Posted: February 27th, 2023

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Chapter 2
The Mariel Boatlift of 1980 Origins and Consequences

In April 1980, as he had fifteen years earlier, Castro announced that all who desired to leave Cuba would be permitted to do so, this time from the port of Mariel.

Thousands of emigrés sailed across the Florida Straits in yachts, sailboats, shrimpers, and even freighters to pick up their relatives and any others who wanted to

leave. Between April and October 1980, 124,776 Cubans arrived in the U.S., comprising the third wave of Cuban migration. 1

Mariel provides one of the most fascinating case studies in recent immigration history, not only for the circumstances of the migration but for the controversy it

engendered. The government’s inability to control the migration raised important questions about President Jimmy Carter’s leadership (as well as about the adequacy

of American immigration policy) and ultimately contributed to Carter’s electoral defeat in 1980. Few immigrant groups elicited as much negative response as the

marielitos. Public opinion turned against them when the press revealed that Castro had used the boatlift to rid the island of “undesirables” and that among the new

immigrants were hundreds, if not thousands, of criminals. Even the exile community turned against this new wave, afraid that their golden reputations as model

immigrants would be tarnished by the criminal element. Unlike the earlier refugees, the marielitos encountered hostility and discrimination wherever they settled.

Neither their homeland nor their host society wanted them.

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EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 2/17/2023 5:50 PM via FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY
AN: 6878 ; Maria Cristina Garcia.; Havana USA : Cuban Exiles and Cuban Americans in South Florida, 1959-1994
Account: s8862125.main.ehost

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1978–1979: The Origins of Mariel

While Mariel caught immigration authorities by surprise, the migration was understandable in light of the events of the late 1970s. In September 1978, during a press

conference with Cuban exile journalists, Fidel Castro invited emigrés to a dialogue in Cuba to discuss several issues of importance to the exile community, including the

fate of political prisoners and a possible family reunification program. Castro announced that upon the successful completion of the diálogo the government was

prepared to release up to three thousand political prisoners. 2

The invitation to the diálogo was a radical departure from Cuban policy, and it stunned the emigré community. Particularly surprising was the conciliatory tone of

Castro’s invitation, since over the past two decades he had rarely missed an opportunity to attack the gusanos. Only three years earlier, he told foreign journalists that

although a reconciliation with the United States was possible, emigrés would never be forgiven for deserting the homeland and would never be allowed to return.3 But

political and economic circumstances now forced the government to extend an olive branch to the exile community. During the press conference, he carefully referred

to the emigrés as “the Cuban community abroad” rather than the usual gusanos, escoria, and apátridas (people without a country) and publicly stated that perhaps he

had “misjudged” the community.4

Castro’s move was politically astute. There had been a gradual thawing in the tensions between the United States and Cuba since the Ford administration, culminating

in 1977 in the establishment of limited diplomatic representation in the form of “interests sections.”5 By 1978, however, a number of issues had brought negotiations for

full diplomatic relations and the lifting of the trade embargo to an impasse, most notably U.S. opposition to Cuba’s military presence in Angola. Through the diálogo,

Castro hoped to keep the lines of communication open. By appealing to the exile community, he sought to influence the segment of American society most opposed to

renewing diplomatic relations, and he used the two issues of most importance to emigrés to bargain for support for his political agenda. Castro also hoped to improve

his image abroad. In the 1970s, his government had lost international support because of its worsening human rights record. His vow to release

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thousands of political prisoners was a humanitarian gesture that promised to pacify critics, particularly among the European intelligentsia.

In reality, the Carter administration was partly responsible for Castro’s aboutface. Throughout 1978, as part of Carter’s human rights agenda, members of the

administration met with Cubans in New York and Havana to discuss a number of issues, among them the release of political prisoners. A preliminary agreement for the

release of thousands of prisoners was reached as early as August 1978, but when the Carter administration refused to publicly acknowledge its role in the negotiations,

the Castro government decided to use the scheduled prisoner release program as a public relations campaign to improve relations with the exile community. 6

Exiles were unaware of the negotiations between the United States and Cuba, and consequently Castro’s invitation spurred intense debate. A segment of the exile

community reacted enthusiastically to the new developments, even praising the regime for its conciliatory gesture. Hundreds of emigrés sent letters and telegrams

expressing their willingness to participate in the diálogo. Others, suspicious, criticized the invitation, arguing that if Castro were sincere in his concern for political

prisoners and family reunification, he had the power to act; he did not need the counsel of gusanos. Editorials in the Spanishlanguage media warned that the diálogo

was not an attempt to make peace with emigrés but rather a ploy to manipulate the community to Castro’s political advantage: Castro was using a controversial issue

to pit emigré against emigré, ultimately undermining the community’s lobbying power in Washington. The truth of this argument was suggested when an official at the

Cuban Interests Section in Washington warned that without the diálogo there would be no release of political prisoners, and that “any hesitation on the part of emigrés

would be perceived as a lack of concern or interest.”7 The fate of thousands of political prisoners was left up to the emigré community—or so they thought. For the

emigrés, it was a moral dilemma with no easy or satisfactory resolution.

Within weeks, enough emigrés had responded to Castro’s invitation to permit the first diálogo. A committee of exiles was formed, nicknamed the Comité de los 75,

headed by Miami banker Bernardo Benes.8 Most were scholars, journalists, and businessmen from the United States, Puerto Rico, Spain, Venezuela, and México,

leaders in their communities, skillful at communication and shaping public opinion, approved by the Cuban government for this very reason. All of them could

eloquently represent Cuban interests within the exile community and in

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Washington. The Comité arrived in Havana for the first diálogo in November 1978. They returned to Havana a month later for a second series of talks, joined by

sixtyfive other emigrés. 9

Nothing in the past twenty years had divided the community as the diálogo did. Lifelong friendships dissolved as Cuban exiles debated the ethical and moral

implications of “collaborating” with the Castro government. Thirty exile organizations publicly denounced the diálogo, including the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association,

which expelled all the members who participated, in spite of the fact that eight Brigadistas were still imprisoned in Cuba and were among those considered for release.

Editorials in the Spanishlanguage media called the dialogueros traitors, cowards, opportunists, vendepatrias (sellouts), tontos útiles (useful stooges), and

mariposas (butterflies—that is, transformed gusanos).10 They charged that the dialogueros were communists, because several of them had ties to organizations that

were allegedly proCastro, such as the Grupo Areíto and the Brigada Antonio Maceo.11

Critics of the diálogo could not believe that anyone in the exile community would want to negotiate with the government responsible for the execution and

imprisonment of so many of their compatriots. As one editorial in an exile tabloid stated: “We cannot forget the executions. … We cannot forget the thousands of

children who were orphaned … the wives, sisters, sons and daughters. … We have a debt of honor with our dead.”12 To remind the community of this debt, various

exile newspapers published photographs of fusilamientos (executions) and family snapshots of the dead.

One of the most vocal critics of the diálogo was Juanita Castro, Fidel’s younger sister and an exile in Miami, who spoke on the radio and made public appearances to

condemn all who participated.13 La Crónica, a Spanishlanguage tabloid in Puerto Rico with a wide circulation in Miami, published the names, addresses, and

telephone numbers of all the dialogueros so that angry emigrés could personally express their rage.14 One organization urged a “campaign of repudiation and moral

sanction” against them.15 Militant extremists, working on their own or through secret organizations, used terrorist tactics to harass the dialogueros and their

supporters. They bombed Miami’s Continental Bank because its president, Bernardo Benes, traveled to Cuba. Orlando Padrón, owner of Padrón Cigars, became the

target of a boycott after the Miami News published a photograph of him offering Fidel Castro one of his cigars; by 1982 his cigar factory had been vandalized or

firebombed four times.16 Militants in New Jersey harassed and threatened Father

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Andrés Reyes, even during his celebrations of mass, forcing the Catholic Diocese of Newark to transfer him to another parish. 17 In New York, militants bombed the

lobby of El Diario–La Prensa, one of the most popular Spanishlanguage newspapers in the country, because reporter Manuel de Dios Unanue took part in the

diálogo.18 Two dialogueros, Eulalio José Negrín of New Jersey and Carlos Muñiz Varela of Puerto Rico, were assassinated.

Among the critics of the diálogo were some of the political prisoners themselves. Calling it a “farce,” 138 prisoners clandestinely signed a petition rejecting the

diálogo. The petition was smuggled to Spain and later to the United States, where it was circulated by Of Human Rights, a nonprofit organization at Georgetown

University.19 The 138 prisoners were all plantados, considered the moral elite of political prisoners for their refusal to participate in the government’s rehabilitation

programs or wear the uniforms of common criminals (thereby remaining naked in their cells). Most had spent from thirteen to twenty years in prison, and by signing the

petition they forfeited their chances of being released. The release of political prisoners, they argued, must be unconditional.

Not all political prisoners viewed the diálogo in the same light, however. Interviews conducted by Miami Herald reporters at the Combinado del Este prison revealed

that many of them favored any talks that might help end their tenure at this repressive installation, one of dozens located throughout the island.20 A few prisoners even

wrote letters to the exile community urging them to put their animosities aside and help secure the prisoners’ release.

The rallies, petitions, and violence failed to alter the course of events. The Cuban government considered the first diálogo a success, and on November 21 Cuban

officials announced that they would release 3,000 political prisoners over the next several months, at the rate of 400 per month.21 By August 1979, 2,400 political

prisoners had been released; of the 1,463 who expressed a desire to come to the United States, 813 were approved for entry, along with 1,200 of their

dependents.22 Most of those who chose to emigrate elsewhere settled in Venezuela, Mexico, and other Latin American countries. Among the prisoners released in

1979 was Huber Matos, the former comandante of the Cuban revolutionary army, imprisoned since 1959.23 Also included were four Americans accused of working

for the CIA, who were released after the Carter administration agreed to commute the life terms of Lolita Lebron and three other Puerto Rican nationalists sentenced

for the 1954 seige of the U.S. House of Representatives.24

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Whatever doubts or reservations emigrés might have had regarding the diálogo, they could not argue with the results. It is difficult to say whether Castro would have

reneged on his agreement with the Carter administration without the diálogo, but in any case more political prisoners were released in one year than in the previous

twenty, and many perceived this as the victory of diplomacy and reconciliation over policies of hostility and aggression. In fact, by July 1980, the number of political

prisoners released totaled almost four thousand, surpassing the government’s initial agreement. 25 Opponents of the diálogo, however, continued to view the

negotiations as a moral defeat. They argued that it was international pressure and the high cost of prison maintenance that forced the Cuban government to release the

political prisoners, and they chastised the emigrés for allowing themselves to be manipulated by the Cuban government and for prostituting their values and convictions:

they had bargained with the devil and lost their souls.

Another, equally controversial consequence of the diálogo was the “opening” of Cuba to emigrés. For the first time, Cuban government officials granted emigrés

permission to return to the island to visit their relatives and witness firsthand the accomplishments of the revolution. One of the great ironies of 1979, therefore, was

that as thousands of political prisoners traveled to the United States, thousands of their refugee compatriots returned to the island as tourists. By year’s end, more than

one hundred thousand Cuban exiles in the United States alone had taken advantage of the Cuban government’s relaxed travel policy. They did so with some

trepidation, however. The Cuban government required that all emigrés enter the country with Cuban passports regardless of their present citizenship; the emigrés

feared they would not be allowed to return and sought some legal protection. INS authorities reported that applications for permanent residency rose to twice the

normal monthly rate during this period, mostly due to the growing number of Cuban exiles who wished to travel to Cuba but wanted some assurance that both Cuba

and the United States would permit them to return to their homes in exile.

The exile community became as divided over the “emigré tourism” as over the diálogo. Critics argued that as refugees and exiliados, Cubans could not morally travel

to the country they had fled. Their trips would help finance Castro’s exportation of revolution by providing the Castro government with the currency it so desperately

needed. Wrote one editor of an exile tabloid: “It is sad to see Cubans today, supposedly exiles, giving money to the regime that humiliated them years ago and

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is now humiliating them by forcing them to return to their homeland as tourists.” 26 Some exile newspapers tried to instill fear in those considering travel to Cuba by

warning them that any benefits they received in the U.S., like Medicare and food stamps, might be canceled, and that they might not be allowed to reenter the U.S.27

And the possibility of being harassed or even assassinated by militant extremists always lurked in the back of most emigrés’ minds.

The chance to return to Cuba and see one’s family after so many years was hard to refuse, however. If Castro had eased the travel restrictions a decade earlier,

perhaps not as many emigrés would have responded. During the first years of exile, most emigrés swore that they would never return to Cuba as long as the Castro

regime remained in power, and they were passionate enough about their politics to remain faithful to that oath. But by 1979 the many years of separation from family

and homeland had tempered these views. The majority of those who chose to travel to Cuba had parents (some quite elderly), siblings, or children living on the island

whom they had not seen in as long as fifteen or twenty years. When the Cuban government eased travel restrictions, these emigrés jumped at the opportunity. Many

returned with their Americanborn children, so that they too could meet relatives they knew only from pictures and see the country whose nationality they claimed.

After years of loneliness and separation, family now took precedence over political ideologies.

Undoubtedly, the Castro regime profited from its new travel policy, as it did from many of its humanitarian gestures. Cuba was burdened by a stagnant economy, an

inefficient bureaucracy, and an unmotivated workforce; emigré tourism generated muchneeded income. In preparation for the tourists, the government refurbished

Havana’s oncefamous hotels and nightclubs. Package deals were prepared that included airfare, hotel accommodations, and meals, for which emigrés paid from a

few hundred to a few thousand dollars. These tourist packages were immensely lucrative, since most emigrés stayed with their relatives and rarely used the services the

government charged them for. The average emigré tourist also spent hundreds of dollars in Cuban stores buying gifts or needed goods for his loved ones. The

economy further benefited from the many consumer goods emigrés brought from the United States, most of which were in short supply on the island: medicine, shoes

and clothing, books and records, and even televisions, stereos, and other small appliances. So great was the quantity of emigré “luggage” that the Cuban government

eventually imposed a limit of forty pounds per person. According to the Miami Herald, by April 1979 the Cuban government had already siphoned an estimated

$150 million from the exile community.28

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While emigré tourism helped to resolve some of the government’s immediate economic concerns, it did not provide a longterm solution to Cuba’s many problems, of

course. The government ultimately paid a high price for its opendoor policy, since the visitors undermined revolutionary fervor and fueled popular discontent. Some

Cubans became confused and even resentful about the change in government policy. After twenty years of official rhetoric condemning the gusanos for betraying the

revolution, the government suddenly welcomed them, giving them access to restaurants, stores, and hotels that few in Cuba were able to enjoy. As thousands of

emigrés arrived each month, Cubans had ample opportunity to compare their lives with those of the visitors returning to the island with fashionable clothes and

suitcases filled with the latest American gadgets, bestowing gifts on their poorer relations. The emigrés, foreigners in a “decadent capitalist society,” seemed to have

more opportunities available to them than Cubans did in their revolutionary socialist state.

The new ideas and perspectives that the emigré tourists brought with them had a profound effect on the island particularly among those born and raised in communist

Cuba, whose contact with other countries was chiefly limited to the Soviet bloc. Cubans became aware of views of history, politics, and international relations that

challenged the standard interpretations they had been taught. They also caught up with the latest developments in American popular culture through the records,

books, and magazines the emigrés brought with them. These new perspectives, whether ideological or cultural, aroused curiosity and interest, and challenged the

Cubans’ most basic beliefs about their society as well as about life in the United States. As one Cuban, then fifteen years old, explained:

Personally, we had no family in the United States, but our neighbors did. I remember when their cousins came to visit. … I think they hadn’t seen each other in twelve years. I went

over one evening out of curiosity, you see. They impressed me as very nice people. They weren’t at all what I expected. You know how children’s imaginations are. … But they

were people just like us. They were funny and had some great stories about life in the U.S. and all the problems they had had to deal with. But, obviously, from the way they were

dressed and the things they brought with them, things were going quite well for them. I remembered thinking that I wanted to visit the U.S. and see it for myself. So when my

parents decided to leave Cuba [in 1980], I thought it was going to be a great adventure. … Boy, and what an adventure it turned out to be!
29

For those already discontented with Castro’s communism, contact with the emigrés only exacerbated their resentment; for others, it provoked

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a serious reevaluation of their society, their evil, imperialist neighbor to the north, and the antiAmerican propaganda promoted in the media, schools, and workplace.

Disaffection grew in many quarters of society. Political repression, underemployment, and chronic shortages of basic consumer goods frustrated even the most

enthusiastic of supporters. Some found subtle but powerful ways of defying the government and expressing their discontent. Having few incentives at work, they

performed their jobs inadequately and ignored production quotas. The black market flourished, despite Cuba’s strict laws, with the import of new consumer goods

from the U.S. Young Cubans, many of whom did not share their elders’ admiration for Castro, found ways of expressing their discontent through “decadent,”

“bourgeois,” ”extravagant” behavior like taking drugs, reading or writing “subversive” literature, and wearing American designer jeans or hippie clothing. Many grew

their hair and beards long; like the barbudos of the July 26th Movement, these young men and women used their physical appearance to express their open defiance

of society’s conventions. Twenty years after the revolution, such behavior was interpreted as counterrevolutionary.

What began, then, as an economic campaign to alleviate Cuba’s sagging economy resulted in what some emigrés jokingly called the bluejean revolution. 30 The

Cuban government failed to provide many of its citizens with the necessary incentives to revitalize their former revolutionary zeal. Consequently, when the opportunity

to leave Cuba presented itself in 1980, thousands of Cubans took it, and by then the government was more than willing to facilitate their departure. Popular discontent

threatened the stability of the regime, and emigration once again provided a safety valve for Cuban society. The emigration of 1980, however, proved to be an

embarrassing indictment of the Castro regime, a catastrophe from which the government never fully recovered. It also had longterm repercussions for the United

States.

