Cuban success story

Last updated
Cuban businesses in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami (1978), home of the mythologized successful Cuban American business sector. Corner bakery in Little Havana - Miami.jpg
Cuban businesses in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami (1978), home of the mythologized successful Cuban American business sector.

The Cuban success story or sometimes referred to as the myth of the golden exile, is the idea that Cuban exiles that came to the United States after the 1959 Cuban Revolution were mostly or exclusively political exiles who were white, largely conservative, and financially successful. The idea garnered traction starting in the 1960s via rags-to-riches stories of Cuban exiles in the US news media, and became widely promoted within the Cuban American community. The idea has been criticized as an inaccurate depiction of Cuban Americans that ignores historical fact. [1] [2]

Contents

History

1960s

In the years 1959 to 1962 various Cuban exiles would leave the island and become referred to as "golden exiles". Most of the exiles in this period were staunchly anti-communist and upper-class who were successful under the regime of Fulgencio Batista and were fleeing the dangers of the successful Cuban Revolution. During the early exodus the US government and national media began promoting an image of the exiles as an exceptional people worthy of Americans' sympathy, and birthed the idea of the Cuban success story. [3] Despite the original upper-class character of many of the first exiles after the Bay of Pigs Invasion of 1961 many unprofessional laborers and clerical workers began to join the exodus from Cuba. Despite the financially successful character of many of the early exiles they often had trouble continuing their professional careers in the United States and often faced economic downturn. By the later Cuban emigration wave starting in 1965 many of the Cuban emigrants were increasingly unskilled workers and from outside the capital of Havana. [4]

Reports about the rising financial success of Cuban exiles became popular in the US media, around the same time as the growth of the African American civil rights movement. This growing image of Cuban Americans as a model minority was often used in Miami to shame African Americans. The image of the successful Cuban was used as an example to demonstrate the ease of rising from poverty and that poverty faced by African Americans was self-inflicted. [5] African American civil rights leaders often lamented that Cuban refugees received undeserved government benefits that were unfairly not granted to African Americans. In Miami some African Americans complained that incoming Cuban refugees were also competing with them in the newly desegregated job market. [6]

1970s-80s

Once in the United States, some Cubans were able to form a successful Cuban business enclave in Miami. Social scholars have reasoned this enclave was able to form for various reasons including the professional skills brought by some early exiles, the close match between jobs available in Miami and the type of workers leaving Cuba, and US aid grants given Cuban exiles. While it is difficult to garner how much money was given to some Cuban exiles by the CIA for their assistance in anti-Castro operations, this theory was a popular rumor in among Anglo business owners in Miami. In 1973 National Geographic published how Cuban exiles had formed an impressive business community in Miami and in doing so helped produce the popular image of the wealthy "golden exile". [4]

The Cuban success story also became popular in Cuban exile circles. The idea that Cubans in the United States were economically successful was embraced as a tool to convince Cubans in Cuba of the advantages of emigrating. [2] The Cuban success story's popularity allowed it to become accepted in various academic circles, policy making groups, and journalist organizations. [7]

By the time of the 1980 Mariel boatlift the image of Cuban immigrants as "golden exiles" began to fade as popular media began to characterize Marielitos as lone males, criminals, and homosexuals. [8] In a Gallup poll of Americans done soon after the Mariel boatlift Cubans ranked dead last among ethnic groups rated for their positive contributions to the United States. To distance themselves from new growing anti-Cuban prejudice older Cuban exiles began to carry the new prejudices against Marielitos to retain a sense of separation from the Mariel arrivals. The narrative of the Cuban success story became repopularized in tandem with older exiles reaction to anti-Marielito sentiment. [9]

Myth

Narrative

The narrative of the Cuban success story goes that Cuban exiles left the country after the 1959 revolution for solely political reasons. Cuban exiles firmly disagreed with the communist government of Cuba and had no intentions of emigrating for better economic opportunities outside of Cuba. The exiles were mainly middle class and highly skilled, with occupational skill, high education, and language abilities that they brought with them to the United States. Most of the emigrants were pale skinned and encountered little if any racial prejudice in the United States. [10]

