Cuba: Could someone educate me. I'm watching this

[EFerrari]

very painful doc on LinkTV. Re Marielitos: " say, put them on leaky boats!"

I don't really know what Marielitos are except a vague memory. And, I sure don't remember the hatred because I never had to deal with it.

Any takers?

[flordehinojos]

1. this is how i remember 1981 and the marielitos...

although i am not too clear on just what started it, and i think that the Peruvian Embassy in Cuba is somehow linked to it, i remember that some political upheaval was happening in Cuba and Fidel said anyone who wanted to leave could leave. Many cubans residing in Miami, bought, rented, or otherwise found a boat to boat down to Cuba to the Port of El Mariel to pick up their relatives in Cuba who wanted to come. Fidel, who wanted to clean his prisons from the common criminal, made those people who had gone to fetch their relatives bring (a certain number of common criminal/accept to transport a certain number of common criminals with them along with the boatman's relatives). many thousands came and miami was not prepared for the influx of people. they put them in tents at the orange bowl for processing, some who were deemed to be criminally dangerous were sent to prisons in different places in the united states (i think arkansas and louisiana took a great number of them), others were sent/relocated to different states and some stayed in miami. they were not prepared for life in the u.s.a, many did not have any work experiences that they could use for gainful employment, robberies increased one thousand per cent, people in miami were afraid of them ... it was hell, but somehow, somewhere, things settled down... perhaps someone else has a better recall of what happened. Jimmy Carter was president then and he created the Cuban/Haitian Entrant Program meant to help them integrate into American life.

I was in north florida at the time and worked for a refugee resettlement agency. as part of my work there i was sent to attend a training workshop to prepare for work with the Cuban/Haitian Entrant Population.

The thing that impacted me the most during that workshop was a film that Miami-Dade Community College presented of all of the marielitos as they were arriving in to Key West. As one of the boats docked there, this old man who had come with no other member of his family, got out of the boat that brought him and a group of people, he stood on the dock there at key west. He looked towards key west, then he turned semi-circle and looked back towards the open sea and said, "what have i done? why am i here? i want to go back and i can't go back"... he, like many others, had come on the spur or the moment, he had come with the flux of the muchedumbre, seeing his face, listening to his words and the way he said them, was very moving and it connected with me in that it made me remember the many times back when i first came in 1961 when i too, very often, looked towards the open sea, wanting to go back and never being able to do so.

years have passed now and i am so integrated into life here that i will never go back to cuba--and if the diaz-balart brothers and ileana ros-lehtinen and the cuban-american foundation, and ninotshka perez and all the rest of that crap get their wishes and have one single hand in the running of cuba after fidel's deminse, i will not even go back for a visit.

[EFerrari]

2. Thank you, flor! Wow, you were in the thick of if all.

Watching this documentary, one thing that struck me was a young man who was obviously gay and who seemed to be fearful for some reason. He was his mom's youngest and the two of them went on camera to talk about that day -- how it was sudden and they had no time to prepare and how his mom and sister tried to help him leave. Not word one about his being gay but that seemed like the unspoken reason that he had to leave -- unless I've misunderstood in some way. It was sad to see this family broken up.

[flordehinojos]

3. i think you got it right...gayness in cuba in the l981s was a criminal

offense. i think there were others who came that day pushed out by fidel because of their being gay.
i was, and i wasn't in the thick of it. all of that happened in key west, and miami. i was in north florida and worked with those who were resettled there through the resettlement agency. it was very lonely for them and many felt discriminated against (and they were). most made their way back to miami.

[EFerrari]

4. I can only imagine. My mom used to tell me that when she

came to San Francisco, she used to cry in the streets because everything was so different and hurried and loud. And she worked very hard to get here, it was her choice.

I didn't know we had resettlement agencies in the 1980s. :wow:

[flordehinojos]

5. yes. they mostly dealth with refugees from viet-nam and also those

who were starting to come in from poland ... then they were funded government money to what the government called The Cuban/Haitian Entrant Program...(your mom was right on target as to what happens when you leave your roots and a slower paced society.) i think of the lebanese who today are having to leave their homes, their country, their massacred family members...it is so sad). The IFC once in a while plays an Argentinian movie called TANGO. The last scene (what I call the last scene in the movie is--I HOPE THIS DOES NOT SPOIL IT FOR ANYONE WHO HAS NOT SEEN THE MOVIE AND WANTS TO SEE IT ... is a powerful telling in dance of the events in nazi-germany and the wave of refugees that left thereafter...The bushes who I think had a hand in advancing Hitler and his war machine, and now in the events of the ME (not to mention iraq) are impermeable to suffering--they ought to see that movie it has got to be bound to grab them in some way.)