The Peruvian Embassy Crisis and the Mariel Boatlift

In May 1979, a few Cuban nationals began smuggling themselves into Latin American embassies to request political asylum. The Venezuelan and Peruvian embassies

were the most popular choices.

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By March 1980, close to thirty Cubans had crashed their vehicles through the entrances of these embassies and taken refuge in the compounds, sparking angry

exchanges between the government of Cuba and those of Venezuela and Peru. On January 5, the Venezuelan government recalled its ambassador to protest “the

heavyhanded measures used by the Cubans in dealing with forcible entries at its Embassy.” 31 At the Peruvian embassy, the ambassador agreed to turn over twelve

Cuban nationals—including children—who entered the compound illegally on January 21. The Peruvian government subsequently recalled him, and the twelve Cubans

were returned to the embassy.

On March 28, six Cubans stole a bus and crashed through the Peruvian embassy gates. The Cuban guards stationed at the three entrances to the compound shot at

the bus, even though the gatecrashers were unarmed; one of the guards was caught in the crossfire and killed.32 The new ambassador refused to turn these gate

crashers over for criminal prosecution. On April 4, Good Friday, Castro pulled all Cuban guards from around the embassy compound and sent in steamrollers to tear

down the embassy gates and barricades. In a radio broadcast later that afternoon, Castro stated that his government would no longer risk the lives of its soldiers to

protect “criminals.”33

As news of the event spread through the city of Havana, people left their homes and jobs and drove to the embassy to observe. Many left their cars by the side of the

road and quietly walked into the embassy compound. One bus driver, in the middle of his daily route, simply got off the bus, told his passengers to wait for the next

bus, and entered the compound. Within fortyeight hours, approximately 10,800 men, women, and children had taken refuge inside the Peruvian embassy.34 These

people were a cross section of Cuban society in age and occupation: students, housewives, factory and construction workers, writers, and even government

bureaucrats. On Easter Sunday, when the compound was filled to capacity, Cuban police put up barricades all around the perimeter of the embassy—and for several

blocks beyond—and prohibited anyone else from entering.

For days the fate of the refugees was uncertain. Rumors circulated that the police were going to arrest or shoot them, prompting some to change their minds and leave

the compound; others simply could not tolerate the cramped conditions. The refugees at the embassy sent messages to the Vatican and to President Carter and other

heads of state, requesting assistance in leaving Cuba. While they waited for international aid, conditions within the camp steadily worsened.35 The Cubans were so

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densely packed inside the lot that many had to sit on tree branches, iron gratings, and the roof of the embassy building. Sleep was virtually impossible. Two babies

were born in the compound (one of them was later named “Peru”). For almost a week, the refugees endured the rain and the hot tropical sun. With little food or water,

they had to improvise: some ate the leaves of plants and shrubs, while others roasted cats and birds over small wood fires. Even the ambassador’s pet parrot became

one family’s meal. Cuban officials eventually sent in cartons of food, but never enough to feed everyone, and fights broke out among the tired, frightened, and hungry

“inmates.” Portable toilets were eventually provided, but not before the lot became covered with mud, urine, and excrement. To impose some semblance of order, the

refugees created their own governing body and elected twentyone men and women to distribute food and bolster morale. The committee also helped break up fights,

some of which were reportedly caused by the provocadores the government sent in.

Thousands of onlookers gathered around the compound each day. Some hoped to be allowed into the compound; others were there as an act of support for the

government. Granma, the official state newspaper, called the refugees “delinquents, social deviants, vagrants, and parasites” and blamed them for all the ills that

plagued Cuban society. 36 One article declared that crime had dropped 55 percent since the gusanos had entered the embassy. The government refused to perceive

the situation at the embassy as either an act of defiance or an indictment of the revolution; rather, it was a temporary crisis that would ultimately strengthen Cuba’s

national character. With the nineteenth anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion a few days away, the government compared the Peruvian embassy crisis to the 1961

crisis, predicting that Cuba would triumph against this “army of delinquents” as it had against the forces of Yankee imperialism nineteen years earlier.37 Pedro Ortíz

Cabrera, the guard killed in the initial entry, became the martyr and symbol of this new moral campaign, and the state used his death to rally public support. Editorials

in the Cuban press fueled the passions of loyal citizens. The Peruvian embassy became a symbol of everything that was wrong with the country, and many Cubans

vented their anger against those who took refuge there. People taunted and insulted the refugees and threw stones and rotted food at them. The Cuban police

participated in the harassment, beating those on the outer periphery of the compound, unleashing their dogs on them, and blinding the refugees with reflector lights at

night.

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Candelaria García, who lived a few blocks from the embassy and whose husband was one of the 10,800, remembered how tense those days were:

People kept arriving with children and with bags full of food, and they would settle themselves on people’s front porches hoping that the embassy would open once again. People

came from the interior [of the island] on trucks. Many people were shouting “Down with Fidel,” and I said, “Oh God, there’s going to be a revolution.” That’s when the people from

the Comités [Committees for the Defense of the Revolution] came out with clubs. I put a barricade on my door … because my husband was one of the people at the embassy and I

thought that someone might break down the door, or whatever … because that’s what they were doing to those who were against Fidel. With my husband at the embassy what

were they going to think of me? One of the members of the Comité told me, “I saw you walk to the embassy with your husband,” and I said, “Yes, but I didn’t go in.” The things

that went on in Cuba were horrible. You tell the stories but they’re hard to believe.
38

As news of the horrible conditions in the compound reached Miami, Cuban exiles rallied in support of the refugees. They sent telegrams to the White House urging the

Carter administration to intervene, and they organized food and clothing drives through their churches and civic organizations. In just one day, Spanishlanguage radio

station WQBA in Miami raised over one hundred thousand dollars for the refugees’ emergency care. Most of their supplies never reached the embassy, however; the

Cuban government reportedly blocked all international relief efforts.39

The emigration plan that was eventually negotiated by the governments of Peru and Cuba required the assistance of several countries. Peru was unable to offer asylum

to more than one thousand of the refugees, and so it appealed for help to the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and the member nations of the

Andean Pact. The Carter administration authorized the acceptance of thirtyfive hundred refugees,40 and Costa Rica, Spain, Ecuador, Argentina, Canada, France,

and West Germany pledged to accept a total of twentyfive hundred.41 While four thousand refugees remained unaccounted for, Costa Rica agreed to accept them

on a temporary basis with assurances from Peru and the United States that they would find homes for them. The U.S. eventually took in a total of sixtytwo hundred of

the embassy refugees.

The airlift negotiated by Peru provided Cuba with an acceptable solution to the crisis: the island was rid of eleven thousand dissidents at

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little or no expense to the Cuban government. Castro granted the refugees salvoconductas, or safe passage, so they could leave the embassy and wait for their exit

permits at home. Most of the refugees accepted the offer and returned home to bathe and eat, and to say goodbye to their relatives and friends, though several

hundred chose to remain at the compound, fearful that Cuban authorities would not honor their pledge and would arrest them once they left Peruvian jurisdiction. Their

fears proved reasonable: a number of people who left the embassy were later denied exit permits and found themselves without homes or jobs. 42 The six original

gatecrashers were among those denied exit permits.43

The airlift began on April 16. Under the terms of the negotiations, the refugees flew first to Costa Rica before continuing to their final destination. Journalists from

around the world converged at the Juan Santamaría Airport in San José to document the refugees’ arrival. They filmed the refugees defiantly shouting “Freedom!” and

“Down with Castro!” as they left their planes, or kissing the airport tarmac, or tearfully embracing. These simple yet powerful images ultimately did more harm to

Castro’s regime than any counterrevolutionary plot. After years of promoting an image abroad as the model socialist state, Cuba now appeared as a society in crisis.

The government claimed that these were the bums and delinquents of Cuban society, but the journalists’ interviews with the refugees suggested otherwise: these were

ordinary citizens who said they preferred the isolation of exile to the repression in Cuba.

Castro abruptly suspended the flights to Costa Rica four days after they began, claiming that the United States and Peru were using the Costa Rican connection for

“publicity and demagogic purposes.” Henceforth, he announced, Cubans could only travel on flights that took them directly to their final destination. To counteract the

negative publicity, the government staged a massive rally and parade to commemorate the nineteenth anniversary of the victory at the Bay of Pigs and granted visas to

hundreds of foreign journalists to cover the events. Close to a million loyal citizens, including Ché Guevara’s father, turned out to demonstrate their support. They

marched in front of the Peruvian embassy for thirteen hours, chanting “¡Que se vayan!” (Let them go) and “¡Abajo con la gusanera!” (Down with the worms).44 Cuban

newspapers and magazines printed special issues to commemorate both the anniversary and the march, and Granma published letters of support from Cuba’s allies in

the Eastern bloc.

