Theme 1. “¡Que Vengan los Asilados!”: Marielitos as “Good Immigrant” Compatriots

Early news stories provoked sympathy for the newcomers by appealing to the notions of family and family unification and by bringing the readers’ attention to the tremendous hardships they faced in Cuba under Fidel Castro’s tyranny (for example, “Families of Cubans That Survived Torture Are Arriving”).⁷ A report in April on the crowds that had congregated at the Mariel military base before they could be brought to the United States reads, “At least 1,000 future Cuban-Americans are waiting at the Mariel military base to be transferred to the United States.”⁸ With the descriptor “future Cuban-Americans” the piece shows the expectation that these people, women, children, and the elderly among them, would indeed make their way to the United States and become incorporated, as previous waves had, into the (Cuban) American family. A powerful line of discourse also invokes U.S. patriotism and the rhetoric of the American Dream to highlight the right of the new exiles to come and join the greater American family. One of the first news reports on the Mariel exodus emphasizes the right of the newcomers to be in the United States and calls on the nation’s historical commitment to accept the world’s “poor, tired, and needy.” The article encourages support for the newcomers by quoting the plaque at the Statue of Liberty and Lyndon B. Johnson’s original promise to the Cubans. Johnson, as quoted in the article stated : “I declare this afternoon to the people of Cuba that those who seek refuge here in America will find it. The dedication of America to our traditions as an asylum for the oppressed is going to be upheld.” The article argued that “By signing a new immigration law in the United States and speaking these words at the feet of the Statue of Liberty, President Lyndon B. Johnson opened the doors of this country for hundreds of thousands of Cuban refugees.”⁹

The quote refers to the speech made by President Johnson (October 3, 1965) when he signed into law the Immigration and Nationality Act, which did away with the national origins quota system and officially declared Cuban asylum seekers as good immigrants, giving first priority to family reunification, then asylum for political prisoners.¹⁰ The article is optimistic about the newcomers’ ability to be incorporated in the United States and responds to the public outcry against the Mariel exodus, which also lamented the growth of the established Cuban community. Using the words of an American president and the Statue of Liberty, the article reminds the general public that all Cubans were indeed “good immigrants” who had as much right to be in the United States as Anglo immigrants of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whose claim to the United States is unquestioned. Hence, in the article, the “good immigrant” frame comes through as it supports the Golden Exiles’ efforts to maintain their own position in the white-dominated hierarchy.

But as time went on, it became increasingly clear that the transition for the Marielitos would not be easy. With their relentless depiction of the newcomers as deviants, the English-language Herald, reflecting the views of many Miami Anglos, began to turn some older Cuban exiles against the Mariel refugees. But it also fostered what Alejandro Portes and Alex Stepick call “reactive ethnicity”; in the face of outside disparagement of their group, Cubans began to view themselves as stigmatized minorities and mobilized together to preserve their self-image (Portes and Stepick 1994, 30). An op-ed by Cuban American Roberto Fabricio (who would later become an editor of the independent El Nuevo Herald) titled “¡Que Vengan los Asilados!”, or, “Let the Asylees Come!” celebrates the newcomers but acknowledges the reality that the Marielitos might not be fully accepted in U.S. society or by their fellow Cubans: “What I believe is that we cannot give ourselves the luxury of turning our backs on them. It would be cruel and treacherous. And this is a city built around hopes and dreams.”¹¹ In his statements, the editorialist makes a plea to his fellow Cuban exiles, who on the premise of the American Dream were actually able to build a successful enclave. This success, he contends, demonstrates that the American Dream can be realized, but it is the job of the previous exiles to extend access to the newcomers.

Because maintaining the idea of unity was so crucial to the exile identity and their strength in the Miami economic, cultural, and political economy, the rejection of newcomers by previous exiles was viewed as a problem. In an op-ed later in the year acknowledging a growing rejection, Fabricio underscores the need for Cuban Americans’ support. The op-ed reads, “Many Cuban families that generally would have been able to serve as foster parents have not responded because there has been so much said or written about whether or not these children could have been imprisoned, that they have stopped considering the reasons why these children were in Castro’s prisons.”¹² The op-ed decries the power of the media to scare off support for the Marielitos, which had become apparent by July.

The attitudes of some Cuban Americans who prided themselves on leaving Cuba when Fidel Castro came to power are chided in several articles that acknowledge a distinction being made between the old guard, or antiguos, and the recently arrived, or recién llegados. In this news report, a Cuban American interviewed for the story says,

Many prior refugees also feel that the new refugees are different from those who came from Cuba previously. Some believe that those who have recently arrived do not want to make the same sacrifices that they made for free passage to the United States.… The previous exiles take on an attitude of superiority because they abandoned the island much earlier than those who just arrived.¹³

This article goes on to present the idea that “we Cubans should stick together”—asserting that people from Cuba, regardless of when they arrive, should view one another as brothers and sisters. An op-ed written by a Cuban American journalist from Miami continues this theme of Cuban unity as he comments on the new division:

And one of the most deplorable aspects of this crisis is that, as a part of it, the Cuban colony has divided against itself. Because, effectively, for many of the “old refugees,” the ones who came through Mariel are plagued.…. The only realistic attitude is to help the decent people that have come through Mariel, who are the majority, and to help them integrate economically and socially into our community in order to strengthen it.¹⁴

These articles hold to the tradition of Cuban American support of any newcomers from Cuba. Yet they also recognize the growing split that was occurring between the antiguos and the recién llegados, a split that threatened to contribute to the disempowerment of the Cuban American community as a whole.