In general Cuban exiles were economically successful and conservative [2] becoming a perfect model minority [10] in the United States, and a prime example of the accessibility of the American dream. [2] This attainment of the American dream is often told as a model for others to look up to such as other ethnic minorities in the United States as well as others living abroad. The model is believed to prove American exceptionalist ideas that anyone can become successful and integrated in the United States. [11]

Impact

The image purported in the Cuban success story myth of Cubans as wealthy and privileged "golden exiles" has various social ramifications. The stereotype presented of Cuban exiles as wealthy emigres encourages the ignoring of poverty within Cuban American communities, especially poverty faced by Cuban refugees who migrated after 1980. [12] The assumption of the privilege of Cuban Americans can also isolate them from the broader Hispanic community who are encouraged to view them as unfairly privileged compared to other Latinos. [13] When the Cuban success story narrative is embraced by Cubans who emigrated in the early 1960s it can result in a feeling of superiority and prejudice directed towards other Latinos as well as Cubans who emigrated later than the "golden exiles". [14]

Apart from the myth's impact in creating prejudices amongst Cuban Americans and other Latinos, the success story is also used to shame African Americans. Since the early Cuban exodus and civil rights movement, the Cuban success story has been used as a model minority myth that stresses the need for hard work to escape poverty. This idea that Cubans have become successful via sheer determination is often used to shame African Americans who face poverty and implies that African American poverty must come from a lack of determination and laziness. African Americans who accept the ideas of the Cuban success story often come to view Cuban refugees as given undeserved government benefits and that Cuban Americans in general are unfairly privileged compared to them. [6] [5]

The myth also utilized by different political groups. The right-wing in the United States often repeats the myth as an example of proof of American exceptionalism and the attainability of the American dream. While leftists often use elements of the myth to portray a staunchly right-wing and politically organized Cuban exile community often dubbed the "Miami Mafia" which is used to demonize and discredit Cuban exiles. [11]

Criticism

Political commentary

Sheila L. Croucher has argued that the propagation of the Cuban success story was a propaganda tool that supported the interest of North American capitalists, the U.S. government and even some politically opportunistic Cuban exiles. [3]

Sociologists Francisco Hernández Vázquez and Rodolfo D. Torres have asserted that the story also helped ease the worries of xenophobic Americans that may have doubted why the government gave Cubans immigration privileges and federal aid. [2]

Scholar Gregory Helmick has noted that some early Cuban exiles adopted the term "Golden exile" to differentiate themselves from later Cuban exiles such as those of the Mariel boatlift. This identity emphasized their ideological purity, machismo, and racial whiteness. [15]

Martin Luther King Jr. challenged the image of the Cuban success story and instead argued that African Americans as well as other American minorities share more in common with their disadvantage they face in a discriminatory society. [6]

Historicity

Scholar Maria Vidal de Haymes argued in 1997 that the relevance of the Cuban success story ignores recorded economic realities. The story ignores that general Cuban American household incomes have been recorded as substantially lower than general non-Latino household incomes in the United States. It also ignores the high rates of poverty among recent Cuban immigrants, Afro-Cubans, and Cuban-American children. [16] Scholar Lisandro Perez has noted in 1986 that the Cuban success story popularizes the idea of a skyrocketing economic mobility for Cubans that is not based in fact, but Cubans have been recorded as having a much higher average income that other Hispanic groups in the United States. This disparity is so much so, that it is far greater than the disparity between the incomes of Cubans and non-Latinos. [17]

Scholar Jorge Duany has argued that Cubans are not as economically successful as propagated in the Cuban success story, and Cubans must suffer through cultural assimilation difficulties that every immigrant group goes through. He also argues that the story only resembles the reality of the early Golden exile and not of other working class Cubans that came in later emigration waves. [7]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Operation Peter Pan</span> 1960–62 evacuation of Cuban children to US

Operation Peter Pan was a clandestine exodus of over 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban minors ages 6 to 18 to the United States over a two-year span from 1960 to 1962. They were sent after parents feared that Fidel Castro and the Communist party were planning to terminate parental rights and place minors in communist indoctrination centers, commonly referred to as the Patria Potestad.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mariel boatlift</span> Mass migration of Cubans to the USA in 1980

The Mariel boatlift was a mass emigration of Cubans who traveled from Cuba's Mariel Harbor to the United States between 15 April and 31 October 1980. The term "Marielito" is used to refer to these refugees in both Spanish and English. While the exodus was triggered by a sharp downturn in the Cuban economy, it followed on the heels of generations of Cubans who had immigrated to the United States in the preceding decades.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cuban Americans</span> Americans of Cuban birth or descent

Cuban Americans are Americans who immigrated from or are descended from immigrants from Cuba, regardless of racial or ethnic origin. Cuban Americans are the third largest Hispanic American group in the United States after Mexican Americans and Puerto Rican Americans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cuban exodus</span> Defectors from Communist Cuba

The Cuban exodus is the mass emigration of Cubans from the island of Cuba after the Cuban Revolution of 1959. Throughout the exodus, millions of Cubans from diverse social positions within Cuban society emigrated within various emigration waves, due to political repression and disillusionment with life in Cuba.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Balseros</span> Illegal emigrants from Cuba floating in rafts to neighboring countries

Balseros was the name given to boat people who emigrated without formal documentation in self constructed or precarious vessels from Cuba to neighboring states including The Bahamas, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands and, most commonly, the United States since the 1994 Balsero crisis and during the wet feet, dry feet policy.

90 Miles is a 2001 documentary film written and directed by Juan Carlos Zaldívar. The film is a recounting of the events that lead Zaldívar to become a Marielito and leave Cuba for a better life in Miami. It premiered in 2003 on PBS as part of its P.O.V. series. It won the award for Best Documentary at the New York International Latino Film Festival and it won two awards at the Havana Film Festival also known in Spanish as Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano de La Habana in Havana, Cuba in 2001: the Black Coral, First Prize, for Best Documentary and the Memoria Documentary Award. 90 Miles was also awarded the Media History Award by the Wolfson family Media History Center in Miami, Florida that year. 90 Miles recounts the strange twist of fate that took Juan Carlos Zaldívar across one of the world's most treacherous stretches of water. It is a journey of a family in search for healing and understanding. IndieWire called 90 miles "Probing and thoughtful." Zaldívar uncovers the emotional distance opened in thousands of families by the 90 miles between the U.S. and Cuba.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mariel, Cuba</span> Municipality in Artemisa, Cuba

Mariel is a municipality and town in the Artemisa Province of Cuba. It is located approximately 40 kilometres (25 mi) west of the city of Havana.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cuban migration to Miami</span> Aspect of Cuban-American history

Cuban immigration has greatly affected Miami-Dade County since 1959, creating what is known as "Cuban Miami." However, Miami reflects global trends as well, such as the growing trends of multiculturalism and multiracialism; this reflects the way in which international politics shape local communities.

Clark v. Martinez, 543 U.S. 371 (2005), was a United States Supreme Court case ending the pointless detention of people who had been denied refugee status. They were kept in prison awaiting deportation even though they could not in fact be deported due to a political stalemate with Cuba. An alien can be found inadmissible on the grounds of poor health, criminal history, substance trafficking, prostitution/human trafficking, money laundering, terrorist activity, etc. The deportation process requires a ruling from an immigration judge for violating immigration laws. The case resolved conflicting rulings made by the 9th and 11th circuits on whether Zadvydas v. Davis (2001) was applicable to inadmissible immigrants, Sergio Martinez and Daniel Benitez. The cases of Martinez and Benitez were later consolidated by the Supreme Court.