The rallies and marches continued over the next several weeks. One million people marched to the Plaza de la Revolución during the annual

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May Day celebration. In a speech denouncing those who chose to emigrate, Castro reiterated his government’s position: “We say to those who do not have the genes

of revolutionaries, or the blood of revolutionaries, or who do not have the necessary discipline and heroism for a revolution: we don’t want you, we don’t need you.” 45

Several heads of state, including Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Maurice Bishop of Grenada, attended the rally. Nobel prizewinning author Gabriel García Marquez

of Colombia, among others, expressed support through letters and telegrams.46 One month later, in yet another symbolic effort to strengthen national resolve, the

Cuban government turned the Peruvian embassy compound into a historical museum—El Museo del Pueblo Combatiente (Museum of the People in Combat)—to

honor their countrymen’s courage during this crisis.47 Exhibited in the new museum were the bloodstained clothes of Oritíz Cabrera and enlarged photographs of

some of the embassy refugees’ alleged criminal records.48

After the Costa Rican fiasco, the Cuban government focused all its hostility on the United States. The refugees were now portrayed as pawns in a Yankee imperialist

plot. In midApril, when U.S. armed forces staged military and naval exercises at Guantánamo Base, the government launched a vehement antiAmerican propaganda

campaign.49 At rallies and demonstrations, angry citizens burned American flags and hung Uncle Sam in effigy. They rallied outside the U.S. Interests Section and

accosted any Cuban seen entering or leaving the offices. One especially brutal incident occurred on May 4, as state police attacked more than seven hundred Cubans

lined up in front of the U.S. Interests Section to request visas. Dozens were injured, and up to four hundred took refuge inside the Interests Section, where they hid for

days. Granma accused the Interests Section of provoking the incident;50 in response, the Interests Section closed its visa offices, and they remained closed for the

next five months. AntiAmerican sentiment became so intense on the island that Washington temporarily recalled seventeen diplomats and their families from

Havana.51

At the time of the airlift’s suspension, some seventyfive hundred Cubans had emigrated.52 Three days later, Castro substituted a new plan to rid the island not only of

the remaining asylumseekers but of thousands of other dissidents as well—a plan partially inspired by emigrés in Miami. Back on April 19, several adventurous

emigrés had taken advantage of the confusion and sailed to Cuba, where they successfully negotiated the release of their families (and fortynine from the Peruvian

embassy).53 Realizing that other emigrés would follow, as they had in

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1965, the Cuban government decided that a flotilla could be used in its best interests. On April 20, the government announced that all Cubans who wished to leave the

island would be permitted to do so and urged them to call their relatives in the United States to come pick them up. The port of Mariel, some twenty miles west of

Havana, would be the new emigration center. Camps were quickly set up around the port to process the thousands of Cubans expected to leave.

Most emigrés in Miami did not wait for their relatives to call. When news broke out that Castro had opened the port of Mariel, they rushed to the nearest marina to

rent any available boat. By the end of the week, an estimated five hundred boats had sailed into the port, and hundreds of others followed over the next few weeks. 54

Some came from as far away as New York and New Jersey. To minimize their risks in the short but dangerous trip across the Florida Straits, emigrés teamed up and

traveled in squadrons of up to fifty boats. Those who did not know how to sail found a large pool of sailors and fishermen in Key West willing to transport any number

of Cubans for the right fee. Many of the emigrés who sailed to Mariel didn’t even have friends or relatives in Cuba; they risked their lives and spent their life savings on

the voyage because they considered it their moral obligation to assist anyone who wanted to leave the island. By May 4, more than one thousand boats had returned

from Mariel with over thirteen thousand refugees. Thousands more arrived every day for the next few months.55

The U.S. Coast Guard, the INS, and other federal authorities tried to discourage the flotilla, warning the exile community that those who sailed to Cuba violated U.S.

immigration laws and faced possible fines. As in Camarioca fifteen years before, however, these warnings did not deter the emigrés. Most were willing to pay any

price to get their families out of Cuba. The government’s warnings drew criticism from the exile community and even from some federal officials. “I want to see the guy

who arrests some Cuban for picking up his parents,” said one U.S. Customs agent. “Sometimes people forget this is America.”56 The Cuban government also

criticized this policy and accused the U.S. government of hypocritically welcoming illegal immigration when it suited propaganda purposes and now turning away

legitimate immigrants.

Emigrés were aware that there were risks in sailing to Cuba, but nothing prepared them for what they encountered at Mariel, or the “Bay of Fools,” as the port was

nicknamed. As each boat reached the port, the “captain” presented Cuban officials with a list of relatives he or she wished to take back to the United States. The

boats then had to wait

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several days before receiving any response, and the port became so jammed with boats that newcomers had to dock out at sea. One participant in the flotilla

commented that if all the boats had been lined up one behind the other, their relatives could have walked back to Key West. At night, Cuban gunboats patrolled the

waters and police patrolled the coast, both to prevent any subversive activity and to prevent any Cubans from swimming out to the boats. As the emigrés waited, they

ran out of fuel, food, and water, and had to buy them from the government—at up to ten dollars for a ham sandwich, fifteen dollars for a gallon of gasoline. Those

emigrés who could afford to do so stayed at the Tritón Hotel in Havana, which was set aside for them by the Cuban government.

When their relatives finally arrived at the port, the emigrés were informed that they also had to transport anyone else the Cuban government told them to take. Those

who refused to cooperate were prohibited from leaving. In many cases, Cuban officials forced emigrés to return to Key West with a boatload of strangers and no

relatives at all. The returning boats were so overloaded with passengers that many of them broke down at sea and had to be rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard.

Recalled one emigré:

One of the most incredible cases involved a boat that was so overcrowded. … They ran into bad weather and a wave toppled them. Fourteen people died, I think, but many more

have not been found [and are presumed dead]. Among the dead was an entire family—mother, father, two daughters, and a grandmother—who drowned. The only member of the

family saved was a fourteen year old girl. … [The stories of Mariel] are all very sad stories that the world, I think, does not want to believe.
57

By the end of May, the Coast Guard had conducted 989 search and rescue operations and rescued thousands of stranded passengers.58 They had also recorded

twentyfive fatalities.

Poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas was one of the thousands who emigrated via the port of Mariel. In his collection of essays, Necesidad de libertad, he recounted

the details of his migration, a process he compared to “livestock on stampede.”59 Arenas’s experience was typical: he left the port of Mariel on a small boat called the

San Lázaro whose captain, a Cuban emigré from Miami, risked financial ruin to sail to Cuba to pick up his relatives. Cuban officials forced him to crowd thirty

strangers onto his boat, among them a psychotic patient from a state institution who was being forced to emigrate. When the San Lázaro was

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several miles out to sea it broke down from the weight, and the current took the boat further out into the Atlantic. They drifted aimlessly for three days, without food or

water, until finally being rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard and taken to Key West. They arrived ill, sunburned, weak from thirst and hunger, but relieved to be in the

United States. “There were thousands of us wanting to come to [Key West] and kiss the earth,” said Arenas. “That day we became human beings.” 60

As in the previous Cuban migrations, a large and complex bureaucracy evolved to register and assist the new immigrants. The first arrivals were processed in Key

West, but as their numbers increased two other processing centers were established in south Florida: one at Miami’s Tamiami Park and another in the OpaLocka

barracks. There they were photographed, fingerprinted, and given medical tests. Volunteers helped the refugees fill out extensive questionnaires asking them about

their families, employment history, political sympathies, and the types of groups and activities they had participated in back in Cuba. One volunteer at OpaLocka

recalled her experiences:

Working at OpaLocka was very tiring because it was a very large place, very noisy, and very hot. … We found that the people we interviewed were simple, modest, humble,

understanding. They were all very tired. They had spent a terrible time at the camp they call “El Mosquito” [a holding camp outside Mariel] and they were eager to settle down and

begin a new life. It was amazing how many children came and how many older people came. But it was also amazing to see so many young men alone … fourteen, sixteen, thirty

years of age.
61

Voluntary relief agencies provided the refugees with medical care, food, clothing, and toiletries. While they waited to be processed, released to relatives, or resettled,

they were housed in churches, gymnasiums, recreation centers, hotels, National Guard armories, and even the Orange Bowl stadium, which the government leased

until football season started. Two processing centers, Krome North and Krome South, were opened to house and process the Cubans, along with the growing

number of Haitians who were also arriving in south Florida during this period. For a short time, Cubans were even housed in dog kennels that had been converted into

emergency lodgings.62 Officials worked around the clock to register the Cubans and release them to their families as quickly as possible. Those who had no families

or friends in the United States were detained for longer periods of time;

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without a sponsor (an individual or institution such as a church willing to assume responsibility for their care and supervision), the government could not release them

into society. The government eventually had to build “tent cities” in parks and underneath expressways to house those with little chance of immediate sponsorship. The

largest tent city was built underneath Interstate 95 on the eastern perimeter of Miami’s Little Havana.

By May 6, the Carter administration had declared a state of emergency in Florida and released $10 million from the Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance

Fund to establish a processing camp at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. Meanwhile, four hundred marines were sent to Key West to maintain order and assist the

incoming refugees. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), best known for managing crises caused by natural disasters, assumed responsibility for

coordinating the work of the VOLAGs. 63 The federal government opened up three additional camps to house and register Cubans: Fort Chaffee, Arkansas (opened

May 8), Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania (May 17), and Fort McCoy, Wisconsin (May 29). Almost half of the Mariel immigrants, 62,541 Cubans, waited for

sponsorship in these camps. Some stayed a few days, others remained for over a year.64

People who interviewed and registered the Cubans heard astonishing tales of human rights abuses. The Cuban government encouraged actos de repudio (acts of

repudiation) against those who applied to leave the country via Mariel, and gangs of thugs accosted them on the street and at work or school, or pelted their homes

with rocks, bottles, and spoiled food during nightly rampages.65 A volunteer at OpaLocka recalls that one man arrived with both his arms broken, and many others

had bruises, welts, and severe wounds.66 Most Cubans had had to wait for days before Cuban officials transported them to the port, and in the meantime they lost

their jobs and ration coupons, and in some cases their homes. At El Mosquito and other holding camps near Mariel they endured more insults. Few were given any

food. Before they could leave the country, they had to sign documents confessing that they were social deviants and had committed crimes against the state. With one

signature, decent, hardworking citizens established fictional records as burglars, arsonists, murderers, rapists, and CIA agents. At the pier, officials forced them to

board any available boat, but not before taking away all their personal belongings: money, suitcases, jewelry, wedding rings, and even address books with the names

and phone numbers of relatives living in exile. By the time they arrived at Key West, the refugees were sunburned, frightened,

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weak from illness or malnutrition, and without any personal belongings or documentation.

Many Cubans, knowing that the government expedited the exit papers of criminals, went to police stations to register as prostitutes and delinquents. Others were

forced to leave whether they wanted to or not. ”I had a neighbor whose husband was expelled via Mariel,” said one Cuban, “and she never found out until he

contacted her from the United States.” She added:

If you were willing to leave your house, all furnished, to the government, then sometimes they let you leave. I have some friends who had a very beautiful house. They told her

that she had to leave. When she said that she couldn’t, because her husband was in prison [as a counterrevolutionary], they told her that they were transporting her husband

directly from prison to Mariel. They lied! She later had to purchase his freedom through Panama. They told her that so she would leave her house.
67

A number of the refugees had either physical or mental disabilities. An estimated fifteen hundred had mental health problems or were mentally retarded; five hundred of

these were judged to need longterm institutionalization, while another five hundred were eventually placed in halfway houses.68 Exact numbers were hard to

determine, since spouses and children often hid or covered for their mentally ill relatives for fear that they would all be sent back to Cuba.69 An estimated sixteen

hundred had chronic medical problems such as drug and alcohol abuse, tuberculosis, or cardiovascular disease. Four had Hansen’s disease (leprosy). To meet the

health care needs of the camp residents, each camp maintained hospital wards, including psychiatric care units.

Most distressing to U.S. officials, however, was the discovery that thousands of the Mariel emigrants—twentysix thousand by the end of the boatlift—had criminal

records. (One of the Cubans who arrived at Key West had been responsible for hijacking a U.S. airline to Cuba a few years earlier.) Estimates varied, but of these

twentysix thousand approximately two thousand had committed serious felonies in Cuba. Most of these were sent to the Federal Correctional Institution at Talladega,

Alabama, for further screening and possible exclusion.70 The majority of the offenders, however, had served time for lesser crimes. Under Cuba’s ley de peligrosidad

(law of dangerousness), Cubans could be incarcerated for such offenses as alcoholism, gambling, drug addiction, homosexuality, prostitution, “extravagant behavior,”

vagrancy, and dealing on the black market. Many of the “criminals” fell under this

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category; they had served terms ranging from a few months to a few years at a work farm. Others had served time for political crimes—longer terms, usually, some up

to two decades in a maximum security prison. Still others had been jailed for refusing to conform to revolutionary norms: these included members of religious groups

such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh Day Adventists which discouraged military participation, as well as draft dodgers and conscientious objectors to the

war in Africa.

Unfortunately, the American press focused an exaggerated amount of attention on those with mental disabilities and on the hardcore felons. While the latter constituted

less than 4 percent of the total number of entrants, they commanded almost all of the media attention. Few journalists ever mentioned the fact that up to 80 percent of

the Mariel Cubans had no criminal history, nor did they mention that many of those who had served time in prison did so for crimes not recognized in the United

States. Instead, they focused on the disturbing details of Castro’s plan to rid the island of undesirables. Newspapers printed story after story of how the Cuban

government rounded up the criminals and “social deviants,” transported them to Mariel, and forced them to board the boats. Most of the stories were highly

sensationalistic and based on rumor rather than fact. The Washington Post, for example, including homosexuals in its list of “deviants,” reported that up to twenty

thousand of the Cubans were homosexuals (the actual number was closer to one thousand). 71 Such sensationalism gave Americans a warped view of the new

immigrants, and the Cubans of Mariel ultimately suffered for it.

The shift in public perception of the Cubans came abruptly. Most Americans initially sympathized with the plight of the Cubans: stories of the refugees’ courage at the

Peruvian embassy provided the only heartening news in a year of gloomy headlines, and Americans applauded their defiance of the Castro regime. Around the

country, editorials in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and other major newspapers urged the federal government to extend humanitarian assistance to

the refugees and to grant them political asylum. The Carter administration shared this perspective. In a speech before the League of Women Voters in Philadelphia on

May 3, President Carter reiterated his strong support for human rights in Latin America and declared that the United States would provide “an open heart and open

arms” to the people fleeing from Cuba.72

This spirit of generosity waned as the boatlift dragged on for weeks. Over eighty thousand Cubans entered the United States in just one

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month—more than had come in any previous year of Cuban immigration. 73 Enthusiasm quickly faded as Americans comprehended the burden these refugees would

place on state and federal resources, especially during the economic recession. Letters once again swamped the White House urging Carter to do something. While

Americans applauded the Cubans’ struggle for political freedom, they did not necessarily want the Cubans to exercise that freedom in the United States. The discovery

of the criminal element, however, proved to be the principal factor in turning public opinion against the boatlift. Americans perceived the boatlift as an act of aggression

against the United States. They resented being used as the dumping ground for Cuba’s social deviants and called on their legislators to expel the criminals and end the

boatlift once and for all.74

In south Florida, local residents had already witnessed the arrival of more than half a million Cuban refugees during the past twenty years, and they were unhappy with

the prospect of thousands more. News of the criminal element only fueled the fear and anger in the community. A Miami Herald poll revealed that 68 percent of non

Hispanic whites and 57 percent of blacks in Dade County regarded the Mariel boatlift as detrimental to their community and to the United States.75 The feelings of

discontent became evident during the first week of May, when riots broke out in a predominantly black neighborhood in Miami known as Liberty City. Although the

riots erupted as a result of the acquittal of the four white police officers responsible for the fatal beating of a local black businessman, the Mariel boatlift only

heightened the racial tension. For many blacks, the boatlift proved yet again that their needs and concerns were secondary to those of foreignborn immigrants.

Oddly enough, though, some of the more extreme reactions came from parts of the country that had little or no contact with Cuban immigration. Colorado Governor

Richard Lamm publicly announced that he did not want any Cubans resettled to his state, and Senator Donald Stewart of Alabama didn’t even want Cuban detainees

sent to the federal correctional institution at Talladega.76 Families and church groups around the country canceled their offers of sponsorship, and some communities

signed petitions to have resettlement camps banned from their city. Capitalizing on the hysteria, the Ku Klux Klan staged marches and demonstrations across the

nation—most noticeably in Ft. Walton Beach, Florida, home to one of the temporary camps.

Americans accused the Carter administration of dealing ineptly with the crisis. How could a small nation like Cuba take such obvious advantage

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of the United States? And why did the federal government allow the emigrés in south Florida to dictate immigration policy? The issue of his leadership haunted the

president later that electoral year. In all likelihood, the administration failed to deal decisively with the crisis during the first days of the boatlift simply because it did not

know what to do. As one White House statement reported, “Our laws never contemplated and [did] not provide adequately for people coming to our shores in the

manner that the Cubans … have.” 77 Never before had a neighboring country imposed such a largescale migration on the United States, and never before had

thousands of Americans rushed out to help. In the first week of the boatlift, no attempt was made to block the boats going to Cuba; the administration did not want to

cut off the Cubans’ only opportunity for emigration. But as the boatlift entered its second week and the number of arrivals reached the tens of thousands, the

government was forced to consider other options.

A tripartite group consisting of the United States, Costa Rica, and Great Britain tried to negotiate a more orderly migration.78 The Carter administration proposed a

new series of airlifts or sealifts similar to the freedom flights of the late 1960s lasting approximately twelve months. In order to weed out undesirables, Carter proposed

that the Cubans be screened in Cuba, with preference given to political prisoners and close relatives of U.S. citizens, in line with current U.S. immigration policy.