Crucial to Cubans’ identity in the United States is their being officially defined as good immigrants through favorable immigration policy because of their anti-communism. Congruent with the exiles’ acceptance of this designation, embracing the idea that they were “worthy citizens” meant that Cuban exiles needed to explain why the Mariel refugees had a more difficult incorporation into U.S. society than previous Cuban immigration waves. To not undermine their own claims to the nation, placing blame on Castro seemed the most acceptable way to explain why waves of refugees from the same country could be so different. Thus, the Castro regime was most often invoked to explain the difference between the established Cubans and the newcomers. For example, in the op-ed “The Youth of Mariel,” the author, an ex-political prisoner turned journalist, defends the Marielitos by discussing the psychological effects of living in Cuba under Castro: “In a society whose values are officially imposed by the State and violently rejected by the nation, social and individual stability cannot exist. Men who have aged chronologically continue to be social infants.”¹⁵ The op-ed is intended to defend the new arrivals, but the author’s words could just as readily be used as evidence against the Marielitos. While his words offer an indictment of the state of the Cuban government in contrast to the United States, he infantilizes the Mariels, describing them as in a state of underdevelopment. The author goes on to assert that the new Cubans suffer from a personality disorder and that in today’s Cuba the youth do not want to work or study and do not have discipline. On the one hand, the problems with the Marielitos are attributed to Castro and his regime, but on the other hand, the author implies that these deficiencies have become ingrained in the Marielitos themselves and does not offer reasons why the reader should believe that in the United States they would overcome this upbringing. The focus on Castro erases other complicating factors, such as the role of race, discrimination, and the U.S. contradictory stance toward immigrant groups based on imperialist goals. The anti-Castro stance also served to preserve faith in the bootstrap ideals about upward mobility in the United States that “worthy” Cuban exiles were able to achieve.

Interviewees who arrived during Mariel commented that this view of Marielitos as somehow degraded by the Castro regime also shaped how they were treated by established exiles. In my interview with Antonio, he affirmed the idea that the Cuban government creates a situation where people do not have the ability for self-determination and must do what they are told. But he also criticized his fellow Cuban American compatriots who made him feel unwelcome when he arrived. In answer to the question of whether he felt accepted by various groups in the United States, he responded, “the only people to discriminate against me have been Cubans, my fellow countrymen, who came before us in the sixties and seventies. Those people truly discriminated against me. I have always said it and am not afraid to say it.” Asked for an example of such discrimination, he talked about how “Marielito” was used as a pejorative term. He noted that other Cuban Americans treated him as if he was not the right kind of Cuban, and he asserted that because he can trace generations of family members to his hometown of Matanzas, “I am as Cuban as him [who criticizes me] or might be more Cuban than him.”¹⁶ Antonio points out the irony that many of the Cuban Americans he met may have no direct familial ties to Cuba or memories of specific places, but nevertheless they position themselves as arbiters of the good immigrant narrative and as having the authority to determine who qualifies as a “real Cuban.”

By arguing that the newcomers had been corrupted by Castro, defenders of the Marielitos implied that the newcomers were in a sense “real Cubans.” Hence, arguments in the newspaper suggested that the Marielitos suffered from guilt by association and were wrongly accused of being deviants. That the Cubans who had endured his regime for twenty years could be so corrupted from their “true” form, that is, law-abiding and respectable, was viewed as testament of the failures of the Castro government. As such, defenses in the paper did not question the deviant label per se but rather emphasized and demonstrated how the newcomers actually did fit the ideal of the worthy citizen who would contribute to U.S. society. Letters to the editor written in their defense had titles such as “The New Exile Has Initiative,” by an ex-political prisoner;¹⁷ “Condemn Attacks on Those Who Have Recently Arrived,” by a recent arrival;¹⁸ and “The Refugees Are Not Scum,” by a writer with a Spanish surname who was affiliated with the Christian Community Service Agency in Miami.¹⁹ A news article (part of a series of news reports on the adaptation of Marielitos) titled “ ‘Scum’ Is a Defamation of the New Exile” attempts to repudiate negative labels attributed to the Marielitos by citing a Brookings Institute study by Robert Bach, which found that only 1 percent of the new arrivals had criminal histories.²⁰ A related news story reporting on the same Brookings study attempts to paint the new arrivals in a positive light by emphasizing the contributions they could make to Miami as a workforce.²¹ The study disputes the claim that Marielitos are lazy and do not work and likens them to the already-established Cuban community, which had been portrayed as having a good work ethic. Mounting a defense against the stereotypes levied against the Marielitos, such articles utilize the idea of worthiness to put forth the idea that “they (we) belong here.” The articles include the newcomers in the Cuban American family and demonstrate that in the face of rising anti-immigrant and anti-Cuban sentiment reflecting dominant societal views, the exile community would fight for their (own) honor. Because of the moral elements of dominant notions of worthy citizenship, doing so required exiles to “prove” they were worthy through strategies of disassociation from the racialized “Other.”²²

Theme 2. “¡Esos No Son Compatriotas Nuestros!”: Contending with Criminality

The explicit linking of race to worthiness becomes apparent when looking at the criminality theme in El Miami Herald. In stories regarding Mariel criminality, the black/white frame that positions blacks and blackness outside the “worthy citizen” ideal was invoked to explain and dissociate from Mariel difference. Blackness was a primary trope used in news articles to construct the group from Mariel as undesirable and criminal, playing into already-existing Cuban stereotypes about blacks (from Cuba) and U.S. stereotypes about African Americans. The newspaper articles, as well as narratives recounted here drawn from interviews with black Cubans living in the United States, also point out that despite the idealization of Cuban unity so important in constructing the notions of the “good immigrant” as “worthy citizen,” this idea of membership in the Cuban family was not extended to black Cubans.

The practices of dissociation from “the black Other” seen here fits in with the growing racial explanation of social and economic problems in Florida and in the nation. At the time of Mariel, media discourses about blackness and black bodies were used by conservatives to achieve particular political objectives: blackness became an important tool of the new right to define worthy citizenship and “Americanness” (Gray 1995). Concern over “the black (African American) problem” was a hot media topic in the nation as a whole. By the late 1970s, economic recession, deindustrialization, rising unemployment, and the growing disparity between the top 20 percent and bottom 20 percent of the population had adversely affected African Americans (Gray 1995). At the same time, by 1980 the African American middle class had grown significantly. Neoconservative groups pointed to the black middle class as proof that capitalism and bourgeois individualism worked and that poor African Americans were therefore to blame for their own problems. Threatened by the gains of the civil rights era, affirmative action, and programs designed to fight poverty, neoconservative groups sought to protect the privileges associated with whiteness by exposing the social problems affecting the United States and defining them in racial terms (Steinberg 1995). The black underclass was discussed as the “unworthy poor” who suffered because they had the “wrong” moral and family values and took advantage of the welfare system (Gray 1995; Katz 2013). The media incited fears about black welfare cheats, the pathological black family, and drugs and violence in the black community, all with a specific focus on black males, who were constructed as a socially irresponsible menace (Gray 1995). These U.S.-based discourses heightened any anti-black notions Cuban exiles brought from the home country and were drawn upon by some exiles to dissociate from their “criminal” compatriots.

El Miami Herald captured and reflected the mainstream focus on Mariel criminality as the criminality theme became predominant in the newspaper. This coverage was primarily in the form of news stories, in the sections reflecting the voice of the English-language Miami Herald. Not all the stories focusing on criminality were fervent portraits of the Marielitos as deviants. Several criticized the U.S. government for being slow to help the Cubans resettle in the United States. In addition, stories reporting on criminal acts were often meant to invoke sympathy for the refugees or give voice to advocates: for instance, allowing the Hispanic American League against Discrimination to make the point that the public should realize criminals were but a small percentage of the refugees.²³ Still, the language of the headlines of even these stories served to alert the community to the criminality and other forms of deviance among the Marielitos. There was a dramatic increase in the percentage of stories covering Mariel criminality between the beginning of the exodus in April and June, from 6 percent in April and 12 percent in May to a peak of 41 percent in June. From July to September, the criminality theme remained a popular topic: between 29 and 39 percent of stories focus on it. In the coverage, titles abounded singling out refugees and associating them with crime, such as “Dade Jail Is Packed with Refugees” and “Refugees Kill a Man in a Bar.”²⁴ Such titles and reports helped frame the arrival of the Mariel Cubans as a crisis and the group as violent criminals. In June, there was a spike in coverage, then a downward trend; however, the reporting on criminality never again dipped to the lows reflected in the beginning months of the exodus. In September, there was another spike in criminality coverage (though not as dramatic as the rise in June) (see Figure 2). This rise is due to coverage of incidences of plane hijackings by Marielitos attempting to return to Cuba.

The sudden increase in articles addressing criminality in June is a result of reports on the June 1 Fort Chaffee rebellion. Fort Chaffee in Arkansas was the largest of the settlement camps and held Marielitos who were the hardest to process, many of them black (G. A. Fernández 2002; Hoeffel 1980, 47). Although the then governor Bill Clinton at first welcomed the Marielitos, Arkansas locals became increasingly hostile to their arrival. In mid-May 1980, Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke led a KKK protest against them. Fort Chaffee had an atmosphere of a “little Cuba” when the Marielitos first settled in. But the camp routine grew monotonous, and efforts to resettle the people there dragged on with no results. Marielitos inside the camp and their supporters outside the camp demonstrated their frustrations with sit-ins and hunger strikes, culminating in the Fort Chaffee riot (G. A. Fernández 2002).

On June 1, 1980, two thousand Fort Chaffee Cubans armed with clubs rioted, and four buildings were burned. More than two hundred Marielitos escaped. The Mariel protestors were met with armed resistance from police outside the camp. Citizens of the city became vigilantes: approximately three to four hundred people armed themselves and gathered near the city limits. According to early reports, fifteen troopers and four refugees were injured, and, as later reports revealed, five Cubans were shot. Clinton responded by declaring a state of emergency and increasing security. Ninety “leaders” of the crisis were detained in an effort to quell the fears of the public. Changes were made in camp leadership, and more concentrated efforts were undertaken to speed the processing of the remaining Marielitos (G. A. Fernández 2002). Although governmental inefficiency created the conditions that spurred the discontent of Fort Chaffee’s inhabitants, it was the image of the Marielitos that was most damaged. Because of the notoriety of the Fort Chaffee camp, Marielitos came to be defined by the goings-on there, even though less than 2 percent of the eighteen thousand people held there were involved in the protests (García 1996).

