Thus, because the United States’ original promises were predicated on its acknowledgment of Cuban suffering, Cubans drew on these criteria to affirm the idea that their status should not be changed. In the reports, Castro remained demonized for his role in creating conditions Cubans would need to flee. But President Clinton also emerged as a traitor and a new enemy of the exile community.¹¹

The focus on Clinton as an individual actor worked to shift the blame from the nation as a whole. Yet Clinton’s moves were far from an aberration; they were in line with a historical pattern of governmental decisions designed to satisfy U.S. imperialist needs. Indeed, in the context of the United States’ investment in the Cold War, Cubans functioned as important “political weapons” for discrediting the Castro government (Greenhill 2010). As Ted Henken points out, “The U.S. would continue to readily accept Cubans as political refugees because their exit was symbolic proof both of the repressive nature of Cuban Communism and the attractiveness of U.S. democracy” (Henken 2005, 396). Furthermore, Clinton’s Cuba policy change matched the increased anti-immigrant sentiment that could be felt in 1994 among local Anglos and in the nation as a whole. The government’s response to the Balsero crisis, like the Mariel exodus, exposed the reality that Cubans were not exempt from being used as pawns of the United States. Hence, as during the Balsero crisis Cubans came to be depicted as “aliens” attempting to enter the United States illegally for the first time (Masud-Piloto 1996; Pedraza 1996), the Balsero crisis forced the exile community to come to terms with the fact that despite their suffering, they were no longer exceptional or favored. According to the logic of worthy citizenship, during Mariel, the “evidence” of deviance among some Marielitos had “rightfully” required explanation, and El Miami Herald demonstrated how a “blackening” of deviant Marielitos was enacted by some members of the Cuban American community to distinguish them from the good Marielitos and from the members of the established exile community. But in the absence of “evidence” of deviance among the Balseros, the fact that the U.S. government was now criminalizing “innocent” Balseros was too much of a contradiction for many Cuban Americans.

Strategically, depicting the Balseros as suffering and courageous figures who braved great dangers to escape Cuba could possibly convince the public that automatic refugee status should be restored. As such, El Nuevo Herald focused on the pain and suffering the Balseros endured as they set out on the high seas through the dramatic retelling of the exodus in news articles and editorials. In this example, the courage of the Balseros is highlighted:

Not even the possibility of death in the Florida straits nor an uncertain fate in the refugee naval base daunted the Cubans. A nation’s general sentiment is repeated. “It is preferable to die at sea or end up someplace else than in the prison that is Cuba.” And the rafters continue arriving.¹²

Portraying Castro’s regime as so horrid that Cubans would risk all to come to the United States, the paper’s stance was a reminder to the U.S. government that Castro remained an enemy of the United States. News accounts paint pictures with words to make the newcomers’ suffering and passion to start a new life palpable. For instance, a news story about a woman who lost her son at sea captures the refugees’ intense desire. The woman recounts, “The United States was his passion.… More than once he told me that he preferred to be eaten by an American shark because in Cuba there was one that was devouring him slowly.”¹³ Using the metaphor of “political sharks” (which brings to mind the oceanic sharks that claimed the lives of many of the Balseros who did not make it) and characterizing whatever dangers or mistreatment the Balseros might encounter in the United States as preferable to Castro’s regime, the stories reaffirm the idea of the obligation of the United States to put an end to this suffering and continue to serve as a place of refuge.

In addition to the dramatic retelling of events, the newspaper invoked even more sympathy by focusing specifically on the children involved in the crisis. For example, an article titled “With Every Raft That Leaves, Cuba Is Bled Dry” describes the plight of an eight-year-old child who was the only one in his group to survive the voyage to freedom:

On Monday, an eight-year-old child by the name of Daniel Bussot was the only survivor of a vessel on which six persons traveled. Moments before the child witnessed the way in which a storm spilled the others into the sea, his mother placed her only life vest around his body, and his father placed him on the other accompanying boat. There have been other children like Daniel since the exodus defined as another “Mariel.” But their stories, like the tales of those arriving, have come to us in undefined and impacting waves. Meanwhile, as the survivors blend in with the population, we prepare for another Mariel.¹⁴

The image of the boy’s parents sacrificing themselves to save his life and the thought of his parents and the other travelers all losing their lives is heartbreaking. The words used to describe the story encouraged the community to mobilize to help the newcomers as they did during Mariel. The reference to the fact that other children have similar stories of tremendous loss or of being the lone survivor reinforced the magnitude of the risks involved in the Balseros’ journey and the impact of the journey on the most innocent people caught in the fray—children.

News reports utilize stories about children to criticize the governments of both Cuba and the United States. The poverty of Cuba is highlighted by emphasizing the prosperity of the United States in this story of a child and her mother rescued by the Coast Guard:

Bravo and her two-year-old daughter were taken to the hospital, Lower Florida Keys Health System, so that the child could receive medical attention. Aboard the Coast Guard vessel, the Monhegan, she suffered a small wound to the head. In front of various members of the press, the child, restless and hungry, said, “Mommy, milk.” Out of habit, her mother responded, “There is no milk.” But, Arturo Cobo, director of the Transit Home for Cuban Refugees, near Key West, interrupted, “Yes, there is milk. There is milk in abundance.¹⁵

The image of the mother from Cuba finally being able to ease her child’s hunger in the United States, where “there is milk in abundance,” offers a heartwarming portrait of the United States as a safe place for children and indicts Cuba for its abuses of the most vulnerable of its population.¹⁶

The plight of children was also used to demonstrate the inhumanity of Clinton’s policies. In one news story, a spokesperson for the Valladares Foundation, an organization that helped the Balseros, argues that the Clinton government was using children as sacrificial lambs: “ ‘That is criminal,’ said Valladares. ‘They are using [the treatment of] these children to discourage others from leaving Cuba.’ ”¹⁷ It is noteworthy that rather than indicting the parents for child abuse for risking their children’s lives at sea, the governments of the United States and of Cuba are criticized in these articles. Instead, the parents are depicted as people who should be praised for saving their children from a worse fate: life in Cuba.¹⁸