Beginning on May 15, the federal government established registration offices in Miami, where Cuban emigrés who were citizens or permanent residents could register

the names of family members they wished to bring out of Cuba. Within the first twentyfour hours, close to ten thousand emigrés arrived at the various offices to

register relatives.79 The government chartered two large ships and stationed them in Key West, waiting for the Cuban government to give the goahead. On May 23,

the Cuban government officially rejected the proposal, calling it “an international attempt to meddle in Cuba’s internal affairs.”80

Over the next several weeks, the U.S. continued to pressure the Cuban government, and in the meantime Carter called upon the Cuban emigré community to end the

boatlift. The U.S. Coast Guard increased its patrol teams off the Florida coast and warned all captains of outgoing vessels that those caught transporting Cubans

illegally would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law: their boats would be seized and they would be fined up to one thousand dollars for each Cuban brought to

the United States without a proper visa. Warnings were also sent by radio to the ships already in Cuban waters, and although the Cuban

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government attempted to jam the marine frequency the messages got through on commercial radio stations, and some ships returned before the Cuban authorities

could hold them and load them with passengers. While the warnings deterred some emigrés, others paid no heed. Many were willing to pay any price to get their

families out of Cuba. They left spouses or children behind at Key West with cash in hand, ready to pay their fines once they safely returned home. Over the next few

months, the U.S. Customs Service seized over one thousand boats, and the INS issued more than fifteen hundred notices of intent to issue fines. 81 One of the largest

ships confiscated was the Ruby Diamond, a freighter of Panamanian registry chartered by Cuban Americans, which brought 731 Cubans to Key West. By the end of

the summer, the stricter policy had reduced the flow from thirteen thousand a week to less than seven hundred.82 The Cuban government finally closed the port of

Mariel to further emigration on September 25 and the last boat arrived in Key West four days later, by which time more than 124,000 Cubans had made it to the

United States.

Profile of the New Immigrants

The Cubans of Mariel were substantially different from those who arrived during the 1960s. They were about ten years younger, averaging thirty years of age. There

were more blacks and mulattoes among them (from 15 to 40 percent, compared to 3 percent of the 1959–73 migration), and they reflected a wider geographic

distribution.83 This migration was also almost 70 percent male;84 many of the new immigrants were men who had been prohibited from leaving Cuba during the 1960s

because of military conscription. Despite these demographic differences, though, the Cubans of Mariel had much in common with the workingclass Cubans of the

freedom flights, especially in their occupational history: they were predominantly craftworkers and factory operators, or professional and technical workers.85 In

education they rated slightly higher, having completed more years of schooling than their earlier workingclass compatriots.86

The Mariel migration was most distinctive, however, in the way it was perceived by the federal government and the larger society. Unlike the Cubans who immigrated

from 1959 to 1973—and unlike the Cubans in the Peruvian embassy—the Cubans of Mariel were not considered

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legitimate refugees. Although the overwhelming majority cited political reasons for their emigration, and administration officials commonly referred to them as “refugees”

in interdepartmental correspondence, the Carter administration determined that under the terms of the 1980 U.S. Refugee Act (which went into effect in March) the

Cubans did not qualify for refugee status or the special assistance it entitled them to receive. 87 The U.S. government had traditionally defined refugees as persons

fleeing from countries ideologically opposed to the United States; Mariel marked the first time since the Cold War began that the government denied refugee status to

individuals emigrating from a communist state. Instead, the government labelled the Cubans with the rather ambiguous term “entrant,” which allowed them to remain

temporarily in the United States until a more permanent status—if any—could be defined.88

Political considerations weighed heavily in this new policy. The Mariel Cubans arrived during a time when Americans were generally less sympathetic to the plight of

immigrants, having taken in over the past decade thousands of people displaced by war, revolution, or persecution in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, the Soviet

Union, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. More significantly, the Cubans arrived during an economic recession, when news of oil embargoes, high

unemployment, and high interest rates dominated the news. Most Americans viewed the Cubans as burdens on the national economy and as competitors for jobs, and

they resented the money ($400 million by August) the government was spending to assist and resettle the Cubans and the Haitians arriving at the same time.89

Carter, whose popularity had dropped drastically in the polls, did not wish to alienate his constituents further in the middle of an election year. The Cubans’ “entrant”

status was a political compromise, a resolution that allowed the U.S. to symbolically uphold its open door policy while appearing to take a harsher stand against illegal

immigration. However, while the Cubans were not entitled to benefits under the Refugee Act of 1980, limited financial assistance was authorized through other

measures.90 In October 1980, the Refugee Education Assistance Act, with an amendment introduced by Florida congressman Dante Fascell and Senator Richard

Stone, allowed the Cubans to receive the same benefits as refugees under the Refugee Act of 1980. The Cubans became eligible for such federal programs as Aid to

Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), and Medicaid and

Food Stamps.

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Under the FascellStone amendment, the states were also eligible for 100 percent reimbursement for all social services, education, and health care benefits provided to

the “entrants.”

No amount of legislation could change public opinion, however, and the Mariel Cubans remained the most stigmatized group of immigrants in recent history. No

articles or editorials praised their patriotism, their democratic spirit, or their Horatio Alger drive to succeed. Instead, they were described as troublemakers, criminals,

and opportunists who took the place of more worthy immigrants. 91 Miami mayor Maurice Ferre complained that Castro had “flushed these people on to us.”92 The

president’s mother, Lillian Carter, said to reporters, “I’ll tell you the truth, I hope they don’t come to Plains.” When the federal government announced that Fort Allen in

Puerto Rico was to become a processing center for up to five thousand of the Cuban and Haitian refugees, Puerto Ricans responded angrily, and the White House

had to assure the governor that the refugees would not be allowed to leave the camp and that they would not be resettled on the island.93 Despite these assurances,

Puerto Rico tried to block the move with various measures, including three civil lawsuits, a “cease and desist” order by Puerto Rico’s Environmental Control Board,

and a federal restraining order.94 The issue was only resolved in November 1980, when the U.S. Supreme Court took action to allow the federal government to use

Fort Allen. As a compromise, the government announced a month later that Fort Allen would be used only to process Haitian refugees.

The Cubans’ image worsened during the summer of 1980, when Cubans rioted at three of the resettlement camps to protest their incarceration.95 At Fort Chaffee,

Arkansas, the site of the worst rebellion, some one thousand Cubans rioted, resulting in the injury of forty Cubans and fifteen policemen. Two buildings were burned,

and police had to use tear gas to disperse the rioters. Eightyfour Cubans were subsequently arrested. The riots drew frontpage coverage, and over the next several

weeks many stories followed in the press about the criminal environment that had developed at the camps: gang fights, prostitution rings, rapes and stabbings, liquor

stills and contraband, homemade firearms. People living near the camps organized themselves into vigilante committees to protect their communities. The press usually

failed to mention, however, that the troublemakers were a small fraction of the camp population; those arrested for rioting and other incidents at Fort Chaffee, for

example, comprised less than 2 percent of the eighteen thousand immigrants processed there. The negative publicity only heightened the animosity toward the Cubans,

and diminished the pool

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of sponsors for those who remained in the camps—which, in turn, prolonged their detention and increased their frustration. 96

By November, 1,769 Cubans—approximately 1.4 percent of the boatlift population—were being detained in federal correctional institutions to await exclusionary

hearings.97 In the minds of most Americans, however, the Cubans of Mariel were all “excludable.” Offers of sponsorship came slowly, since most Americans feared

bringing home a felon. While federal officials detained all those who posed an obvious threat to society, they readily admitted that the screening process was not

infallible. To prevent large backups in Key West and at the processing centers, Cubans were not given as thorough an interview as ordinarily required under normal

immigration procedures. The press reported at least one incident of a woman raped and murdered by the man she sponsored.98 Thousands of Cubans reportedly

roamed the streets homeless.99 Some Cubans, unable to adjust to life in the U.S., turned to burglary and theft, and crime statistics rose in many communities where the

Cubans settled. In Miami, crime rose 66 percent in 1980, and over a third of those convicted of murder were Mariel Cubans. Nine hijackings took place in August

and September, six of them in one fiveday period.100 The White House eventually asked the Public Health Service and the INS to conduct followup investigations

of the earlier arrivals who had been released to sponsors to determine if their criminal or mental health histories had gone unreported.101

Understandably, most Americans preferred not to endanger their families or their neighborhoods by sponsoring a Cuban refugee. The camp population would have

been difficult to resettle even without the negative press, because they did not fit the typical refugee profile. Most Americans preferred to sponsor women, children, or

entire families, but the majority of the camp residents were young single men, and over half were black. Many were unskilled and uneducated, with a history of

vagrancy, and up to sixteen percent had spent some time in prison.102 Their chances of finding and keeping employment during these hard economic times were slim,

and most Americans did not want to be burdened with their financial care. In addition, the Cubans had to compete for sponsorship with immigrants from many other

countries, including the more than fourteen thousand Southeast Asian refugees who were arriving in the United States each month.103