Following the Fort Chaffee uprising, by July the idea that Marielitos were criminals was firmly established. In a news report reflecting a non-Cuban point of view, the Miami police attribute the rise in rape and transport of arms in the city to the Marielitos.²⁵ In fact, the article reports that police had begun the practice of distinguishing the arrests of refugees with an “R” to keep track of how many crimes were committed by refugees. The Marielitos are also described as dangerous, young, single males who may rape women. According to the article, these men do not comport themselves in the “proper” fashion: “The refugees, generally young and single, represent a cultural impact for the previous residents as well. The men walk around shirtless. They like to talk on the street corners while drinking beer.… They speak only Spanish, and they have their radios turned all the way up.” The article does attempt to include an unbiased explanation of the Mariel behaviors, attributing them to Cuba’s customs, where drinking in public is acceptable, and to the fact that the prohibitive signs in the neighborhood were all written in English. It also includes the testimony of a recent arrival who does not fit the stereotype and who says, “All of my family members work. We don’t wander around the streets like vagabonds.”²⁶ The story also acknowledges that the rise in crime in Miami Beach had begun even before the Marielitos arrived. Yet these disclaimers do little to diminish the impact of the title, “Rise in Crime in Miami Beach Is Attributed to the Refugees,” or that of most of the rest of the story.

By September, the rupture between the established Cuban community and the newcomers was more clearly distinguished, as exiles reacted or responded to such negative depictions of the Marielitos.²⁷ A September 1 letter to the editor, “Castro Benefits from the Mariel Exodus,” calls for the established Cubans to completely disassociate from the Marielitos because of their criminality. The self-identified Cuban author maintains that the Marielitos were sent to the United States by Cuba for the purpose of infiltrating the United States with communists. Furthermore, he says, “And there are the acts that embarrass the Cubans so much: burned encampments and violence provoked by those elements, miserable and despicable rape of children. These delinquents who have come to damage the constructive image of the Cuban, esos no son compatriotas nuestros (these are not our compatriots).”²⁸ The letter draws attention away from the fact that the Mariel exodus also included many more people who, just like the previous waves of Cubans, came to the United States with the intention not of committing crimes or of spreading communism but of working to achieve the American Dream.

The split between the old and new Cubans is similarly illustrated in a story discussing how Little Havana had changed for the worse with the arrival of the Marielitos. The story describes how the Antonio Maceo Park in Little Havana, which used to be where older Cuban Americans went to play dominos, was now a place where criminals congregated and drugs abounded. The story cites a 51.3 percent increase in police calls for service in Little Havana in August. It makes the point that the evidence is circumstantial, because the statistics document only the increase in calls for service without any indication of exactly who had committed the crimes. Yet simply by discussing the increase in calls for service, and indicating the areas from which the calls originated, the article makes a case for attributing the rise in crime to the Marielitos despite the lack of clear evidence. Because this rise in crime took place in the well-known Cuban community of Little Havana, a contrast is made between the established “law-abiding” Cubans and “law-breaking” Marielitos.²⁹

On the whole, the stories on the criminality of the Marielitos do not directly implicate blackness (in a biological sense). Only one story, about the response of Arkansas residents to the Cubans who had been brought there, is explicit in describing a Mariel as both black and criminal:

The residents of Jenny Lind [Arkansas] insist that the fugitive crowd “wields knives and clubs” and were hitting cars and shouting hysterically. “It seemed like a pack of wild animals,” said … (a resident) on Wednesday.… [A] truck driver … threw back his cowboy hat and told a visitor that, during the escape on Monday, a black Cuban ran up to his truck and grabbed the driver’s side window.³⁰

Here, a Cuban is gratuitously described as “black” by one of the Anglo residents, who seems to use the word to intensify the negative image of the man. Although the bulk of the article actually highlights the hysteria among the Jenny Lind residents, the imagery invoked in this passage is of savage fugitives, at least one of whom was black, wildly attacking the (white) innocent residents of Arkansas. Words historically associated with blacks, particularly black males (wild, animal), and qualifying the descriptor “Cuban” with “black,” make blackness central in the idea of threat. Given the historical association in the United States of “threat” with “black male,” this depiction resonates with the characterization of Marielitos as a whole as black.

Although the Marielitos were not often described explicitly as black, El Miami Herald characterized them with many surrogates for blackness. For instance, the use of the word “ghetto” functioned in this way, making a concrete association between the Marielitos and African Americans. An editorial, “No Plan Exists for Integrating the New Cuban Exiles,” discusses the profound impact of the refugee crisis, given the other various problems plaguing Miami at the time. The new arrivals are described as young people who grew up in a repressive regime and repeats the refrain that they had learned to work as little as possible and to rely on the underground market. The language and imagery of lazy youths waiting for a handout or too willing to turn to crime, juxtaposed with the editorial’s discussion of the recent and notorious African American riot in response to the police killing of an unarmed black man, Arthur McDuffie, compounds the implied idea of black threat.³¹ Furthermore, the word “ghetto” is employed in the editorial to contrast the Mariel immigrants with the Golden Exile entrepreneurs as polar opposites:

This isn’t the working class that moved in 15 years ago and converted a declining community into a bustling commercial district. These men are the building blocks from which a true Cuban ghetto can emerge, with all of the problems that that word implies.