Victor Andres Triay is a Cuban American historian and writer, known for the books Fleeing Castro: Operation Pedro Pan and the Cuban Children’s Program, Bay of Pigs: An Oral History of Brigade 2506, The Unbroken Circle, and The Mariel Boatlift: A Cuban American Journey.

Marielitos is the name given to the Cuban immigrants that left Cuba from the Port of Mariel in 1980. Approximately 135,000 people left the country to the United States from April to September in what became known as the Mariel boatlift.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cuban immigration to the United States</span>

Cuban immigration to the United States, for the most part, occurred in two periods: the first series of immigration of wealthy Cuban Americans to the United States resulted from Cubans establishing cigar factories in Tampa and from attempts to overthrow Spanish colonial rule by the movement led by José Martí, the second to escape from Communist rule under Fidel Castro following the Cuban Revolution. Massive Cuban migration to Miami during the second series led to major demographic and cultural changes in Miami. There was also economic emigration, particularly during the Great Depression in the 1930s. As of 2019, there were 1,359,990 Cubans in the United States.

Acts of repudiation is a term Cuban authorities use to refer to acts of violence and or humiliation towards critics of the government. These acts occur when large groups of citizens verbally abuse, intimidate and sometimes physically assault and throw stones and other objects at the homes of Cubans who are considered counter-revolutionaries. Human rights groups suspect that these acts are often carried out in collusion with the security forces and sometimes involve the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution or the Rapid Response Brigades. The amount of violence in these acts has increased significantly since 2003.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Golden exile</span>

The emigration of Cubans, from the 1959 Cuban Revolution to October of 1962, has been dubbed the Golden exile and the first emigration wave in the greater Cuban exile. The exodus was referred to as the "Golden exile" because of the mainly upper and middle class character of the emigrants. After the success of the revolution various Cubans who had allied themselves or worked with the overthrown Batista regime fled the country. Later as the Fidel Castro government began nationalizing industries many Cuban professionals would flee the island. This period of the Cuban exile is also referred to as the Historical exile, mainly by those who emigrated during this period.

A dialoguero is a label for a person who wants to open negotiations with the Cuban government. The label was coined as an epithet by hard-line anti-communist Cuban exiles.

In 1978 negotiations known as El Diálogo occurred between Cuban exile groups and the Cuban government that resulted in the release of political prisoners.

A Cuban exile is a person who emigrated from Cuba in the Cuban exodus. Exiles have various differing experiences as emigrants depending on when they migrated during the exodus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cuban boat people</span> Refugee migrants from Cuba during the Castro regime.

Cuban boat people mainly refers to refugees who flee Cuba by boat and ship to the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peruvian Havana Embassy Crisis of 1980</span> 1980 diplomatic crisis

On April 1, 1980, six Cuban citizens made their way into the Peruvian embassy in Havana, Cuba, instigating an international crisis over the diplomatic status of around 10,000 asylum-seeking Cubans who joined them over the following days. The Peruvian ambassador, Ernesto Pinto Bazurco Rittler, spearheaded the effort to protect Cubans, most of whom were disapproved of by Fidel Castro’s regime and were seeking protection at the embassy. This episode marked the start of the Cuban refugee crisis, which was followed by a series of diplomatic initiatives between various countries in both North and South America that tried to organize the fleeing of people from the island of Cuba to the United States and elsewhere. The embassy crisis culminated with the substantial exodus of 125,266 Cuban asylum-seekers during the Mariel Boatlift.

