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Cuban boatlift exiles thriving
25 years after exodus
KVOA,
June 11, 2005.
Andres Perez arrived in the United States,
seasick and scared, on El Tumpax, an overloaded
boat that carried him to freedom from Cuba.
The wide-eyed 9-year-old boy scanned the
faces of the Cuban exiles already in the
United States cramming the Key West, Fla.,
piers to claim newly arrived relatives.
His heart pounded as his father, Emilio,
searched the crowd for family members while
waiting for immigration officials to process
them.
For Andres and his family, May 27, 1980,
marked the beginning of a new life and an
end to a life of always wanting.
"We came with zero, with nothing,"
said Perez, now 33 and living in Surprise.
"But it was worth it. The American
Dream doesn't come to you. You gotta go
get it."
It's been 25 years since more than 125,000
Cubans poured into the United States after
Fidel Castro temporarily allowed residents
to leave the "island of desperation"
in 1980. For about five months, from April
to September, Cubans fled from the port
of Mariel to Key West, just 90 miles north
of Cuba in the Gulf of Mexico.
Castro also released hundreds of criminals
and mentally ill patients during the boatlift,
but the vast majority of the immigrants
were Cubans who wanted to leave. By the
time the last boat left Cuba, 125,266 had
fled on more than 2,000 sea craft. Most
marielitos stayed in southern Florida, but
others were sent to camps in Pennsylvania
and Arkansas.
The Perez family boarded a shrimp boat
built for 60 and pulled away from the dock
at 11 a.m. More than 200 crammed onto the
patched-up boat. Andres and his older brother,
Antonio, cried during the 14-hour trip,
nauseous from the choppy sea and smell of
vomit.
El Tumpax arrived at the Key West shore
at 1:30 a.m. on May 27. "It didn't
matter if they knew you or not," said
Emilio, 59. "Everybody clapped for
us. And there were people from our town
in Key West (receiving refugees)."
A family member claimed them, and the Perez
family spent 15 days in Miami, where they
arranged to meet Sonia's parents in Chicago
and set up jobs.
Through the 1980s and '90s, Sonia worked
taking product orders at Sears, Roebuck
and Co. and Emilio toiled at Zenith, cleaning
television tubes. They lived in one room
for eight months and then moved into a rented
3-bedroom apartment in suburban Chicago.
Like thousands of marielitos, the Perez
family quickly integrated into an American
lifestyle and became successful. They bought
their first home in 1987 in a suburb of
Chicago. They became U.S. citizens in 1992.
And in 1998, Andres, then married with children,
moved to Phoenix to open a landscaping business.
Sonia and Emilio followed the next year;
Antonio lives in Miami.
In 1999, they opened N and A Landscaping
in Surprise, where they now employ about
50. But their success is bittersweet as
it came at a price. For everything they
have gained, something was lost. Sonia and
Emilio returned in 1994 to their Cuban hometown
of 4,000.
They walked the town from end to end, crying
about the lives that continued without them,
friends who had died, and their former home
on the hill, overlooking the water, that
no longer looked the same.
"We came here (United States) as immigrants
and gave up a lot of things," said
Sonia, 54. "Instead of 125,000 Cubans
being forced to leave their country, one
Cuban could've left. That's Fidel."
Marielitos like the Perezes have become
productive members of their adopted country,
fusing into American society, experts say.
They speak English well and have good jobs,
and their children are well educated. Their
impact is less noticeable in Arizona, where
just 5,272 (about 3,600 in the Phoenix area)
of the nation's 1.2 million Cubans live.
Officials and families cannot confirm the
number of marielitos in Arizona.
They have had a tremendous impact on southern
Florida, creating a bilingual and bicultural
way of life.
"An immigrant wants to be part of
his new country," said Uva de Aragón,
associate director of the Cuban Research
Institute at Florida International University
in Miami. "That is why this community
has formed so strongly. They are examples
of the American Dream; that you can come
with absolutely nothing, and you can make
it in this country."
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