The editorial claims we know the problems that the word “ghetto” suggests without actually filling in that blank for us—but the association with poor African Americans is what is implied.³² The articles using the word “ghetto” also make a strong statement about the peculiarity of Cubans being characterized as deviant and living in conditions similar to those of African American ghettos, preserving the good image of the Cuban American community.

The emphasis on the word “ghetto” in the news story “Tent City: Cuban ‘Ghetto’ in Miami” provides an example, with the implication that the word is most appropriately associated with African Americans or blacks. The story, about the deplorable living conditions in the tent cities housing the refugees, asserts that the camps are the first Cuban ghetto: “The camp is an open wound; in less than four weeks it has been transformed into the first Cuban ghetto in Miami. If the conditions do not improve, they could provoke the first Cuban riot in Miami.” The fact that so many of the Marielitos were black, especially those whose transition in the United States was more difficult, also appears to be a factor in the use of “ghetto” because of the association of the word with African Americans. We see the direct linking of the Marielitos and African Americans in a report on a fight that occurred between refugees in the camps and the police. The article quotes a threat made by a Cuban who was upset about how they had been treated by the police: “ ‘The American blacks set the zone on fire, causing $200,000,000 in damage,’ yelled a refugee. ‘We have more guts than they do and we’re going to set this place on fire.’ ”³³ With reference to rioting African Americans, U.S. blacks are depicted as instigators of the problem—as models of deviant behavior. Hence, although the news article calls attention to the deplorable living conditions in the tents and by implication the failures of the local and federal government, the ultimate message demonstrates a concern that the real problem and threat to the local community and the Cuban image was the Marielitos themselves.

By framing the Marielitos as deviant/black with the use of the word “ghetto,” the coverage in El Miami Herald illustrates John Fiske’s argument that predominant social orders contain possibly dangerous bodies in “their place”—in spaces such as ghettos that are usually ignored. He states, “The ghetto is not surveilled, because it is that which the eye of power does not wish to see, the regime of truth [it] does not wish to know” (2000, 60). On the one hand, poverty, degradation, and crime are viewed as naturally occurring in the ghetto and thus naturally associated with certain bodies. The plight of the people in the ghetto and the government’s contribution to their condition, then, can be ignored. On the other hand, when the problems of the ghetto begin to have an impact on those outside of it, they become issues of intense scrutiny and concern for which a solution must be found.

Depictions of the Marielitos as unworthy citizens who do not know how to live in freedom, who are lazy and less inclined to work hard, who are the black rioting “inmates” at Fort Chaffee, and whose deviant natures affect the environment around them by creating ghettos define them as outside the white middle-class norm and distinguish them from the law-abiding exiles. The characterization of a large proportion of Marielitos as criminal further racialized and blackened the Marielitos and justified that they be put under the same type of surveillance experienced by other black (and brown) bodies in the United States.

My interviews with Afro-Cubans suggest that the black/white frame in turn shaped how established Cuban exiles treated black Cubans as they worked to dissociate from the stigma attached to the Marielitos. Interviewees confirmed the idea that a disconnect exists between white and black Cubans and pre-1980 and post-1980 refugees, based on real or perceived differences in politics, class, and race. Digna, a fifty-two-year-old woman living in Miami who arrived during Mariel, explained, “In Hialeah, many were welcoming family members and such, but we did not have family. There were many signs of racism. People here were welcoming Mariel people into their homes, with the conditions that they were not black. You know, [the unwelcoming people] were Cubans just like us.” For Digna, the message was explicit: blacks were not wanted. Another Mariel entrant, Luis, found that he too would not have the opportunity to benefit from being sponsored. He recounts the experience of many single black males such as himself. He was shipped straight to Fort Indiantown Gap in Pennsylvania, one of the several holding centers for Mariel arrivals. He was later transferred to Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. “From there, I was one of the last to leave, so I didn’t have no sponsor or nothing like that, so there was about a few hundred of us left.” His journey then took him to halfway houses in Seattle, Washington, and then finally to Los Angeles in 1991. Far from the storied tale of Cuban ease of incorporation, Luis did not get settled in to begin “living the American Dream” until a decade after he arrived. His story and stories like it are living testament to what Cuban refugee centers during Mariel found to be a major obstacle; representatives from the Cuban Refugee Resettlement Center stated that they had the most difficulty resettling single, black, adult Cuban males (Boswell and Curtis 1984). One of very few stories in El Miami Herald about Mariel to talk about black Cubans even makes notes of the more difficult situation for blacks, asserting that being male, single, and black or mulato makes it difficult for the Marielitos to find sponsors in the United States.³⁴ This acknowledgment that being black made it harder to benefit from the U.S. framing of all Cubans as worthy of U.S. citizenship highlights the strength of the stigma attached to blackness. Indeed, it was difficult for black Marielitos to get sponsors among the established Cuban community, but they met rejection from the U.S. general population as well. The media framing, which equated criminality with blackness, played a strong role in promoting the idea that the Marielitos, purported economic immigrants rather than immigrants fleeing a dictator to whom they were morally opposed, were indeed (potential) criminals and thus bad immigrants.