[EFerrari]

6. I don't believe those bastards recognize anyone outside

their limited circle as human.

[Lost-in-FL]

7. I watched this other movie

last week (I don't remember the name unfortunately) about being an artist, gay or devout Christian in 1980 Cuba. It was at the Sundance Channel. A gay writer was continuously harassed by the Cuban police and arrested several times until he managed to leave Cuba with a friend (my boyfriend Olivier Martinez :loveya: :loveya: :loveya:) as a "Marielito". Johnny Depp and Sean Penn did "cameos" in that movie. Depp as a mean Cuban General (who happen the be gay and hiding it from other Cuban officials) and Penn was an ARMY Officer or US Inmigration officer (I believe).

It showed how artists, religious people, "santeros o brujos" and gays had to hide from the government at that time. From the movie I learned that the reason they sent mostly gays and prisioners from Cuba was because Castro did not want his people "contaminated" with those who followed lifestyles that were against the Revolution. So gays, religious people, those in jail and writters who are and write against his revolution where to be sent away together with those who did not want to live in Cuba so the people who stayed in Cuba could embrace the "Revolution". I have no Idea how true that is. Of course, since this movie was in the 80's the artist finally died of AIDS in NYC.

[flordehinojos]

8. i think i've seen, as they used to say in cuba, "avances" of the movie

you are talking about. i am not sure if it is the one named, COMO AGUA PARA CHOCOLATE, or if it is another movie by another name. I do recall reading about a cuban writer, possibly the guy who wrote the script(?) or story(?) for the movie dying of AIDS in NY.

There is also another excellent movie which portrays the life of the marielitos as they first came to miami, it is called LA FAMILIA PEREZ... Marissa Tomeii, Anjelica Houston, Raul Molina and Celia Cruz played in it. Both my husband and I fell in love with the movie...if you can get the tape to it, i highly recommend it.

edited to add:




oh, and i forgot to add chazz palminteri ... as a little kid he uses to make apperances in the SHOW DE DON FRANCISCO.

[EFerrari]

10. Like Water for Chocolate!

:loveya: My nearest cousin travelled to my town to watch it with me.

I don't know about the other one you mention. Maybe we need another ilo, just about film. :)

[flordehinojos]

11. hi sfexpat2000,

without another "ilo" for just about film, let me say, if you happen to get a copy of the Perez Family ... i think you will love it ... amazon.com lists several used copies (and some not) of the VHS.

[EFerrari]

12. Thank you! And, hmm, that should have been hilo. Oops!

:)

[flordehinojos]

13. O:-)

nice catch! hilo it is.

[EFerrari]

9. Before Dark Falls? Or, close? n/t

[Lost-in-FL]

16. Yup! That is the movie

:hi: Thanks!!

[RagingInMiami]

14. It started early in 1980 with three separate hijackings of boats

out of Cuba to the U.S. seeking asylum. It escalated when a group of Cubans stormed the Peruvian embassy in Havana, seeking asylum from Castro's communist regime.

When Peru granted asylum to the Cubans and any other Cuban who sought the same thing, more than 10,000 Cubans poured in through the downed gates of the embassy seeking asylum.

Realizing that a significant portion of the Cuban population was getting restless, Castro announced that he would open the port of Mariel for anybody wishing to leave Cuba.

Within four days, 400 boats had sailed from Miami to Cuba to pick up friends and relatives. And through the next six months, more than 125,000 Cubans arrived in the United States, 25,000 of them released from prisons and mental institutes.

That, along with the sudden influx of cocaine by the Colombian cartels, turned Miami into the murder capital of the USA in 1981 and 1982.

In September of 1980, I was 12 years old and entering junior high. While I had grown up in a Cuban neighborhood, most of my Cuban American friends preferred English over Spanish and were more Americanized than Cubanized. Most of us were not prepared for the Marielitos, who did not speak English and were socially different, having been raised in a communist country.

It was a huge culture shock for everybody. I have a Cuban American friend who was born in Pennsylvania, but moved down here that year and tells me that when her family lived up north, they would speak Spanish to each other when they did not want to be understood in public. In Miami, they resorted to English when they did not want to be understood in public.

During the midst of the boatlift, one of the deadliest race riots in US history broke out in Liberty City, a black neighborhood in Miami. The immediate cause of the riot was a not guilty verdict of four white police officers who beat a black motorcyclist to death. But an underlying reason was that the influx of all these Cubans would make it harder for blacks to find low-wage work.

Although it was a struggle at first, we all adapted to each other. Most of the criminals ended up dead or in prison. The rest of the Marielitos assimilated and became productive members of American society.

The Miami Herald did an excellent series of articles last year to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Mariel Boatlift.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/special_packages/mariel/

[EFerrari]

15. Thank you!

:yourock: