Mariel boatlift

Cuban refugees arriving in crowded boats during the Mariel boatlift crisis.

The Mariel boatlift was a mass emigration of Cubans, who departed from Cuba's Mariel Harbor for the United States between April 15 and October 31, 1980. The event was precipitated by a sharp downturn in the Cuban economy, which led to internal tensions on the island and a bid by approximately 10,000 Cubans to gain asylum in the Peruvian embassy.

The Cuban government subsequently announced that anyone who wanted to leave could do so, and an exodus by boat started shortly afterward. The exodus was organized by Cuban-Americans with the agreement of Cuban president Fidel Castro. The exodus started to have negative political implications for U.S. president Jimmy Carter when it was discovered that a number of the refugees had been released from Cuban jails and mental health facilities. The Mariel boatlift was ended by mutual agreement between the two governments involved, in late October 1980. By that point, as many as 125,000 Cubans had made the journey to Florida.

Background

In the United States

The Mariel boatlift had its origins circa 1977 during a period when relations between Cuba and the United States were improving. The Carter administration established an Interests Section in Havana and the Cuban government reciprocated by establishing an Interests Section in Washington, D.C. Cuba subsequently agreed to the release of several dozen political prisoners and allowed Cuban Americans to return to the island to visit relatives—a privilege that had been denied previously to Cuban citizens living abroad.

Initially, the Carter administration had an open-arms policy in regard to Cuban immigrants. Cubans were immediately granted refugee status and all the rights that went with it. Additionally, public opinion towards Cuban refugees was initially favorable.

This situation changed when it was discovered that the refugees included criminals and people from Cuba's mental hospitals. Castro arranged for the inclusion of criminals and people with mental illness among the political and economic refugees in order to rid Cuba of undesirables and to damage the image of Cuban exiles. United States media accounts such as a May 11, 1980 New York Times article, and the 1983 movie Scarface, suggested that the refugees consisted largely of undesirables. However, according to the Brookings Institution Study in 1980, the vast majority of Mariel refugees (technically Cuban-Haitian entrants-status pending) had blue collar skills which matched perfectly with the labor force in Miami at that time. While Castro did send criminals and mentally ill people, most Mariels were not.

This heightened tensions between the United States and Cuba.^[1]

In Cuba

In November 1978, the government of Fidel Castro met in the City of Havana with a group of Cubans living in exile, where the government acceded, among other important decisions, to start authorizing Cuban exiles to visit their relatives on the island as early as January 1979.

Prelude

In May 1979 a bus carrying several people crashed through the gates of the Peruvian embassy in the upscale Havana suburb of Miramar. This was the first of several instances of forced entry into the Venezuelan and Peruvian Embassies that took place between 1979 and early 1980 by groups of people seeking political asylum.

The use of vehicles as battering rams was common. The general population did not have access to a foreign mission without express consent of the authorities.

Exodus

The episode started on April 1, 1980, when Hector Sanyustiz acted on a plan he had been organizing secretly for months. He boarded a bus, and along with four others (including the driver), stopped several blocks from Embassy Row in downtown Havana.

The driver, who was a friend of Sanyustiz's, announced that the bus had broken down and emptied the vehicle, leaving the four others who were privy to the plan inside. Sanyustiz took control of the bus and drove it through a fence of the Peruvian embassy.

Some of the Cuban guards who were positioned to guard the street opened fire on the bus. One guard was fatally wounded in the crossfire. The five had taken desperate measures to ask for political asylum, so the Peruvian diplomat in charge of the embassy, Ernesto Pinto-Bazurco, granted it.

The Cuban government immediately asked the Peruvian government to return the five individuals, stating that they would need to be tried for the death of the guard. When the Peruvian government refused, Castro threatened to remove the guards at the entrance of the Peruvian embassy, and proceeded to do so on Good Friday, April 4, 1980.

On April 5, 1980, about 750 Cubans gathered at the Peruvian embassy in Havana and said they wanted diplomatic asylum.^[3]

The news of these events spread by word of mouth, and by Easter Sunday, there were over 10,000 people crammed into the tiny Peruvian embassy grounds. The Cuban government quickly ordered a large number of guards back into place and blocked access along the perimeter of the embassy. Additionally, travel by motor vehicle was halted in the suburb of Miramar, home to most foreign embassies in the City of Havana.

Inside the embassy, people occupied every open space on the grounds, eventually climbing trees and other structures and refusing to abandon the premises despite the lack of basic surface infrastructure. The dangers inherent in this situation were allayed somewhat by the actions of other embassies, including those of Spain and Costa Rica, which agreed to accept a small number of refugees.

Castro ultimately stated that the port of Mariel would be opened to anyone wishing to leave Cuba, as long as they had someone to pick them up. While news of the situation was not broadcast in Cuba, Cuban exiles in the United States rushed to Key West and to docks in Miami to hire boats to transport people to the United States.

Military involvement

United States Navy and Marine Corps

As the crisis deepened and the scale of the boat lift grew, the Coast Guard asked for help. In May 1980 the United States Navy dispatched the USS Saipan (LHA-2) and the USS Boulder (LST-1190) to support the Coast Guard with the assistance of refugees who were fleeing Cuba by way of Mariel. The mission of the Saipan and Boulder was to assist, but not directly transport, refugees on their way to mainland Florida. During the mission, Saipan and Boulder took aboard hundreds of refugees in need of humanitarian assistance. Needs included medical attention, food, fresh water, refueling of private watercraft and the like.

Some refugees from Mariel were ferried to the mainland via commercial watercraft. However, many refugees were poor and in rather dire straits. Essentially, these refugees had taken up less-than-desirable modes of transit, i.e. anything that would float. Jerry-built rafts were not an uncommon sight. Poor watercraft often broke down or ran out of fuel.

Upon completion of their mission, Saipan and Boulder officers and crew were awarded the Humanitarian Service Medal for their efforts during the Mariel boatlift.

Also, in May 1980, elements of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, 2nd Marine Division of Camp Lejeune, N.C. provided assistance to the INS; providing around the clock security at Trumbo Point and Truman Annex, interpreters and assisted with the processing of refugees once they arrived in Key West, Florida. Dozens of watercraft arrived daily. 706 refugees were counted on the Red Diamond alone. One craft lost power 60 miles from Key West and had to be towed to the U.S. mainland. Not all vessels that arrived at Truman Annex were carrying Cubans. Canadians were held for weeks in Mariel Harbor before being allowed to leave.

In recognition of their assistance in support of the Cuban refugee humanitarian operation, entitled Operation Freedom Flotilla, the Marines of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, 2nd Marine Division were awarded the Humanitarian Service Medal and a Certificate of Appreciation for exemplary service at Key West, Florida. F-4 "Phantom" fighter aircraft from VMFA-312 and later VMFA-251 provided air cover. The Marines of VMFA-312 and VMFA-251, based at MCAS Beaufort, South Carolina, at the time also received the Humanitarian Service Medal.

United States Army

In May 1980, the US Army dispatched the 503rd Military Police Battalion (commanded by LTC David Humbert) of the XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to relieve the Florida National Guard units who were mobilized to handle the on-ground safety and security as well as daily operations of the various refugee compounds established throughout the Miami metropolitan area. These compounds were generally at the various decommissioned Nike-Hercules Missile Defense Sites. Other sites were established at the Orange Bowl and various churches throughout the area. Some sites were established to segregate the refugees until they could be provided with initial inprocessing at places like the Nike-Hercules sites at Key Largo and Krome Avenue. Once initially processed and documented, the refugees were quickly transferred to larger compounds in the metropolitan area so they could be reunited with relatives already living in the US as well as to allow interaction with various social action agencies like Catholic Charities, the American Red Cross, and others. It was at these initial processing sites that the undesirable elements were identified and segregated from the general population.

The 503rd MP Battalion was augmented by Spanish-speaking soldiers of the 96th Civil Affairs and Psychological Warfare elements of the JFK Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg. As the Haitian refugees started arriving, interpreters were found to be in short supply for Haitian Creole and interpreters from the local Haitian community were put under contract through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). As the end of the initial crisis period wound down and after the vetting of those refugees who could be sponsored had run its course, the decision to transfer the 'hard to sponsor' refugees, which included those with criminal records, to longer-term processing sites at Fort Chaffee, AR and Fort Indiantown Gap, PA also Fort McCoy, Wisconsin as a joint operation with FEMA and the US Bureau of Prisons among other federal agencies including the US Army Military Police Corps. US Army members participating in this operation were awarded the Humanitarian Service Medal for their service.

Effect on the Miami labor market

About half of the Mariel immigrants decided to reside in Miami permanently, which resulted in a seven percent increase in workers in the Miami labor market and a 20 percent increase in the Cuban working population. Aside from the unemployment rate rising from 5.0% in April 1980 to 7.1% in July, the actual damage to the economy was marginal and followed trends across the United States at the time. When observing data from 1979 to 1985 on the Miami labor market and comparing it to similar data from several other major cities across the United States, focusing on wages, it is clear that the effects of the boatlift were marginal.^[4]

The wages for White Americans remained steady in both Miami and comparative cities. Likewise, the wage rates for African Americans were relatively steady from 1979 to 1985 when in comparable cities it dropped. Aside from a dip in 1983, wage rates for Non-Cuban Hispanics were stable, when in comparable cities it fell approximately six percent. There is no evidence of a negative effect on wage rates for other groups of Hispanics in Miami.Wages for Cubans demonstrated a steady decline especially compared to other groups in Miami at the time, however, this can be attributed exclusively to the 'dilution' of the group with the new, less-experienced and lower-earning Mariel immigrants, meaning that there is also no evidence of a negative effect on wage rates for Cubans already residing in Miami prior to 1980.^[5]

The Refugee Education Assistance Act of 1980 provided $100 million in cash, medical and social services (Senator Stone and Congressman Fascell) and authorized approximately $5 million per year to facilitate the Mariel refugees' transition to American life. The 1980 Census was also adjusted to include Mariel children, to ensure additional assistance would be available to them through the Miami-Dade County Public Schools via Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Assistance Act (ESEA).

The end

The Cuban government eventually closed the Mariel harbor to would-be emigrants. Approximately 125,000 Cubans arrived at the United States' shores in about 1,700 boats, creating large waves of people that overwhelmed the U.S. Coast Guard. Twenty-seven migrants died, including fourteen on an overloaded boat that capsized on May 17, 1980. Upon their arrival, many Cubans were placed in refugee camps. Others were held in federal prisons pending deportation hearings.

Crowded conditions in South Florida immigration processing centers forced U.S. federal agencies to move many of the Marielitos to other centers in Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, Camp Santiago, Puerto Rico, and Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. Federal civilian police agencies such as the General Services Administration's Federal Protective Service provided officers to maintain order inside the gates of the relocation centers. Riots occurred at the Fort Chaffee center and some detainees escaped which became a campaign issue in the re-election defeat of Governor Bill Clinton.

The majority of refugees were ordinary Cubans. Many had been allowed to leave Cuba for reasons which, in the United States, were either loyalty-neutral or protected: tens of thousands were Seventh-Day Adventists or Jehovah's Witnesses, for example. Some had been declared "anti-socialista" by their block Committees back in Cuba. In the end, only 2% (or 2,746) of the refugees were classified as serious or violent criminals under U.S. law and denied citizenship on that basis.^[6]

In popular culture

The Mariel boatlift was the subject of multiple works of art, media, and entertainment. Examples include:

Artworks

• Inconsolable Memories, a 2005 installation by Canadian artist Stan Douglas, is based on Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's 1968 film Memorias del subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment) and tells the story of Sergio, a fictional black architect in Havana at the time of the Mariel boatlift. Douglas' installation consists of a 16mm projection with a photographic series of contemporary Havana.^[7]

Documentaries

• Against Wind and Tide: A Cuban Odyssey (1981), a PBS documentary film, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.^[8][9]

Films

Fictional depictions include:

• Scarface (1983)
• The Perez Family (1995)
• Before Night Falls (2000).

Television

• In the pilot episode of the television series Miami Vice (1984), the villain's right-hand man, Trini De Soto, mentions he was in detention with other "Marielito riffraff".

Notable Marielitos

Notable Mariel boatlift refugees ("Marielitos") include:

• Magician El Mago Aguila Jose Ramon Alvarez
• Writer and Pulitzer Prize winner Mirta Ojito
• Opera singer Elizabeth Caballero
• The Real World star Pedro Zamora
• Rapper and songwriter Cuban Link
• Actor and soap opera star Rene Lavan
• Julio González, arsonist and mass-murderer
• Luis Felipe, convicted murderer and founder of the New York branch of the Latin Kings gang.
• Cuban reggae band Arawak Jah
• Poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas
• Mailet Lopez, founder of I Had Cancer, one of the first social networking sites for cancer survivors, fighters and supporters
• Pedro Medina, executed for the 1982 stabbing of Dorothy James in Florida
• Bárbaro Garbey, baseball player^[10]
• Jesus Mezquia, murderer of Mia Zapata

See also

• Cuban exile
• Atlanta Prison Riots
• Cuba – United States relations
• Garcia-Mir v. Meese
• Jimmy Gresham

Footnotes

References

• Larzelere, Alex (1988). The 1980 Cuban Boatlift. Washington, DC: National Defense University Press. 
• Mariel Boatlift on globalsecurity.org.

External links

• Memories of Mariel: 20 Years Later.
• Six-year study of Mariel refugees
• Fleeing Cuba For a Better Life in USA
• Voices from Mariel

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