In many respects, the reaction of the Cuban emigré community paralleled that of the larger society. Emigrés were initially sympathetic to their compatriots, pooling their

resources to assist the new immigrants in their adaptation to the United States. By the end of April, the emigré

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community of Dade County had raised over $2 million to assist the new refugees in their immediate needs, and the emigré communities of Puerto Rico, Union City,

Chicago, Los Angeles, and Houston had established their own fundraising efforts. Spanishlanguage radio stations in Miami broadcast aroundtheclock news updates

on the exodus and organized radio maratóns to find jobs and sponsors for the Cubans. The Spanish International Network (now Univisión) followed suit with a

nationally televised telethon. More significant were the personal demonstrations of concern and generosity. Every day emigrés arrived at the temporary camps with

carloads of clothing, food, medicines, blankets, radios and television sets, cots, and mattresses; some emigrés even donated cars and house trailers. Local restaurants,

hamburger franchises, and bakeries donated cartons of food, and families prepared large pots of arroz moro (black beans and rice) or arroz con pollo (chicken and

rice) to serve to the Cubans in the camps. By May I more than two hundred doctors and nurses had traveled to Key West to volunteer their services, 104 and over

the next few months, many more donated their time either in Key West or in the camps in Miami. The Little Havana Community Center provided the refugees with

counseling and information on job training programs and housing.

Having been through their own problems of adjustment and accommodation years earlier, emigrés felt a moral duty toward the new immigrants. Currents of fear,

however, ran beneath these feelings of obligation. Between the Mariel Cubans and those who had emigrated in the early days of the revolution lay twenty years of

social and ideological differences, and the older emigrés worried that the Mariel generation, raised under a socialist and authoritarian regime, would never adapt to

democratic institutions and free enterprise. The new immigrants, they feared, would never fit into their community; they were too different; they spoke and dressed

differently. Some of them had Russian or Eastern European names. Some older emigrés even worried that the new immigrants might be spies. Over the past two

decades, hundreds of intelligence operatives had reportedly infiltrated the emigré community to spy on antiCastro activities and terrorize the community, and the

boatlift provided Castro with the perfect guise under which to get more of his agents into the U.S.105

The emigrés’ worst fears became reality when news of the criminal records of some of the refugees broke out—news which, like the rest of the nation, they accepted

unquestioningly. Unlike many Americans, however, they did not call for an end to the boatlift, since the boatlift provided the only opportunity for family reunification.

But the negative

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publicity affected their community, and ultimately their relationship with the new immigrants. The emigrés took great care to distinguish themselves from the new

immigrants. They coined a special term for them—marielitos—which quickly became a pejorative in the community. As fear spread, emigrés became reluctant to

sponsor the Cubans and even to offer them jobs. The new immigrants never expected such behavior from their compatriots, and many Cubans complained that they

encountered more discrimination within the emigré community than from Americans as a whole.

The Cuban government took great pleasure in reporting the difficulties the “parasites” encountered in the United States. Each week, beneath the latest emigration

statistics, Granma printed translations of stories from the Associated Press and United Press International about Americans’ negative reactions to the immigrants. 106

Granma also printed accounts of the camps, the riots, and especially the hostility within the emigré community, gloating over the number of criminals the U.S.

government detained and using these figures to support the government’s claims that the emigrés were lumpen. By July, several dozen refugees had found life

unbearable in the United States and had asked to return to Cuba, and the editors capitalized on this news.107 While celebrating the departure of the lumpen, the

Cuban government sought to discourage further emigration.

As Americans debated the pros and cons of Carter’s immigration policy, thousands of Cubans waited anxiously in the resettlement camps for the government to

determine their future.108 Twentytwo nations agreed to assist the United States in finding homes for the Cubans, but by the end of 1980, only three countries—

Venezuela, Argentina, and Australia—had taken in even a small number.109 Attempts were made to resettle the Cubans around the country, but approximately 73

percent stayed in the state of Florida, and of these, 75 percent (or 54 percent of all immigrants) found homes and jobs in the Dade County/Miami area. New Jersey

and New York, two states with large Cuban populations, ranked second and third in the number of resettlements, with 6 percent and 5.5 percent respectively.110

California (4.3 percent), Illinois (1.5 percent), and Texas (1.2 percent) were next on the list. By midOctober 1980, there were still 8,516 Cubans awaiting

resettlement at various processing camps, and they were ultimately consolidated at Fort Chaffee, where most remained for several more months.

The administration sent note after note condemning Cuba’s dumping of hardcore criminals and requesting that Castro take back the detainees; all went unanswered.

Forcible deportation was ruled out because it

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might provoke a military confrontation with Cuba and would ultimately make the United States appear weak. The Carter administration considered various options,

including bringing action against the Cuban government in the World Court, confining the detainees on a remote U.S.—owned island or some “abandoned outofthe

way” military facility, or housing the detainees at the Guantánamo naval base. 111 None were acted upon.

The Aftermath of Mariel: The Next Fourteen Years

In 1984, the Reagan administration and the Castro government signed a new immigration accord. Beginning in 1985, up to twenty thousand Cubans per year could

now immigrate to the United States; in return, the Cuban government agreed to take back 2,746 criminals and mentally ill detainees of the Mariel boatlift.

As expected, nonCuban residents of south Florida were strongly against the immigration accords. Despite resettlement efforts, most Cuban immigrants had returned

to live in Dade County. Over one hundred thousand Mariel Cubans settled in south Florida in less than five years, and during the same period tens of thousands of

immigrants from Haiti, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Mexico, and Colombia also settled in the area. State legislators warned the Reagan administration that their state could

not take in the new immigrants without massive federal assistance; the state did not have the jobs, schools, or social services to accommodate twenty thousand people

each year. Furthermore, the federal government still owed the state over $150 million for social services provided in the wake of the boatlift.112

State leaders also warned that ethnic and racial relations would worsen under the burden of renewed immigration from Cuba. AntiCuban sentiment was already

evident in November 1980, when voters repealed the BilingualBicultural Ordinance (originally passed in 1973) and made it unlawful to use county funds “for the

purpose of utilizing any language other than English, or promoting any culture other than that of the United States.”113 A disc jockey at a local radio station initiated a

letterwriting campaign called SOS (“Save Our South Florida”) to ask the president to repeal the accords. One of the most popular bumper stickers sold in Miami

read “Will the last American out of south Florida

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please bring the flag?” The public outcry subsided in May 1985, however, when the Cuban government suddenly suspended the immigration accords. Infuriated by the

Reagan administration’s installation of Radio Martí (discussed in chapter 4), Castro retaliated by refusing to take back any more prisoners. By then, only 201 Mariel

detainees had been repatriated to Cuba.

The situation called attention to the state of limbo in which Mariel detainees still lived. Cubans who had had their immigration parole status revoked were held in

federal custody indefinitely to await deportation. By March 1986, federal authorities held close to two thousand Cubans in the Atlanta federal penitentiary and another

seven hundred in prisons and detention centers around the country. 114 Of these, 1,769 had been detained upon arrival, but the rest had committed crimes in the U.S.

and had had their parole status revoked. Another five thousand Cubans were serving terms in local jails and state prisons, and upon the completion of their sentences

they were scheduled to be handed over into federal custody to await deportation. Some were detained for minor offenses like drunkenness, trespassing, failing to pay

traffic tickets, violating the rules of their halfway houses, even food stamp fraud. The majority, however, had committed serious crimes in the United States, from drug

trafficking to assault and armed robbery.115

The Cuban population at the Atlanta federal penitentiary already demonstrated dangerously high stress levels; nine homicides, seven suicides, four hundred

“unsuccessful but serious suicide attempts,” and more than two thousand attempts at selfmutilation had been recorded among them.116 With little chance for freedom

either in the United States or in Cuba, the Cubans felt increasingly hopeless. The U.S. government was spending up to $40 million a year to keep these individuals

detained. Civil rights activists charged that holding the Cubans indefinitely after their prison terms were completed constituted a violation of their civil rights. They filed

lawsuits on the detainees’ behalf and urged the Justice Department to begin a casebycase review of their records, if not for humane reasons then for prison control.

In 1981, Atlanta Federal Judge Marvin H. Shoob ruled that the Cubans could not be indefinitely detained and were entitled to due process. The federal government

disagreed, however, claiming that since the Cubans had arrived in the United States without proper papers they were not in the United States legally and therefore

were not entitled to due process. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in support of U.S. policy,117 and in 1986 the Supreme Court agreed, stating that aliens

convicted of

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crimes in the United States were not entitled to constitutional due process.

Further lobbying continued over the next two years, bringing together an unlikely coalition of activists from the American Civil Liberties Union and the conservative

Cuban exile community. Friends and families of the detainees created their own organizations, such as the Comisión Pro Justicia para los presos Cubanos del Mariel,

to lobby on their relatives’ behalf and to mobilize the emigré community. The latter proved especially difficult, however. While emigrés readily defended the human

rights of political prisoners in Cuba, most preferred to remain ignorant of the prison conditions in Atlanta. Still reeling from the boatlift’s damage to its image, the

community preferred not to become embroiled in controversy once again, or to become too closely associated with the riffraff in the prisons.