In later months, numerous news stories focusing specifically on the plight of the Cubans held in Guantánamo continue the theme of suffering, advancing a harsher view of the United States and the new policy change. The stories depict the horrors of Guantánamo, documenting the heat, sickness, shortages of food and supplies, and unmet needs of the elderly and children being held there. In one story, the plight of children is underscored, as a doctor there emphasizes the fact that Guantánamo is no place for children: “This is a military base. Here we have medication for war-related emergencies, not for children.”¹⁹ Other stories point to the good character of the detainees in Guantánamo to criticize the new policy change as unjust. The very act of holding the Balseros at a military base is viewed as an insult because it suggests that they are criminals:

The wake-up call needs to be sounded loudly in face of the agony of thousands of rafters who throw themselves into the sea and who today are held at Guantánamo Naval Base or in Panama. The exile community, with its force in numbers and influence, has to make its presence felt in favor of those brothers subjugated to an inhumane confinement they don’t deserve because they are not criminals; they’re men, women, and children who risked their lives in the pursuit of liberty.²⁰

The implication here is that if the Balseros were truly criminals, they might deserve exclusion, but they seek only freedom, a goal that does not merit punishment and should instead be rewarded. The stark difference between the image of the Balseros and the criminal “bad immigrant” is driven home here and also in other stories that emphasize that many of the twenty thousand adults held in Guantánamo were professionals and many held university degrees; they included doctors, teachers, sculptors, artists, engineers, carpenters, dancers, electricians, and plumbers.²¹ The sympathy shown in El Nuevo Herald for the “brothers and sisters” of the Cuban American community—regular people with education and skills who were being mistreated in Guantánamo—expresses the Cuban American disappointment and anger that the worthy Balsero immigrants were being wrongly excluded from the United States and denied access to the American Dream and the immigrant success story.

Reports on the tireless efforts of Cuban Americans from all walks of life to help the Balseros portray a Cuban community unified in their welcome. With the expression “at least you are helping your own,” a Cuban American service agency employee working to help incoming Balseros settle in Miami poignantly captures the message emanating from articles on Cuban American efforts to support the Balseros:

“I am tired, very tired,” a 57-year-old employee, who declined to give her name, said as she walked home at noon on Thursday after a tiring workday. The woman said that she began to work on Wednesday at 8 a.m., the day that 225 rafters were processed, without going home. On Thursday, a larger number of refugees were to be processed. But she did not complain. “It’s lovely to do this work,” she said. “At least you are helping your own kind.”²²

Such stories reveal that members of various segments of the Cuban American community, including high-profile Cuban American stars, singers, athletes, and politicians, along with ordinary citizens and children, helped the Balseros. For instance, through descriptions of pictures drawn by the youngest members of the exile community for the refugees at Guantánamo, an article elucidates several factors that promote Cuban American unity—a shared disdain for Fidel Castro; the idea that Cubans, regardless of immigration status, are part of a cohesive family unit; and the music of popular Cuban American singer Willy Chirino:

Some students drew small vessels, peace symbols, or American and Cuban flags. Another made a map showing the distance between Havana and Miami. Another drew happy faces and cited verses from a popular song by Willy Chirino: “And, still they are arriving.” One child, specifically, drew Fidel Castro, within a circle intersected by a line, in the style of the “no” icon, made popular by the film, Ghostbusters.²³

In this story and others illustrating the high level of Cuban American involvement in rallying to the Balseros’ cause, the newspaper reinforces the view that the new immigration policy and the plight of the Balseros was, and should be, the concern of every Cuban American.²⁴

But despite the fact that the Balseros are depicted as worthy of help simply because they are fellow Cubans, an underlying message in several articles, such as those described earlier that eschew a criminal image and argue that the Balseros were potential assets to the United States, is that this value depends on the extent to which the newcomers conform to moral notions of worthy citizenship. A story about how a recently arrived Balsero directly benefited from the support of the Cuban American community suggests that the Balseros would not be a liability for the United States because they had a bootstrap mentality. In the story, the Balsero, named Mojena, highlights how he fits the U.S. ideal for citizenship: “ ‘After arriving, I did not take benefits or anything. Not Medicaid or anything else,’ confirmed Mojena, who is from Marianao, a suburb of Havana. ‘If one looks around, one finds work because there are jobs to be found here. One has to begin little by little, doing anything while you move ahead.’ ”²⁵ Ironically, Mojena boasts that he did not need social services, but the article focuses on how he benefited from the intense mobilization of Cuban American organizations on behalf of the Balseros. Such resources and support from the strong Cuban American enclave and their network of community aid put him in a position where he could avoid requesting welfare and Medicaid, unlike other poor immigrants or racialized groups without U.S.-based networks. Nevertheless, his statements about coming to the United States and starting from the bottom without public aid affirm the idea of the good immigrant who arrives willing to work at anything to succeed (Espíritu 2006, 2014; Saito 2001). Hence, this and other supportive articles invoke a morality frame by implying that the Balseros are the right “type” of immigrants. The language in the paper also points to what characteristics would make one the “wrong” type of immigrant—criminals and those merely seeking handouts. The right type not only shares the proper moral characteristics but also has the skills that can ensure upward mobility. Most of all, as their voyage has proven, they are worthy because they are willing to suffer to become Americans.

The Herald coverage affirmed white Anglo elites’ moralistic framing of the requirements of worthiness, but it also continued to raise questions about the nation and its failures to meet moral obligations to its citizens. Here, a Miami lawyer is cited who argues that the United States should have already intervened in Cuba, as advocated by the Cuban exile community. He argues that Haitians in 1994 were in a better position than Cubans. This, he argues, is because the United States planned military intervention in their country, which would allow Haitians to return home, but was not moving to overthrow Castro:

“The legal situation of the Cubans held at the Guantánamo Naval Base is different than that of the Haitian refugees, and the solution to the rafters’ dilemma lies in the political pressure that members of the exile community may exert,” said Miami lawyer, William Allen. “Haitians have a realistic chance that the government of their country will change.… At this moment, there is no hope for Cubans. That is why their asylum requests would be very different.”²⁶

This story points out contradictions in foreign policy toward Cubans and Haitians, yet the position advanced contrasts sharply with views expressed in the African American Miami Times, where Cubans are portrayed as having the advantage. Notable here is that a politics of division is invoked as the criticism being made is constructed by setting up an oppositional relationship between Cubans and Haitians.

An editorial pointing out that Cuban Americans have often been accused of being una minoría mimada, or “a spoiled minority,” criticizes the United States by insisting that it must reaffirm its commitment to its citizens who have already proven themselves through suffering and contributing as “good immigrants.” The article portrays the Cuban American identity as inextricably tied not only to the idea of exile and possible return to Cuba but also to being American and “favored” in America. The author argues that the “spoiled” stereotype has always been false because the United States’ stance toward Cuba and Cuban Americans is the appropriate and just response to a “despotic regime.” Further, he insists, the allegation that Cubans are a spoiled minority overlooks the fact that Cubans work hard and make sacrifices and that their conservatism stems from their gratitude for the nation that took them in. The detention of the Balseros in Guantánamo, the author argues, is further proof against the stereotype.²⁷ Articles such as this demonstrate an embrace of the idealized requirements of U.S. citizenship. That the country could betray them, however, exposes the limited benefit of embracing such requirements of whiteness and moral superiority.

Cubans could see that the nation-of-immigrants narrative did not consistently hold true in the U.S. treatment of them and that their suffering would not always be rewarded. The United States was motivated by something other than humanitarian concerns. During the Balsero crisis, some members of the wider public followed an impulse to reaffirm the white mainstream idea that when the right people were suffering from the right conditions, the United States would respond. Furthermore, the United States had established the rules by which the Cubans were required to play when it declared their government dangerous and Cubans as worthy suffering immigrants with the Cuban Refugee Adjustment Act of 1966. But unlike European immigrants, who could by the third generation become whites or generic “Americans” (Waters 1990), Cubans found that even after having suffered for citizenship, their whitened status could be revoked as the imperialist goals of the United States shifted.

“What About Haiti?” The Politics of Suffering in the Miami Times

The names of Cuban rafters detained at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base can be found posted on bulletin boards at Radio Mambi and grocery stores in Little Havana and published in Spanish-language newspapers. But no one knows the names of the nearly 15,00 [sic] Haitians detained at the base—and for a longer period.²⁸

As the above quote illustrates, the differential attention to Haitians versus Cubans continued to be a major point of contention for African Americans in 1994. In the years between the Mariel boatlift and the Balsero crisis, the economic situation for African Americans had not much improved, and this would also shape how the Miami Times framed the Balsero crisis. From a national perspective, blacks had made some important gains; for instance, the percentage completing high school rose from 51 percent in 1980 to 63 percent in 1990. But at the end of the 1980s, the national unemployment rate among blacks was at 13 percent, slightly higher than it was for blacks in 1979 but more than twice that of whites (5 percent). Because of economic recessions, the poverty rate had decreased only slightly between 1980 and 1990, from 29.9 percent to 29.5 percent (Dunn 1997). In Miami, conditions for poor blacks were worse than for those across the country. Although many blacks were making it into the middle class, the gap between poor and higher-income blacks had widened so that they had the highest poverty and unemployment rate of all ethnic groups in Miami (Dunn 1997). The median family income for African Americans was $13,897, compared with $44,092 for Anglos and $19,801 for Latinos. Whereas 18 percent of Anglo families and 23 percent of Latino families lived below the poverty line, 43 percent of African American families fell below it in 1990 (Martinez 1997). In 1994, African Americans were in better jobs and were better educated than ever before, but black business growth lagged far behind that of whites and Latinos. In contrast, by the 1990s, 42 percent of all Miami-Dade enterprises were Cuban owned (Grenier and Castro 1999). In the 1980s, Miami was torn apart by several urban conflicts, including black uprisings against three incidents of police brutality, two of which involved Latino police officers (Portes and Stepick 1993). Black concerns about poverty and racism expressed during the riots, and the continuing interethnic conflict between Cubans and African Americans, carried into the 1990s (Portes and Stepick 1993; Martinez 1997). These matters provided the background context for the reporting in the Miami Times during the Balsero crisis, wherein writers looked at their own “native” African American suffering (as well as “black” suffering more generally as exemplified in the treatment of Haitian migrants) and questioned why it had not been rewarded.

An op-ed feature taking up about three-quarters of a page and written by a member of the community elaborates the local concerns of some African Americans. The title, “We Are a Community Controlled by Others and Failed by Our Leaders,” puts forth the reasons, the author believes, that African Americans remain disenfranchised. The op-ed primarily expresses that African Americans are not in positions of power where they can make their own decisions about what happens to their community, the children do not see themselves represented in the curriculum of the educational system, and black Miami leaders are not as visible as Cuban and Jewish leaders. The main problem, the columnist says, is that blacks are too concerned with helping all: “Whites for Whites, Jews for Jews, Cubans for Cubans, Blacks for everybody!”²⁹ The author advocates black self-reliance and the ideas of racial uplift with a critique more in line with the sentiments of members of the public, which diverges from the civil rights rhetoric of coalition building and general social justice and equality endorsed by prominent black leaders such as Jesse Jackson.³⁰ By the beginning of the 1990s, Cuban economic and political power had become clear (Portes and Stepick 1994). In 1980, only a few Cubans had held elected office and they generally stayed out of U.S. local politics as they focused on efforts to facilitate changes in Cuba and a return to the island. But “by mid-decade, the mayors of Miami, Hialeah, West Miami, and several smaller municipalities in Dade County were Cuban born, and there were ten Cuban Americans in the state legislature—quite a step up from the one or two envisioned in the ‘embryonic organization’ plan outlined by the Cuban American Dade County official in 1981” (Stepick et al. 2003, 37). When African Americans ran for office in the 1980s and 1990s, the Cubans who ran against them almost always won. Thus, blacks seemed unable to gain any real political ground (Stepick et al. 2003). The real “on the ground” problems faced by Miami’s blacks gave credence for some African Americans to the idea that when immigrants and other groups win, African Americans lose.