<i>Cuba de ayer</i>

The idea of the Cuba de ayer is a mythologized idyllic view of Cuba before the overthrow of the Batista government in the Cuban Revolution. This idealized vision of pre-revolutionary Cuba typically reinforces the ideas that Cuba before 1959 was an elegant, sophisticated, and largely white country that was ruined by the government of Fidel Castro. The Cuban exiles who fled after 1959 are viewed as majorly white, and had no general desire to leave Cuba but did so to flee tyranny. Cuban exiles who uphold this image of the Cuba de ayer view their version of Cuban culture as more desirable than American culture, and that it is best to recreate their lost culture of the Cuba de ayer in the United States. Proponents of the image of the Cuba de ayer also view Cuba as a more worthy country to live in than the United States and hope to return Cuba to the Cuba de ayer after the hoped for fall of the government of Fidel Castro. Critics of the idea of the Cuba de ayer claim it is a nationalist myth created for white Cuban exiles that ignores the reality of Cuban life before 1959, and embraces an exotic vision of Cuba.

References

  1. ↑ Nicolás Kanellos (1994). Handbook of Hispanic Cultures in the United States: Sociology. Arte Publico Press. p. 134. ISBN   9781611921656.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Francisco Hernández Vázquez; Rodolfo D. Torres (2003). Latino/a Thought: Culture, Politics, and Society. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. pp. 295–296. ISBN   9780847699414.
  3. 1 2 Michelle M. Cobas (2001). "Mass media ethics vs. ethnicity : the Cuban American National Foundation's battle with the Miami Herald". digitalcommons.lsu.edu.
  4. 1 2 In The Land of Mirrors Cuban Exile Politics in the United States. University of Michigan Press. 2001. p. 74-75.
  5. 1 2 A Dream Unfinished Theological Reflections on America from the Margins. Wipf & Stock Publishers. 2007. p. 195.
  6. 1 2 3 Civil Rights and Beyond African American and Latino/a Activism in the Twentieth-century United States. University of Georgia Press. 2016. p. 73-75.
  7. 1 2 Jorge Duany (1999). "Cuban communities in the United States: migration waves, settlement patterns and socioeconomic diversity". Pouvoirs dans la Caraïbe Revue du Centre de Recherche Sur les Pouvoirs Locaux dans la Caraïbe (11): 69–103. doi: 10.4000/plc.464 .
  8. ↑ Performing Exile Foreign Bodies. Intellect Books Limited. 2017.
  9. ↑ Alejandro Portes; Alex Stepick (1993). City on the Edge The Transformation of Miami. University of California Press. pp. 30–31. ISBN   9780520915541.
  10. 1 2 Jorge Perez-Lopez (1993). Cuban Studies 23. University of Pittsburgh Press. p. 168. ISBN   9780822970361.
  11. 1 2 Racial Transformations Latinos and Asians Remaking the United States. Duke University Press. 2006. p. 177. ISBN   0822387611.
  12. ↑ Joseph F Healey; Andi Stepnick (2019). Diversity and Society Race, Ethnicity, and Gender. SAGE Publications. ISBN   9781506389042.
  13. ↑ Harriette Pipes McAdoo (1999). Family Ethnicity Strength in Diversity. SAGE Publications. p. 152. ISBN   9780761918578.
  14. ↑ Brett Seabury; Barbara Seabury; Charles D Garvin (2010). Foundations of Interpersonal Practice in Social Work Promoting Competence in Generalist Practice. SAGE Publications. p. 71. ISBN   9781544350080.
  15. ↑ Helmick, Gregory (2016). Archival Dissonance in the U.S. Cuban Post-Exile Novel. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 43–44. ISBN   9781443887588.
  16. ↑ Vidal de Haymes, Maria (1997). "The Golden Exile The Social Constructionm of the Cuban American Success Story". Journal of Poverty. 1. doi:10.1300/J134v01n01_05.
  17. ↑ Perez, Lisando (1986). "Immigrant Economic Adjustment and Family Organization: The Cuban Success Story Reexamined". The International Migration Review. 20 (1): 4–20. doi:10.1177/019791838602000101. JSTOR   2545681. PMID   12340641. S2CID   35188116.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.