To increase pressure on the Reagan administration, the ACLU charged the United States with human rights abuses and petitioned the Organization of American States

to intervene on the prisoners’ behalf. 118 By 1987, several legislators had rallied to the cause and had succeeded in persuading the Justice Department and the INS to

begin hearings on a casebycase basis.119

The problem became critical in November 1987, when the Cuban government once again agreed to accept the Mariel detainees. On November 21, one thousand

Cuban inmates rioted in protest at the federal detention center in Oakdale, Louisiana. The inmates set fire to four buildings, injuring dozens of prison employees and

inmates, and took twentyeight people hostage. Two days later, three hundred detainees at the Atlanta federal penitentiary followed suit, setting fire to three buildings

and taking ninetyfour people hostage. The inmates at both prisons demanded that they be allowed to remain in the United States and that their cases be reviewed

individually before a parole board.

During the following week, federal officials tried to negotiate with the Cuban inmates. The situation was tragic: a group of foreign, non–Englishspeaking inmates,

imprisoned in the Deep South, holding hostages to guarantee an uncertain future in the United States. Hundreds of people mobbed the entrance to the prisons each

day. Relatives held nightly prayer vigils outside the gates and spoke to their loved ones through loudspeakers. From time to time, the inmates at the Atlanta penitentiary

allowed news reporters inside the compound to interview prisoners and hear their demands. Photographers and cameramen with zoom lenses captured poignant

scenes of inmates standing at the barred

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windows, waving small American flags and holding banners that read “Please let me stay in America.” 120

The inmates’ willingness to remain in prison rather than return to Cuba won for them the support of the emigré community, since it provided yet another opportunity to

discredit the Castro government. After seven years of apathy, the community now rallied to the prisoners’ side. Prominent Cuban exiles, including Xavier Suarez, the

mayor of Miami, traveled to Atlanta and Oakdale to assist in the negotiations. Cuban exile spokesmen argued that the marielitos should not be sent to Cuba against

their will.

Of all the people who became involved in the negotiations, only one person secured the trust of the inmates: Rev. Agustín Román, the Cuban Auxiliary Bishop of the

Archdiocese of Miami. Oakdale inmates specifically demanded that Bishop Román represent their interests and suspended all talks until Justice Department officials

granted him a role in the negotiations.121 Over the next several days, Román traveled from city to city acting as mediator, interpreter, priest, and confessor. Finally, on

November 29, the Oakdale inmates threw down their homemade weapons and released all their hostages. The following week, Román succeeded in convincing the

inmates at the Atlanta penitentiary to lay down their weapons as well, earning him ABC News’s designation of “Person of the Week.”

As part of the negotiations, the Justice Department agreed that no reprisals would be made against the inmates who took part in the siege and promised them a “full,

fair, and equitable” consideration of their pleas to remain in the United States. The government established a special panel to review each case, and Cuban American

leaders formed a coalition, headed by Román, to defend the inmates’ interests over the course of the deliberations. The nine hundred Cubans approved for parole

before the riots erupted were released over the next few months, and the government began a review process for the others, which dragged on for several years. As it

reviewed each case, however, the INS carefully dispersed the detainees to dozens of prisons around the country to prevent another riot.122 By 1991, approximately

sixteen hundred prisoners had been paroled and four hundred deported. Amazingly, the Cuban government gave these returning gusanos a hero’s welcome and

released them into the general population.123

The prison riots were just part of a series of events during the 1980s that focused more negative publicity on the Mariel immigrants. Crimes involving Mariel Cubans

usually drew heavy media attention. The

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television and film industries capitalized on anger and resentment, portraying Cubans as drug dealers, pimps, and psychopaths. Nowhere were the stereotypes plainer

than in Universal Studios’ 1983 remake of Scarface, directed by Brian DePalma, in which the mobster made famous by James Cagney became a marielito cocaine

king, played by Al Pacino. Cubans in Miami expressed their outrage even before the movie was filmed; City Commissioner Demetrio Pérez tried (unsuccessfully) to

get the city government to prohibit DePalma from filming in Miami. To combat the negative images that now dominated the media, emigrés in Miami founded Facts

about Cuban Exiles (FACE) in 1982. Like the NAACP, LULAC, and other minority rights groups, FACE’s goal was to educate Americans about the emigré

community through conferences and publications and to celebrate the Cubans’ accomplishments.

Fear of another boatlift was a lasting legacy of Mariel. South Floridians lived with the knowledge that Castro could at any moment allow another largescale migration,

and rumors of a new boatlift periodically circulated in Miami. Throughout the 1980s, the Miami Herald regularly interviewed sociologists and political scientists for

their “migration forecasts”: analyses of social and economic conditions in Cuba that might foster another migration. 124 In 1983, the federal government and the state of

Florida compiled a list of emergency procedures called Operation Distant Shore to follow in case of such an event.125 The plan called for, among other measures, a

naval blockade by U.S. warships of the south Florida coast to prevent another boatlift.

By the early 1990s, another boatlift seemed very possible. Following the “Velvet Revolution” in Eastern Europe and the dismantling of the Soviet Union, Cuba found

itself isolated politically and economically. Its former Latin American allies now pressured the Castro government to institute democratic reforms, and the United States

tightened its trade embargo with the passage of the Cuban Democracy Act. More significantly, a number of human rights and dissident groups emerged on the island

to call for reforms, and even members of Castro’s own government began advocating reform. With Cuban society in crisis, the Castro government sought ways to

ease domestic pressure.

The number of Cubans who emigrated clandestinely on rafts and small boats increased dramatically. In 1990, 467 balseros were picked up by the Coast Guard; but

every year the numbers multiplied.126 An emigré organization called Hermanos al Rescate (Brothers to the Rescue) was founded specifically to patrol the Florida

Straits by helicopter and assist the Coast Guard with rescue missions.

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From January 1 to August 15 of 1994, more than sixtytwo hundred rafters were picked up. 127 After a series of antigovernment demonstrations in Havana in mid

August turned violent, an angry Fidel Castro announced that the government was considering allowing another mass emigration.128 The Clinton administration quickly

warned Cuba that the U.S. would not permit another boatlift like that which occurred in 1980, and warned that the U.S. was prepared to impose a naval blockade of

the island if Castro tried to launch another boatlift. At the same time, federal officials warned the emigré community that another boatlift would not be permitted. Cuban

American leaders cooperated with federal government and advised the community to be prudent, reminding them that another boatlift would only help Castro stay in

power.

The Cuban government was then forced to change its game plan: the Cuban Coast Guard was instructed not to detain those who left on the rafts. The government

could not lure emigrés to transport people off the island, but it could encourage the discontented to leave by their own means. As rumors spread through the country

that they were free to leave, thousands of Cubans set off on homemade rafts from Cojímar, Mariel, and other beaches and ports. The change in Cuban policy was

calculated to ease domestic pressure but also to bring the United States to the bargaining table. Cuban officials hoped that Americans would reevaluate the legitimacy

of their thirtytwoyearold trade embargo against Cuba; at the very least, the crisis might force the Clinton administration to negotiate another immigration accord.

In a reversal of three decades of U.S. policy, on August 18 the Clinton administration announced that Cubans picked up by the U.S. Coast Guard would no longer be

brought to the United States. Rather, they would go to the Guantánamo naval base in Cuba or other safe havens around the Caribbean. They had no chance for parole

status and would remain at these camps indefinitely until they were accepted by a third country or Castro allowed them to return. This announcement, however, did

little to dissuade the balseros. Two days later, in order to pressure the Cuban government to restrict illegal emigration, the administration announced that the sending of

U.S. dollars to relatives on the island was once again prohibited, and charter air traffic from Miami to Cuba was canceled. (Both were important sources of income for

Cuba in the post–Cold War era.) Still, the balseros kept coming. By the end of August, over 17,000 Cubans had arrived.

Beginning on September 1, 1994, representatives of the U.S. and Cuban governments held a series of meetings in New York, Washington,

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and Havana to try to resolve the crisis once and for all. Despite the Cuban representatives’ attempts to negotiate an end to the U.S. trade embargo, the U.S.

government refused to concede. Finally, on September 9, the governments reached an agreement: the U.S. would accept a minimum of twenty thousand new

immigrants each year, not including the immediate relatives of United States citizens, and in turn the Cuban government agreed to restrict illegal emigration. As an

additional measure, the United States agreed to accept during the next oneyear period all qualified Cuban nationals in Cuba currently on the immigrant visa waiting

list, and Cuba agreed to continue to discuss the return of Cuban nationals excludable from the United States. 129 The Cubans held at Guantánamo and Panama had

the option of either returning to Cuba and applying for visas at the U.S. Interests Section or relocating to safe havens around the Caribbean. In the fall of 1994, then, a

fourth Cuban migration was under way.

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