A predominant idea portrayed in the Miami Times was that the underlying cause of the disparities between Miami’s ethnic groups was anti-black racism, and congruent with this, when the paper turned its lens on immigration and the Balsero crisis, its writers took on the cause of Haitians as an African American or black issue, as they had during Mariel. As in 1980, the Miami Times gave less space to the coverage of Cuban immigration in 1994, and the infrequent reports it printed were mostly in contrast to Haitian issues, with editorials setting the tone. Two of the themes predominant in the paper’s coverage of Mariel remained salient in this context and they greatly overlapped: (1) black Haitians versus white Cubans, which draws on the black/white racializing frame in a reaction against it (but also positions Haitians as potential “good immigrants” while depicting Cubans as detrimental to society); and (2) native-born blacks as Americans versus (Cuban) foreigners or immigrants, which affirms a predominant U.S. nativist stance. The category of the “necessity of unity among all oppressed peoples” prevalent in the Mariel reporting was less salient.³¹ The zero-sum oppositional framing of the issues was problematic because it affirmed the idea that worthiness could be measured on the basis of suffering. Furthermore, placing blame on other minority groups and immigrants obscures the underlying causes of racial disparities imposed by the nation’s white power base. But the discourses in the Times also helped turn attention to moral obligations back onto the United States, as it raised questions about the nation’s contradictory foreign and immigration policy.

Because African Americans perceived a rank ordering of Cuban and Haitian suffering by the U.S. government and the public, the Miami Times reflected an effort to revise this view by reordering the groups so that Haitians now would come up on top and Cubans on the bottom. One of the earliest editorials in the Miami Times commenting on the larger influx of Cubans that year, “the biggest since 1980,” immediately brought the issue of race into focus by arguing that it was the main factor in the differential treatment of Cuban and Haitian immigrants.³² The opinion voiced in the editorial is echoed in letters to the editor, such as “President Clinton’s New Cuba Policy Is Welcome,” written by a woman who says that the United States is racist against Haitians and that Cubans should be locked up just like the Haitians. In her view, the United States has done more than enough for Cubans: “We have paid our dues with the Cuban people.… We welcomed the Cubans with open arms and slammed the door in the Haitian people’s face because our great country has had a fixation with race, meaning if the Haitian people were White, we or, say, the White people, would have welcomed them with open arms too. But since their skin is dark, they don’t deserve the same consideration as others.”³³ The writer includes herself within the definition of American by saying that “our great country” and “we” let the Cubans in with open arms, but she then corrects herself by noting that the real decision makers are “the White people.” It is about time, she argues, that Haitians also get their due. Speaking as an “American” responding to immigration and as an African American who has less of a say than “the White people,” the letter writer provides a prime example of the DuBoisian notion of African American double consciousness and of its duality in Miami and in the national framework.

Other stories drew attention specifically to the suffering of Haitians to contest what they argued was the government’s favoring of Cubans over Haitians. An editorial, “What about Haiti?,” written after Clinton’s policy change, asks, “Why is Clinton working so hard to avoid another Mariel and so slow on Haiti?” The editorial begins, “The rapidity with which President Bill Clinton is moving to confront the Castro regime in Cuba over the threat of another Mariel boatlift stands in sharp contrast to the foot-dragging that has come to characterize the Democratic administration’s response to the nose-thumbing and atrocities of the military government in Haiti.”³⁴ Like other stories in the paper addressing Haiti, this article make the point that the atrocities happening in Haiti are the same if not worse than those in Cuba and thus Haitian suffering should not be devalued.

Despite the progressive stance of seeking to undermine a U.S. tradition of racism that would negatively affect both native and foreign-born blacks, the opinions expressed in the Miami Times were often nativist in tone with anti-immigrant sentiments similar to those expressed in the mainstream. For instance, in a feature titled “Street Talk,” where reporters from the Miami Times connect with people “on the street” and ask their opinions about particular questions, members of the general public corroborate the newspaper’s predominantly negative evaluation of the new wave of Cuban immigration. An installment written before the enactment of “Wet Foot, Dry Foot” asked, “What should the U.S. do about Mariel II?” All the respondents (four men and two women, all African American) commented on the inequitable treatment of Haitians compared with Cubans, arguing that both groups should be treated the same. All the respondents also asserted that there were too many “illegals” and that the Cubans in particular (though not truly fitting the term “illegal”) should be shipped back to Cuba. One respondent argued that America should worry about itself instead of other countries. She said, “We’ve got enough people here; there are too many now. They still put the Haitians down—and the Cubans get what the Haitians should get. I’ve been here all my life and Miami’s still the same to me as before the first Mariel boatlift. I think they are going to let them in, I sure do. They let anybody in … the Cubans, anyway.”³⁵ The language used, such as “too many,” “illegals,” and “ship them back,” mirror the nativist discourses identified by Otto Santa Ana (2002) and Leo Chavez (2001) as circulating in the general public about Latinos during the 1990s. Thus, such coverage illustrated an African American embrace of a narrative positioning themselves as “natives” against foreigners.

This opposition expressed in the Miami Times is further illustrated in that, at times, Haitians were also included in the “immigrant threat.” For instance, in another installment of “Street Talk” that asked, “What effect will the Cuban crisis have on the black community?,” of the six African American people polled (three men and three women), five argued that the crisis would make it more difficult for African Americans to get jobs, and two of the six respondents argued that not only would Cubans hurt African Americans’ ability to get jobs but Haitians would too. As we saw in Chapter 3, in the 1980 coverage of Mariel, Haitians were almost exclusively discussed as the “brothers and sisters” of African Americans. However, during the Balsero crisis, the coverage in the Miami Times reflected a move toward grouping Haitians into the idea of “illegal” as well. As evidenced in some of the “Street Talk” installments, though many members of the African American public were generally for the acceptance of Haitians, some argued simply for equal treatment; either both groups should be excluded, or if the Cubans were included, then so should be the Haitians. Clearly, African Americans, continuing to idealize Pan-African sentiments, had taken on the cause of Haitians immigrants. Yet, as expressed by one man on the street, the real stake for other segments of the African American community was that “as we divide the pie between more people, our [African American] slice of the pie keeps getting smaller.”³⁶

Linked Fates: We Suffer Together?

