With Mariel, South Florida
blossomed
Our opinion: What we
have in common is greater than that which
divides us
Posted on Sun, Apr. 03,
2005 in The
Miami Herald.
They left Cuba in desperation in search
of a better life here. The 125,266 Cubans
who arrived on our shores via the 1980 Mariel
boatlift were a hardy bunch. To leave, they
survived leaky boats, rough crossings and
attacks on their personal dignity in Cuba.
Once here, their image was tarred by the
behavior of criminals, a minority among
them.
Failure of communism
Twenty-five years later, we can see that
the Mariel refugees overcame stereotypes,
assimilated, succeeded economically and
pursued the American dream. They followed
the time-worn path traveled by immigrant
groups before and after them, only made
more difficult by their arrival in the largest
single human tide to wash up so abruptly
on American soil. In the process, they enriched
South Florida.
Marielitos showed the lie of the Cuban
revolution. They were younger and darker
than the Cuban exiles who preceded them
in the 1960s. Most had grown up under 20
years of communist indoctrination, yet they
desperately leaped at the chance for freedom.
The pent-up frustration that led to their
mass defection was a clear sign that the
communist revolution had failed to produce
the promised egalitarian paradise.
Fidel Castro and the mobs that assailed
the Marielitos before they left the port
of Mariel called them escoria (scum) and
gusanos (worms). In fact, Castro packed
boats with common criminals and mentally
ill people, homosexuals and others considered
deviant by the regime. Even so, a study
showed that by 1990, Mariel refugees generally
had attained the same economic success as
the 1960s exiles had attained 10 years after
arrival.
False generalizations
Many Marielitos had U.S. help, but they
still faced big obstacles. The criminal
minority tainted the whole group. Crime
shot up in Little Havana. Rioting by Mariel
detainees at Fort Chafee, Ark. -- and years
later in an Atlanta penitentiary -- propelled
negative stereotypes nationwide. Scarface,
the movie about a violent, Marielito drug
trafficker, and the Time magazine cover
story Paradise Lost didn't help. Even established
Cuban exiles bought into the false generalizations.
Mariel refugees parachuted into tough times
here in 1980. They saw race riots erupt
in Miami after white cops were acquitted
in the death of Arthur McDuffie, a black
insurance salesman. Their welcome exposed
the unjust treatment of Haitian refugees
who were denied asylum and returned to a
murderous dictatorship. The cocaine trade
flourished. Altogether, the difficulties
pushed many whites to flee South Florida.
South Florida survived and thrived, nonetheless,
and so did the Marielitos. Today they are
indistinguishable among us as doctors, teachers,
artists. They continue to pursue the American
dream like others who have blended seamlessly
into our community fabric. Even the criminals
among them won justice last year when the
U.S. Supreme Court ended a policy that detained
them indefinitely after they had served
out their sentences.
A valuable lesson
In the end, Marielitos disproved the stereotype,
injected new blood, ideas and vitality into
our Cuban community and paved the way for
the continuing stream of Latin American
newcomers. Their experiences provide a valuable
lesson to all of us in this great multiethnic
experiment:
What we have in common -- our desire to
leave a better world for our children, for
one -- is much greater than what divides
us. We are much stronger when we pull together
than against each other. To Mariel we owe
a hardier South Florida.
|