Atlas of Hispanic-American History

The Mariel Boatlift

From 1973, Fidel Castro for the most part

banned emigration from Cuba to the

United States. But in 1980 the Cuban

dictator temporarily lifted the emigration

ban, allowing about 125,000 people to

leave by boat from the port of Mariel.

Known as Marielitos, the people in the

Mariel boatlift were demographically

unlike previous generations of Cuban

immigrants, who had largely been well

educated, middle class, and white. Most

Marielitos were poor, less educated, and of

African descent. A small percentage were

convicted criminals and mentally ill

patients, though many sensationalist news

reports in the United States made it seem

like most of them were sick or criminal.

About 2,700 Marielitos (2 percent) were

refused permission to enter the United

States, either because of criminal records

or crimes committed upon arrival.

Because of a combination of factors—

racist sentiment, economic anxiety, fear

of rising crime, and concern about rising

immigration—many Americans gave

the Marielitos a cold reception, unlike

the welcome they had extended to earli-

er newcomers from Cuba. One New

Jersey automobile worker said, “Those

Cubans—we should put them back on

their boats and sink them. We don’t have

enough work for our own people.” With

the boatlift coming at the height of a

major economic recession in the United

States, this anti-immigrant attitude was

fairly commonplace—and not just aimed

at Cubans. Other Hispanics, as well as

immigrants from Asia and elsewhere, were

targeted for blame. Even the popular

name for Marielitos signaled that they

were percieved as different from earlier

arrivals from Cuba. While earlier Cuban

immigrants had been given the noble title

“exiles,” these immigrants were called by

the scruffier term “refugees.”

As for the Marielitos who were

refused entry, most languished in

American prisons for years, detained in

diplomatic limbo while Cuba and the

United States faced off over the issue of

their return. Not until some Marielitos

led prison riots in 1987 did the United

States take action to hear their cases, per-

mitting some to stay in the United States

and others to return to Cuba.

Cuba and the Collapse of

the Soviet Union

Throughout the 1980s, episodes like the

Mariel boatlift were played out in the

context of cold war relations between the

United States and the Soviet Union,

Cuba’s primary financial backer. While

Castro’s socialist ideology placed him

squarely within the pro-Soviet camp in

the cold war era, Cuba’s bond with the

Soviets was cemented by massive Soviet

financial support for the island’s economy

at least as much as by shared ideology. In

the face of a U.S. trade embargo in force

since 1960, Cuba depended on the Soviet

Union for trade and assistance. U.S. offi-

cials accused Cuba of serving as the Soviet

Union’s proxy, giving arms and military

support to leftist forces in other nations to

spread Soviet control throughout Central

America and the Caribbean. The United

States responded with its own military

aid—for example, to the anticommunist

government of El Salvador and the right-

wing Contra rebels in Nicaragua

(described later in this chapter). In 1983 a

U.S. invasion overthrew the Cuban-sup-

ported government of Grenada.

The United States put pressure on

Cuba in other ways as well, notably by

206 ATLAS OF HISPANIC-AMERICAN HISTORY

Under pressure at home and from the United States to allow people to leave Cuba,

Fidel Castro decided to permit open immigration from April 21 to April 26, 1980, out

of the port of Mariel. During this period, some 125,000 Cubans fled to the United

States, many of them poor and far less educated than the initial exile group of the

1960s. Many were criminals Castro had released from prison, and many others were

mentally ill. Most were quickly processed by American officials at Fort Chafee,

Arkansas, and other bases. But thousands—including many falsely accused of crimes

or of being mentally ill—were detained for months.

Route of the Mariel Boatlift, 1980

“The news media tended to

focus on the ‘undesireables’

that the Castro government

forced onto the boats....The

majority of those who arrived

in the U.S. were decent,

hard-working folks, who

simply wanted to be reunited

with their family members,

or have new opportunities;

but their stories were buried

in larger stories with very

sensationalistic headlines.”

—Maria C. Garcia, author of
Havana USA,a history of the
Cuban exile community