The findings discussed so far demonstrate discourses emanating from African American and Cuban exile communities that set at odds the various Miami populations. We could see in the newspapers that the predominant arguments utilized for reclaiming or situating one’s own community or race in a more favorable position in the U.S. hierarchy centered on declaring one’s own group as having suffered and thus being deserving of U.S. inclusion. However, these were not the only sentiments in the newspapers, and certain articles in both papers show more awareness of the overlaps among communities. Such coverage captures a more complex view of the politics of race in Miami by illuminating links between the fates of various Miami communities.

El Nuevo Herald acknowledged similarities in the plight of the Balseros and of other racialized groups as it recognized that the “special pact” between the U.S. government and the Cuban community was eroding. For example, a news article picks up on the idea that Cubans previously deemed “model immigrants” were also being caught up in an overall anti-immigrant backlash in the country. It reads, “From Los Angeles to El Paso, and Miami, with a fervor, according to some analysts, not seen since the 1920s, Americans are faulting excessive immigration for the erosion of the quality of life in the United States.” As the writer goes on to explain, “Suddenly, the official U.S. opinion viewed Cubans as no different from mere poor and hungry foreigners, including the Mexicans who dream of reaching California and the Haitians huddled in tents at Guantánamo.”³⁷ The sympathetic framing of the Balseros in this article serves as a strategy to preserve and bolster the former “Golden” identity in the face of a policy that equated Cubans with Mexicans and Haitians. However, the language also introduces the idea that, now lumped with other economic refugees, Cubans could no longer count on their image as the brave souls who fled communism for democracy to ensure their position atop the hierarchy of Latinos and other immigrants in the United States. Such observations illuminate that U.S. immigration policy had instituted the hierarchy in the first place and that all immigrant groups were, in reality, subject to the whims of the government.

In contrast to the Miami Times, only a few stories in El Nuevo Herald directly compared the plight of Cubans with that of Haitian migrants, and the limited discussion of Haitians in Balsero-related stories underscored the fact that various members of the Cuban American community simply did not connect the experiences of the two groups. This article, however, takes the stance that the public should have the same concern for both Haitian and Cuban detainees in Guantánamo:

On Wednesday, in a labor of love accomplished mostly by Hialeah Cubans and NE Miami African Americans, and that lasted the whole day, 40,000 pounds of clothing, shoes, and toys stored in a cement warehouse were catalogued and packed. “This is not only for Cubans but for Haitians,” said Cuban exile Oscar Torres, owner of the warehouse. “We are all human beings.”³⁸

The report of the efforts of Cuban American and African American communities to work together is noteworthy, given that, for the most part, the local Miami newspapers depicted African Americans as being concerned about the needs of Haitians and not Cubans, and Cuban Americans were depicted as being concerned with Cuban migrants but not Haitians. In this exemplary case, the group that packed forty thousand pounds of donations was organized by a Cuban exile who believed that “we are all humans,” implying that ethnicity should not matter when distributing aid and when recognizing suffering. This example of cooperation is rare, but it reveals the shared interests that could unite the two communities.

Another article in El Nuevo Herald captures the shared interests of Cuban and Haitian refugees in its reporting on the news in mid-November that Cuban children held at Guantánamo were being allowed into the United States in response to humanitarian concerns. A person quoted makes the point that all the refugees should be treated equally: “All children everywhere are the same.… I would like them to release all the children on the base, not just Cubans.” In the same article, however, activists for the Haitian cause claim that Haitians were not being allowed to leave because they were being punished for racial as well as political reasons. A lawyer at a Miami refugee center explains: “We think it’s wonderful that Cubans are being allowed to come here,” he says. “Our only complaint is with the Clinton Administration, which believes that the Statue of Liberty’s whiteness does not apply to black Haitians.”³⁹ The lawyer takes the position voiced by many members of the African American community, that color was a major determinant of the (preferential) treatment of Cuban immigrants that allowed their suffering to be ranked higher than the suffering of other groups. The few Herald articles that discuss the plight of both Cubans and Haitians show that, overall, the concerns of Cubans, Haitians, and African Americans are viewed as being unaffiliated with one another, if not in opposition. Still, by including stories such as this that do not only affirm the predominant stance (which elevated Cuban concerns and ignored Haitian ones), El Nuevo Herald provided some space for debate on the issues faced by Cubans, Haitians, and African Americans.

A focus on Afro-Cubans could potentially further complicate the framing of these three groups’ concerns as being in opposition. But Afro-Cubans are the focus in only three Herald stories about the Balsero crisis. Although the percentage of blacks among the Balseros was smaller than among the Marielitos, it was more than double the amount that arrived with the pre-1980 exiles.⁴⁰ Still, no articles in this sample focus on the racial background of the Balseros as a group or make any racial distinction between this group and earlier waves.⁴¹ It is notable, however, that an Afro-Cuban voice was prominently heard in this period of coverage in the voice of Dora Amador, an award-winning journalist for El Nuevo Herald who self-identifies as a black Cuban.

Amador provides her perspective on the Haitian/Cuban immigration in an op-ed that begins by addressing the response to one of two articles she wrote on black Cuban experiences with white Cuban discrimination in the United States. But as the opinion piece develops, Amador shifts to the issue of Cuban and Haitian immigration and, in her evaluations, mirrors the predominant perspective of the newspaper. It is apparent that, despite her concerns about the stigmatization of blackness in the Cuban American community, she does not promote a Pan-African connection between Haitians and Cubans. She compares the case of the Balseros to that of the Haitians and argues that Haitians have a better deal than Cubans and that African Americans have not shown any concern. In her view, “Today, we are the beggars and pariahs that a whole continent rejects, those herded in detention camps in whose defense not one voice is raised, not by Anglos, Afro-Americans, or other Latin Americans.” She ends by saying, “Today I am envious of the Haitians. At least in their country, the marines have landed.”⁴² Amador paints the Cuban community as being alone in their struggle because other Americans—Anglos and African Americans—are silent. Alleging government discrimination against Cubans, her words are in sharp contrast to rhetoric that praised the United States for its welcoming stance toward Cuba and the Cubans. Her words corroborate the opinions expressed by some members of the Cuban American community, in opposition to African American arguments in the Miami Times, which insisted that Haitians were the ones being discriminated against, not the Cubans. In Amador’s opinion, Cubans have been situated by “native” Americans within Miami’s racial order as forever foreign.⁴³ As public opinion polls and articles in the Miami Times reveal, her contention that Anglos and African Americans were not supportive of the Balseros and the Cuban community as a whole had some credibility.

Amador is concerned with the political conflicts between the United States and Cuba on the one hand and the United States and Haiti on the other, and she reaffirms the role of the United States as the arbiter of freedom and democracy, without acknowledging how her concerns may reflect her (black) Cuban American subjectivity. While Amador makes no connection between black Cubans, African Americans, and Haitians, as the Miami Times often did, her black Cuban subjectivity does come into play; in another section of this op-ed (and in other stories that she writes), she makes an important contribution through addressing racism against black Cubans by white Cubans. But Amador does not have be overt in addressing black concerns to make a contribution; that a black Cuban writer such as Amador is given a prominent voice in the newspaper serves to remind the public of the multiracial nature of the Cuban community.

The Miami Times coverage also showed more acknowledgment of the overlaps between the Cuban and African American communities during the time of the Balsero crisis. The new multiculturalism in the United States presented complex new challenges for the directions African Americans would take to resolve lingering inequality and forced a recognition that like native-born African Americans, immigrants also suffered from racialization in the United States. In the Times coverage, voices of leaders and some members of the public worked to complicate the mainstream African American view that placed African Americans and immigrants, especially Cubans, in opposition.

Two op-eds speak to the new diversity and endorse an African American response more affirmative of the strategy of coalition. “Immigrant as Scapegoats” by Mohamed Hamaludin argues against placing blame on immigrants for the U.S. economic and social problems: “There should be a natural alliance between immigrants and African Americans and other non-whites in America because of the similarities of their history of exploitation. Those who seek to set them against each other should be thoroughly rebuffed.” Further, he argues, “The anti-immigrant lobby carefully disguises its real intent, which is to be a part of the current effort to make American [sic] decidedly Anglo-Saxon at a time when there is a growing clamor for the country to move away from just such a bigoted position and acknowledge diversity in all aspects of American life and culture.”⁴⁴ The author’s critique is similar to that argued in this book—that at the heart of interethnic conflict between African Americans, other minority groups, and immigrants there are the workings of racial power to keep the United States white. But the assumption of a “natural” alliance between African Americans and immigrants because they are denied access to whiteness would also assume that this denial is equally allocated.

In his regular column “Across the Color Line,” African American political scholar Manning Marable similarly argues for alliances between blacks and Latinos. He talks about how the population of Latinos is now surpassing that of blacks in some cities but does not view this phenomenon as negative, merely as a matter of fact. He ends the article with a statement recalling DuBoisian themes: “The problem of the 21st Century is the problem of ‘the new color line’—whether blacks, Latinos and other people of color can overcome their differences to construct a new democratic, multicultural majority for America.”⁴⁵ Writing in 1994, when the major demographic shifts that have now occurred across the country had become profoundly evident, Marable spoke to the inevitability that African Americans would need to go beyond a binary analysis of racial problems. Viewpoints expressed by people like Marable, Jesse Jackson, and Hamaludin allowed the Miami Times to present alternative evaluations of the Balsero crisis and of the significance of increased immigration on the African American community, offering a challenge to the predominant negative view of the impact of immigrants in the United States. Their statements also acknowledged the suffering of various groups as equally legitimate.

The Miami Times articles involving Afro-Cubans offer another view into the complexity of the issue of immigrant–African American relations and, more specifically, the interethnic relations between Cubans and African Americans. In the articles collected for this period, six of them cover Afro-Cubans in the form of a news story, an op-ed, and a column written by Rosa Reed, an Afro-Cuban woman. A July 14 news story, “Afro-Cuban Dissident Takes Refuge in Miami,” demonstrates the African American press’s interest in the concerns of Afro-Cubans but also reports on Cuban American awareness that their community was being criticized for receiving preferential treatment over Haitians. The article reports on the arrival in Miami of Angele Herrera, who left Cuba because of the threat of imprisonment. She was president of the Cuban Democratic Coalition (identified in the article as the largest human rights organization in Cuba) and founder of the Afro-Cuban rights group Maceo Movement for Dignity. In the article, Cuban American leader Jorge Mas Canosa, director of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), explains that the arrival of Herrera was significant for the Cuban democratic movement: “[It is] symbolic because it shows that Black and White Cubans fight for a common cause.… It destroys a common notion that the Cuban community holds something against Black people.” The article also states that the CANF recently paid $20,000 to $30,000 to reunite Haitian children in Haiti with their families in the United States.⁴⁶ Mas Canosa, the notoriously conservative Cuban American leader, includes both black Cubans and Haitians in the category “Black people” by referring to the usefulness of Herrera’s arrival and CANF’s efforts for the Haitian community to undercut criticism that white Cubans, and more specifically white Cuban American organizations, are racist. Although Mas Canosa’s actions and statements may be viewed as opportunistic and insincere by some, particularly by members of the African American community, the article displays how attention to Afro-Cubans brings a complexity to the racial conflicts in Miami, between blacks and white Anglos, black and white Cubans, Haitians and Cubans, African Americans and Cubans, and so on, and points to areas of overlap, such as mutual concerns about immigration and possibilities for coalitions. The presence of Afro-Cubans forces Cuban Americans to see race and pushes African Americans to acknowledge that Cubans are more than “white.”

In an op-ed, “Race at Heart of Cuba Crisis,” Ricardo E. Gonzalez tackles the subject of race and racism among Cubans referred to by Mas Canosa by informing the African American community that the issue of race and the stigma attached to blackness is not only an African American concern (or a Haitian concern for that matter) but also “is at the heart of Cuba’s crisis.” The op-ed focuses on the “conspicuous” absence of blacks among the Cuban immigrants. Although studies have characterized the two most recent immigration waves from Cuba as containing a higher percentage of blacks than the pre-1980 waves, Gonzalez notes the high percentage of blacks in Cuba (65–70 percent, according to his estimates) and claims that 90 percent of exile Cubans are white. Gonzalez’s op-ed is concerned more with race in Cuba; he argues that Castro needs to address the issue of race more, and he cites the infamous Malecón riots, of which he says that the majority of the participants were blacks and mulattos, as evidence of black Cuban discontent on the island.⁴⁷ Although Castro took action to solve racial inequalities in Cuba, Gonzalez says that blacks in Cuba remain disempowered by white communist elites. The author’s focus is not on the experiences of black Cubans in the United States, but he argues that the “powerful, conservative anti-Castro lobby in Miami, whose leaders are itching to switch places with Castro,” are taking the racial situation in Cuba into account; they pray for the end of Castro but are apprehensive about the large numbers of blacks there. He continues, “And so the much-tabooed ‘racial question,’ sometimes timidly addressed but more often ignored, once again feared, is heard on both sides of the Florida Straits through the resurgence of the old paranoid phobia known throughout Cuban history as the ‘Peligro Negro’ (the Black Peril)!”⁴⁸ The racism he identifies as existing in Cuba also translates onto U.S. shores, where the differential treatment of black and white Cubans speaks to the tenacity of white racism against blacks regardless of national origin in the United States. By connecting Cuba’s and the United States’ racism, Gonzalez’s article, written for the African American Miami Times, unites the Afro-Cuban cause to that of African Americans.

The newspaper also connected its African American audience to the plight of Afro-Cuban Balseros in two photo essays that include pictures exclusively of black Cubans setting out on their voyage to the United States. One essay, “Thousands Flee from Castro’s Failed Revolution,” shows a large picture of black Cuban men in the water, saying good-bye to a woman as they set off on their raft.⁴⁹ The photo essay is very short, only describing the picture and announcing that the United States and Cuba will begin talks to resolve the disputes over immigration policy. But the next day the paper ran another photo essay, “Rafter Stocking up for Sea Trip,” which contains a photo showing black Cubans buying bread to bring with them on their trip and notes that Cubans who leave Cuba are now being brought to Guantánamo naval base as a result of changes in immigration policy.⁵⁰ In contrast to the supposed whiteness of the Cuban Balseros, the photos allow the reader to see that some of the refugees are black, providing an alternative interpretation of the events revolving around U.S. policy toward Cuba—that this policy affects black peoples. Yet given the overwhelmingly predominant depiction of Cubans as whites in the newspaper, and with little discussion in the newspaper about the significance of the fact that some Cubans are black, the pictures may not have had much impact in revising negative reactions to the crisis.

Still, the newspaper did open a major channel for readers to connect to Afro-Cubans and, perhaps, white Cuban Americans, by running a regular op-ed column by Rosa Reed, whose ethnicity was displayed prominently in her byline “an Afro-Cuban businesswoman in Miami.”⁵¹ Five op-eds by Reed were published during the period investigated. Perhaps to offset the fact the Miami Times did little reporting on Cuban Americans, her articles discussed U.S. immigration policy and Cuba, along with other Cuban American concerns. In “Support the President on His Tough Stand against Castro,” Reed takes a stance contrary to a large proportion of Cuban Americans, most of whom were against Clinton’s policies. She argues, “We Cubans should stop criticizing Clinton.… We must also make sure that all Cuban refugees are processed fairly, whether Black or White, rich and influential Miami relatives or not.”⁵² Reed supports the stronger sanctions against Cuba proposed by Clinton, although she is opposed to Clinton’s decision to send Cubans to Guantánamo. The article does not explore at length the differential treatment of black and white Cubans, but her plea that all refugees be processed fairly implies she believes that race and class have been factors. Like the Afro-Cuban writers for El Nuevo Herald, Reed’s voice demonstrates that Cuban Americans did not all agree, even on issues that were viewed as what unified the Cuban American community. Her contribution then had the potential to provide a wider view of Cuban Americans among members of the African American community.

In another article, Reed directly addresses black American leaders, requesting that they also involve themselves in issues affecting black Cubans because, just as Haitian issues were considered African American issues, African Americans should also care about the concerns of Afro-Cubans. In “Black Cubans Need Friends, Not Defenders of Castro’s Regime,” in which she criticizes Jesse Jackson’s argument that the United States should suspend its trade embargo with Cuba, she also draws attention to the fact that Afro-Cubans have specific concerns and claims and that they are puzzled by Jackson’s stance when he does not try to represent those who “have no representation in exile and are politically invisible.”⁵³ By looking to African American leaders to take on the Afro-Cuban cause, she affirms a connection between the two communities and states that this connection should exist on the basis of their shared racial background. Although she shares an anti-Castro stance with other Cuban Americans, her comments also highlight the fact that race makes her and other Afro-Cubans invisible, even though it distinguishes them from the majority of the exile community.⁵⁴

In “Cuban Power in Miami,” Reed brings further attention to how race comes between black and white Cubans and puts forth a firm criticism of the powerful white Cubans in Miami in a discussion of a local political race that polarized the Cuban and African American communities. County commissioner Arthur Teele, a black Republican, was pushing for his candidate, Cynthia Curry, for the position of county manager, but “the so called ‘Latin bloc’ flexed its muscle” and the Latino candidate, Armando Vidal, won.⁵⁵ The article goes on to detail rumors about a physical confrontation between Teele and another politician and the move by some Latino commissioners to oust Teele. Reed is highly critical of the Latino power base and asks, “Have the Hispanics decided that Teele’s power trip is now over, he has served his purpose and it’s time for him to move to the back of the bus?” With the “back of the bus” reference she calls forward a collective black memory of Miami’s Jim Crow history and equates powerful Latinos with white Anglos. She also alludes to her own siding with African Americans. White Cubans are trying to take over, she says; “We have a white Cuban public schools superintendent, we have a white Cuban county manager. What’s next? … Are the white Cubans salivating at the prospect of absolute power?”⁵⁶ The specific political context Reed describes offers a fascinating look at a concrete contest over power between African Americans and Cubans. It is also interesting how she, a black woman and a Latina, positions herself so firmly with African Americans. Reed’s critiques indict Cuban Americans for deploying the notion of white supremacy to elevate themselves or to exclude “others,” particularly African Americans, Afro-Cubans, and other blacks, whom they see as threats to their own livelihoods.

Reed’s articles demonstrate that she thinks of her blackness in a diasporic sense and aligns herself closely with African Americans, though she is still concerned about issues affecting the Cuban American community. In another of her articles, she labels herself and other groups of African descent living in the United States as African Americans. She says, “African Americans regardless of their roots (Cuban, Jamaican, Panamanian, Nicaraguan, Haitian, Nigerian, etc.) are not asking for handouts, welfare or more social programs. We are asking for solid jobs, quality and affordable healthcare … housing, less tax increases and less bureaucracy.” She says that “we” must vote for politicians who will work with “us” to have the opportunity to share the American Dream.⁵⁷ She affirms the overall stance of the Miami Times that race can be a unifying factor for people from various countries of African descent but does not make the leap to necessarily include powerful white Cubans in the “us.” The fact that she was given a column in the newspaper demonstrates a move by the newspaper to connect to the Cuban American community but affirms that this connection is made only on a basis that reaffirms the binary between black and white. The situation in Miami, in which Cubans and African Americans held so much tension against each other, may have constrained any efforts to go beyond this reasoning. Still, the voices of Afro-Cubans and acknowledgment of their presence by the paper was a start toward connecting the two communities, affirming their mutual suffering, and linking their fates together.

Conclusion

El Nuevo Herald and the Miami Times clarified the new political, economic, and racial stakes of Cuban Americans and African Americans in light of the 1994 Balsero crisis. As we read the discourses in El Nuevo Herald, we find an embedded critique of the national project of exclusion even in a climate of enhanced worldwide attention to the importance of universal human rights. The larger national frame of anti-immigrant backlash, which showed itself in restrictive immigration policies, provided a context where immigrant groups knew they were under more intense scrutiny, and “native” groups were provided with the discourses they could accept or reject about the threat immigrant groups posed for them. After thirty-five years of maintaining an open-door policy, the Clinton administration responded to the Balsero crisis by instituting its “Wet Foot, Dry Foot” legislation, a move that allowed Cubans to acknowledge the conditional nature of whiteness and the reality that the motivation for U.S. policy decisions is to protect U.S. interests rather that fulfill moral duties. In the Herald’s use of the worthy suffering immigrant trope, we see the strategic nature of such framing; rather than merely being an effort of members of the Cuban American community to decide who is worthy and who is not, the use of racializing frames is a testament to the fact that it is actually the dominant group that imposes these restrictions and requires the suffering of marginalized groups. In the Miami Times, we gain perspective on views among African Americans. With the economic, social, and political standing of the Miami black community hardly improved fourteen years after Mariel, the Balsero crisis to them was merely another Mariel. Another mass immigration from Cuba was viewed as a disruption for the African American community, which continued to suffer and struggled to make gains. Overall, both newspapers affirmed the idea that in the United States suffering is required of racialized groups and thus these groups must compete with one another to benefit from their suffering being recognized and rewarded above other groups. Although I critique this zero-sum reasoning, ultimately the strategies used in El Nuevo Herald and in the Miami Times contain an important protest because they indict the United States for its own moral failures to fulfill promises it has made that it would respond to and care about human suffering.

The newspapers also provide some encouragement that an oppositional stance is not the only one taken by members of the Cuban and African American communities. As both newspapers illustrate, some links were made between African Americans and Cuban Americans, which open up spaces of possibility that could help toward resolutions of interethnic conflict. In El Nuevo Herald, few articles in the coverage specifically made connections between Cubans and African Americans. But the articles that did exist connected the plight of Haitian and Cuban refugees and discussed Cuban Americans in relation to other Latinos in the United States, demonstrating a realization among some Cuban Americans that their fate was linked to those of other minority and immigrant groups. Furthermore, Afro-Cuban voices in the paper further challenged white Cuban Americans by emphasizing a need to acknowledge race. The Miami Times also demonstrated the fact that not all African Americans were against the Cubans, and, through the voices of prominent leaders and thinkers, some articles in the paper challenged African Americans to support interethnic alliances. The paper incorporated Afro-Cubans more than it did during Mariel (owing largely to the articles written by Reed). The move to include Afro-Cubans under the African American umbrella affirmed the Pan-African philosophies of the newspaper but also served in a small way to connect African Americans to the Cuban American community and to Latinos in general, a connection that would be all the more crucial as the numbers of Latinos across the country rapidly began to surpass those of the African American population.

The next chapter focuses more specifically on Afro-Cubans, who were marginally included in Cuban American and African American newspapers, to attempt a deeper engagement with their voices and to hear how they speak to the continued rigidity of race in the United States. Their experiences illuminate how white Cubans, African Americans, and other communities make claim to the nation by promoting the exclusion of other minority groups, particularly those who do not fit within any dominant racial paradigms. The chapter provides greater insight into how people placed “in between” present a challenge to dominant racial frames and offers insights useful for promoting the alleviation of interethnic conflict between various racialized groups.