And Justice for All?

Chapter 3 analyzes African-American responses to the Mariel boatlift in the Miami Times, a local black newspaper. The boatlift immediately followed the McDuffie Riot, an African-American uprising against the latest incident of police brutality. As the local government turned their attention to the large Cuban influx, some African-Americans feared Miami’s white dominant infrastructure would continue to ignore their concerns. The chapter reveals that the Times endorsed the idea that blacks and white Anglo were the “real Americans” and that Cubans, constructed as white, were receiving preferential treatment over black Haitian migrants. The chapter argues that the seeming disdain for Cuban immigration was a symptom of a pressing desire to challenge white supremacy and promote greater equality for all blacks in U.S. culture. However, the larger presence of Afro-Cubans among the new Cuban refugees forced African-Americans to reexamine modes of solidarity that decide group membership according to a black/white racial frame.

Cuban Immigration to the United States

After more than a century of sporadic immigration from the island of Cuba to the United States, the trajectory of the diaspora accelerated steeply, beginning with Fidel Castro coming to power in 1959. In the ensuing years, as bilateral relations between the Communist regime in Havana and the administrations of President Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy soured and the exodus of upper-class, then middle-class, Cubans increased until Castro clamped down on it. Thereafter, the pace of departures became episodic, involving mainly working-class people, and their nature turned increasingly desperate. Three major immigration events punctuated the next 30 years: in 1965 from the port of Camarioca, in 1980 from the bay city of Mariel, and, again in 1994, a more general wave of flight that also heavily involved the port of Mariel. These bursts of seaborne migration came against a backdrop of constant, low-level, individual efforts to flee adverse circumstances in Castro’s Cuba. These include manifold political pressures, with opponents of the regime and cultural nonconformists alike facing harassment and imprisonment; as well as other severe economic challenges, with food scarcity, fuel shortages, and unreliable electric power making daily life difficult for the vast majority of Cuban citizens. U.S. opposition to Castro has taken many forms, beginning with economic sanctions. A complete break in relations followed in early 1961, an invasion attempt at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961, and, later, a Central Intelligence Agency–sponsored campaign of terrorist attacks and assassination attempts code-named Operation Mongoose. Since the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, a nearly complete embargo has prevented any sort of trade or tourism. In response to the influx of new Cuban arrivals, U.S. policy toward the immigrants themselves altered radically, facilitating their arrival and assimilation as political refugees until August 1994, then actively preventing their entry as economic refugees, until this writing.

Revolution in the Air

Chapter Three explores Cuba’s image within the U.S. radical imaginary through the surge of airplane hijackings that occurred from the U.S. to Cuba between 1968 and 1973. Seeking political asylum, sanctuary from criminal charges, contact with Third World revolutionary movements, and apolitical adventure, Americans who hijacked airplanes to Cuba often framed air piracy as an act of political protest. Cuban immigration officials were not always convinced, however, viewing many hijackers as criminals, not revolutionaries. Making ninety attempts to reach Cuba in commandeered aircraft, American air pirates ultimately forced the U.S. and Cuban governments into unprecedented high-level negotiations despite the nations’ lack of diplomatic relations. Viewing hijacking as a liability, the Cuban government moved to counter its outlaw mystique in the American popular imagination, with the two governments signing a bilateral agreement to curb hijacking in 1973.

Latinos and Latinas: Cubans

In 2004, an estimated 1,614,000 individuals of Cuban origin were residing in the United States, placing Cubans as the third largest Hispanic ethnic group in the United States, constituting ∼4% of the nation's Hispanic population. 84.1% of the Cuban-American population is concentrated in four states: Florida (67.1%), New Jersey (6.2%), California (5.8%), and New York (5.0%). Although Cuban immigration to the United States dates back to the mid-1800s, 68.5% of Cuban Americans are foreign-born and, as a group, represent a wide spectrum of social realities and political interests.