Theme 3. “Aquí versus Allá”: Teaching the Marielitos to Be Worthy Citizens

They can’t think that those who arrived here 20 years ago are better or worse; we are all human beings and we all possess virtues and, unfortunately, defects, but there is something that does differentiate the recently arrived, and that is that they need to learn how to live in freedom.… It is now time to close the lines—we need to unify all the people of good faith from both sides so the Cuban community can grow in this land; those who have spent more time [in the U.S.] could serve as tutors for the new refugees in their new lives.³⁵

In light of the “evidence” that reports of the criminality and deviance of the Marielitos constituted, preserving the image of Cubans as the Golden Exiles meant finding ways to either dissociate from the Marielitos or explain and help correct the Marielitos’ “deviant” behaviors. Portes and Stepick (1993) and Yohel Camayd-Freixas (1988) argue that the English-language Miami Herald purposively sought to turn its readers against the newcomers in its editorials and news reports. Articles in the Spanish-language El Miami Herald with the theme “Marielitos as immigrants needing reform” advanced the mainstream newspaper’s stance while at the same time they communicated Cuban American anxiety over the Mariel stigma. Beginning as early as May, approximately 10 percent of each month’s articles sent a message to the newcomers that they were not acting like “good immigrants” and thus “worthy citizens”; that is, they were not among those who adhered to laws, who were hard working, and who educated themselves, and thus they needed to change their ways to more fully fit the “Golden Exile” image. They needed to distinguish between how to comport themselves aquí in the United States, versus allá (in Cuba). Some of the stories also communicated that those who committed unlawful acts deserved to be punished. As Herman Gray points out, discourses about the “rehabilitation” of the (black) underclass involve “the idea that the inculcation of appropriate moral values, self-discipline, and a work ethic can effectively break the vicious cycle of dependency that cripples the poor and disadvantaged” (1995, 24). In El Miami Herald, the opinions about Mariel Cubans as immigrants needing reform were delivered mostly in the form of editorials and op-eds or letters to the editor. These were written primarily by news staff or members of the public who identified as Cuban or who had a Spanish surname. The articles reflect the variations of opinion in the Cuban community toward the newcomers by demonstrating a desire to help the Marielitos in the spirit of Cuban unity, but they also included veiled criticism.

Some letters and op-eds detailed the skills the newcomers would need to learn to “live in freedom,” including how to adhere to U.S. laws and to value hard work and education. One letter to the editor paints the United States as the undisputed savior of the Cuban people and argues that each individual Cuban is a representative of the Cuban people and needs to behave in ways that demonstrate gratefulness to the United States. The letter outlines several lessons about the gratitude, language, and behavior that the author, a Cuban American, believes newcomers needed to learn upon arriving on the beaches of freedom:

I believe it is necessary to offer counseling to the thousands of compatriots who are now arriving to these free beaches.… Above all, we all owe gratitude and recognition to the people and government of the United States for everything they have done in our favor.… Secondly, understanding life and the customs of the United States is a necessity.… Obviously, it must be said that there is no chance at improving the conditions of one’s life if one does not learn the [English] language. In the third place, the behavior.… Here, people do not fear the police.… Here, order, in addition to being the result of general education, has a higher purpose—to maintain a standard of living for all of us.³⁶

The letter declares that newcomers should become accustomed to the way the United States works as soon as they can and learn English so that they can make a contribution (rather than be a liability) to the nation. The letter advances the idea of the “good immigrant,” which is really about affirming the exile community’s own acceptance in U.S. society and maintaining their sense of power. With the title “Behavior in the United States,” the advice seems to be a response to the increasing reports on the criminal or deviant actions of some Marielitos. The letter also asserts white Cuban privilege in its reference to how policing works to protect them, not accounting for the differential police surveillance experienced by black subjects.

The extensive coverage of the June 1 Mariel uprising at Fort Chaffee also prompted members of the Cuban community to write letters to the editor of El Miami Herald. Most letters in reference to the uprisings criticize the Marielitos rather than the mistakes made by the United States in the resettlement of the refugees. “Refugees: You Are in a Law-Abiding Nation,” written a day after the uprising, exemplifies the widespread concern about the Marielitos’ lack of adherence to laws and the negative repercussions for the exiled community: “These hoodlums, in addition to harming the image of the Cuban exile—who in their vast majority are orderly and respectful of the laws—are hurting the refugees themselves. I believe that they should know that the United States is a Nation of Laws, which are very different from Castro’s evil installation in Cuba, and that these laws should be obeyed.”³⁷ The author goes so far as to insist that those who do not follow the laws should be sent back to Cuba. He expresses a fear of guilt by association and seeks to defend the image of the established Cuban community. This letter and others like it present a simplistic view that ignores things such as the fact that the U.S. political stance toward Cuba was changing and that its new stance toward the newcomers contributed to the problems faced by Marielitos in the United States. The United States’ handling of the group is diminished in the reports, and difficulties faced by the exiles are blamed on their character and their unwillingness to obey laws, in a classic example of blaming the victim.

The negative role of the United States was not completely ignored in the coverage and was in fact highlighted in several articles, but, following the reporting in the Miami Herald, the stories focused on the U.S. role were more concerned with the economic effect of the government’s indecision on the local community rather than the effects on the Marielitos themselves. For example, an editorial critical of President Carter’s indecision regarding U.S. policy toward the new arrivals was also not supportive of the Marielitos. Its main point is a scathing critique of the new entrants and their lack of a work ethic:

These new Cuban refugees will have to learn the American system in one form or another. They will have to quickly learn that freedom doesn’t mean that you can have all the things you want at any time you want them. They will have to learn that the prosperous Cuban community in Miami earned their relative wealth through hard work, long hours of study, and diligent attention to learning the rules of the North American game.³⁸

The editorial castigates the newcomers by praising the antiguos and makes the claim that the established Cuban community in Miami became affluent because they learned how to be worthy citizens. The newcomers are portrayed as having unrealistic expectations and desiring freedom and goods without sacrifice, and the hardships the group may have endured in Cuba, while traveling to the United States, and being processed in the United States are erased. This editorial and other items criticizing the Marielitos starkly distinguish the new arrivals, who are considered potential bad immigrants if they are not reformed, from los antiguos. Furthermore, in contrast to earlier articles that portray the Mariel refugees as good immigrants who are mostly compatriots in pursuit of similar goals, the articles framing the Marielitos as needing reform firmly place los antiguos in the role of the “native” group that has the authority to dictate what the “foreign” group should do to become good immigrants and to earn their place as worthy citizens of the nation.

Mariel Voices in El Miami Herald: A Case Study of an Afro-Cuban Family

In all the reports on the Marielitos, what are often lost are the voices of the Mariel refugees themselves. There were special interest stories and times when Marielitos were quoted in news stories, but for the most part they are a faceless group, pawns of either Castro or the U.S. government, a problem to be solved. Significantly, however, two months after the beginning of the Mariel exodus, El Miami Herald began a series of articles that follow the experiences of a recently arrived family, La Familia Casanova, to document their “immigrant story.” It is also significant that the family chosen for the exposé is black. There is no direct reference to the family’s race in the stories—their race is indicated in the accompanying pictures. As mentioned previously, there is little attention in the paper given to the fact that many of the Marielitos were black.³⁹ This may be related to the fact that in the U.S. context, the idea of the “black Cuban” was relatively new, because blacks were such a small percentage of those who came during previous waves. Cubans were most often discussed in U.S. public discourse as a homogenous group unified by their anti-Castro, anti-communist stance. Thus, non-Cubans involved in choosing stories to run may have been oblivious to differences among Cubans based on socioeconomic status, race, or gender. For Cuban writers in the newspaper, racial democracy discourse inspired by Cuban patriot Jose Martí, which has infused Cuban ideas of their nation, may have also influenced a tendency to avoid the issue of race or to see it as a nonissue. In addition, learning that African Americans are stigmatized in the United States, Cuban exiles may have wanted to avoid “guilt by association” with African Americans by avoiding attention to Cuban blackness. The silence on race reflected in the newspaper then belies the problematic ways blackness is regarded in Cuba coupled with the insidious but perhaps less overt “color-blind” racism of the neoconservative 1980s United States (Gray 1995). A close look at the case of La Familia Casanova allows for an interrogation of the silences about race and blackness, and allows a view into the contradictory ways Afro-Cubans have been positioned both inside and outside the larger Cuban identity.

Moreover, we hear directly from black Cuban Mariel refugees as profiled in the newspaper. Juan Casanova; his wife, Natividad; and her eight-year-old son from a previous marriage are first introduced to us through the words of Juan Casanova. Juan had been a journalist in Cuba, and El Miami Herald provided him with the opportunity to write about his family’s experiences. His story, titled “Ten Thousand Were Looking for Refuge and Found Hell,” a top front-page story on June 1, 1980, tells of the preparations they took to leave Cuba, such as getting clothes together, saying good-bye to relatives, and consulting the Santos, or the gods, for a safe journey.⁴⁰ He documents their harrowing experiences at the Peruvian embassy and the details of the journey until their arrival in the United States on April 30, 1980. Subsequent stories about the family were written by an El Miami Herald staff writer, who gives a blow-by-blow account of their daily lives and the little victories and setbacks they encountered. The family brought very little money with them from Cuba and did not have relatives in the United States to help them settle in. After moving from camps to churches for shelter, a North American family took notice of their plight and rallied others to help them with housing, furniture, and food. Nevertheless, their struggles continued. Juan had trouble holding onto his job as a gardener because of transportation problems: the family could not afford a car and relied on bikes that kept getting stolen. Natividad could not find work comparable to the scientific information-processing work she did in Cuba because she did not have the equivalent certificate in the United States. They both struggled to pay their bills.

The staff writer’s articles focus on the family members’ optimism as they sought to incorporate themselves into U.S. society despite these hardships. This optimistic focus is evident in the titles of the articles—“Exiles from Mariel Have a New Life,”⁴¹ “In Spite of Problems the Family Is Not Discouraged and Is Adapting Little by Little,”⁴² and “The Casanova Family Are Adapting to Exile”⁴³—and in captions to the accompanying pictures (such as “Casanova refuses to let instability discourage him”).⁴⁴ In addition, after accounts about their difficulties, the next paragraph would often begin with a statement like “nevertheless the family is optimistic.” The last article in the series, written four months after they first arrived, ends their story on a high note. It begins, “It could be a success story.” It continues, “After the nightmare of the Peruvian Embassy in Havana, the trip from Mariel to Key West and the first days without a home in Miami, the family seems to be adapting to life in the United States.”⁴⁵ The stories’ accounts frame the family’s adversity as the obligatory struggle immigrants undergo to earn the privileges of the American Dream.

By and large the stories leave out the tremendous stigma attached to the Marielitos by the U.S. public and the discrimination many black Cubans faced. By focusing on a mother, father, and child, the series appealed to the immigration policy ideal of family and family unification. The Casanovas are depicted as a generic Cuban family; unlike for other Marielitos, their blackness is of no consequence. They have suffered, but their optimism has allowed them to find some success. They are good immigrants—they do not complain, nor do they wish to impose on the U.S. government.⁴⁶ For instance, Juan is recorded as saying, “I’m crazy for not receiving food stamps. [But] I refused to depend on them”; and “I think they could give that to someone else who needs it more.”⁴⁷ Juan demonstrates proper moral values by expressing his discontent with having to rely on the government for assistance. The family is slowly but surely becoming a part of the American family—their acquisition of a washing machine, which the reporter asserts is a symbol of independence and freedom in the United States, and the son’s love of hot dogs, Coca Cola, and children’s television programs are all cited as evidence. Although they arrived as “Marielitos,” a group stigmatized because of their blackness, association with Castro’s Cuba, and supposed criminality, the stories depict them as refugees who redeem themselves and succeed because of their hard work, struggles, and attitudes.⁴⁸ Thus, Los Casanovas are able to be represented within the newspaper as exemplars of the good immigrant ideal, wherein their embrace of capitalism and their desire not to be a burden to society allow their blackness to be of no consequence. Their blackness need not be acknowledged.

Yet a closer look at the stories and Los Casanovas’ own words demonstrate a greater complexity. The family is indeed optimistic about their chances in the United States, but they are not naive. Like exiles from the earlier generations, they criticize the Cuban government, but they also make comments that represent a critique of the United States. For instance, Juan speaks of the fact that all societies have their problems and does not demonize Cuba. Juan makes a sophisticated critique of both the United States and Cuba, saying, “In Cuba, shortages create an unsatisfied consumer society. It translates into a psychological hunger.” He goes on, “Here, it all comes down to people buying things, but some people are against that. But on the other hand, you know that there will always be goods available.”⁴⁹ His assessment of the United States is mixed. He comes from a society where he lived in extreme scarcity, and the extreme abundance in the United States can be overwhelming. It is clear that one does not have to worry about basic needs in the United States. But he hints at the possible cynicism that can come after the “psychological hunger” is satisfied in the United States—an experience many new immigrants go through after they are confronted with the new hardships that living in a capitalist system entails. One is always chasing the dollar, and this makes for another type of dependency, where survival relies on one’s ability to pay for goods.

Though the staff writer’s articles about the Casanova family do not make note of the fact the family is black, in his own article about his family’s experiences, Juan is not silent about their adherence to Santería, a religion with African origins practiced in Cuba but often maligned in the United States, especially during Mariel. He writes of consulting with Ochún (described in the article as an incarnation of la Vírgen de la Caridad), and he talks of waiting for his wife at her home in Cuba, where her relatives were playing Santería drums.⁵⁰ He also recounts that after he and his wife made the decision to leave, her brother-in-law consulted a babalao (Santería priest) about the decision. He does not hide the importance of his faith or this African aspect of his culture.

The Casanova family is also noteworthy in how they disrupt the common depiction of the Marielitos as uneducated and unskilled. It is true that a larger percentage of Mariel refugees were lower skilled than in previous waves, but many were professionals and intellectuals in Cuba, as were Juan and Natividad. They were equipped with the social capital many pre-1980 refugees had, yet they still struggled to achieve in the United States. Juan and Natividad sought to continue the intellectual pursuits that may have been stifled in Cuba, but the hardships of taking care of their basic needs in the United States hindered those plans. They aspired to middle-class stability and to own the possessions that symbolized capitalist success, while still offering a sophisticated critique of capitalism. The reports on the Casanovas provide a view into how one black Cuban family confronted the questions of what it means to be included in the American family. Their story is hopeful that full inclusion or “success” is possible for them but also presents an indictment of the United States’ exclusionary practices. The stories on the family catch them in the early months of entry into the United States, and we and they cannot see what is coming down the pike. How might they evaluate the United States in terms of racial issues and their treatment? Did race-based discrimination come into play for them, contributing to some of their struggles? If the voices of the Mariel refugees were privileged and they were given more opportunities to express themselves publicly, we might be able to see a fuller picture of the situation surrounding the Mariel exodus and the conditions in the United States that made the incorporation of Marielitos more difficult. Studies in which Marielitos have been interviewed conclude that there is no uniform Mariel voice (see Portes and Stepick 1993). But if El Miami Herald had listened more closely to their voices, we might find a picture of the Mariel crisis more critical of U.S. racism, imperialism, and capitalism. Furthermore, their voices could present a challenge of the divisions between black and white Cubans (and African Americans and white Cubans for that matter) that we see reflected in other Herald stories. Subsequent chapters allow further insight into these questions, as black Cuban immigrants discuss their experiences with race in the United States.