Mariel boat crisis

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Cuban refugees in an overcrowded boat during the Mariel boating crisis.

During the Mariel boat crisis ( english boatlift Mariel , Spanish Éxodo del Mariel ) fled between 15 April and 31 October 1980 about 125,000 Cuban citizens from the island country in the south of the US state of Florida . The refugees left via the port in Mariel near the Cuban capital Havana , where they were picked up by helpers who had specially come from South Florida on a variety of watercraft for the crossing to the United States.

prehistory

In view of the accumulation of ship hijackings in the direction of Florida by Cubans willing to flee since the beginning of the year, Fidel Castro had indicated in a speech on March 8, 1980 that the Cuban government might be forced to take special measures by accepting them in the USA. He recalled the sudden opening of the port of Camarioca in 1965 - through which Cubans in exile were able to pick up around 5,000 family members by sea for a month before a Cuban-US airlift was agreed, on which around 50,000 Cubans per year until 1973 the USA were allowed to leave. Castro stressed that his revolutionary project and the struggle for communism was based on the principle of voluntariness. In fact, the Cuban authorities only approved applications for their citizens 'exit permits in rare cases, and at the same time prevented attempts to escape with several years' imprisonment. In the course of the historical dialogue between the US and Cuban governments in 1978/79, for the first time since the revolution, around 100,000 Cubans in exile, now living in the US, were able to visit their relatives in their old homeland, which made the Cubans on the island uncomfortable because of the huge difference in living standards and further nourished existing wishes to leave the country.

Occupation of the Peruvian Embassy

On April 1, six Cubans in a hijacked omnibus forcibly entered the premises of the Peruvian embassy in Havana in order to apply for political asylum there. Cuban guards assigned to cordon off the embassy attempted to prevent entry by using firearms, one of whom was killed in crossfire. Peru refused to comply with the Cuban demand for the asylum seekers to be extradited, whereupon Castro removed the police security of the embassy on April 4 and had it announced over the radio that any Cuban applying for an exit would be allowed. Between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, more than 10,000 Cubans entered the embassy premises in the hope of being able to leave the country. US President Jimmy Carter announced on April 14 that his administration was ready to grant asylum to 3,500 of the Cubans who have fled to the embassy in the US, in addition to the regular annual quota of 16,000 refugee visas. Costa Rica's offer to set up an airlift for 700 refugees to leave the country was initially approved by Castro, but was canceled by the Cuban side on April 17th. Among other things, the media-effective greeting of the first Cubans flown out by the Costa Rican President Rodrigo Carazo aroused the displeasure of the Cuban head of state.

Departure of the refugees via Mariel

On April 20, 1980, Castro announced the opening of the port of Mariel to the collection of Cubans wishing to leave by relatives living abroad. The captains of the boats that then arrived in Mariel were obliged by the Cuban authorities against their will to transport not only their own relatives but also other passengers assigned to them by the Cuban side to Florida. Around 65,000 Cubans left the island within the first month, and almost as many again in the following four months. The sum of around 125,000 corresponded to 1.3% of the then officially recorded Cuban total population.

Due to the mixed social origins of the refugees, the wave of emigration differed significantly from earlier waves of flight from Cuba to the USA since the revolution of 1958, in which the majority of the bourgeoisie had emigrated. Another difference was that, at around 40%, a high proportion had no relatives in the USA who could have helped with reception and integration. What was also noticeable was the much higher proportion of dark-skinned refugees compared to the Cuban exile average: 40% blacks and mestizos.

The Cuban leadership was surprised by the large numbers of onslaught first at the Peruvian embassy and later at the port of Mariel. For the Castro government, both the large number of refugees and their broad social background caused considerable damage to its image. In order to underline the assessment of those wishing to leave in front of its own and international public as "anti-social elements", the Cuban government filled the lists of Mariel candidates with members of socially undesirable groups who were advised to leave, including opposition members, homosexuals and members of religious minorities . In fact, the Marielitos also included criminals who had been released from prisons by Castro - according to a study by the Cuban sociologist Rafael Hernández, the proportion of convicted criminals among those who emigrated via Mariel was 15 percent, more than half of them for theft. The US did not categorize the latter as political refugees but as "excludable aliens"; As a result, they were on probation and could be arrested or deported back to Cuba if there was evidence of a crime. 685 of the first 43,000 arrivals were immediately detained by the US authorities.

For several months, the crisis was accompanied by demonstrations and violent riots by government-friendly Cubans against their compatriots who were willing to leave the country, who were generally denigrated as "scum" and "worms". Such acts of intimidation organized by the government, so-called Actos de Repudio , were a frequent occurrence. On May 2, under the very eyes of the Cuban security forces, a gang of plainclothes armed with clubs attacked several hundred former political prisoners who stood before the US advocacy group to ask for news of their visa applications after they were told by the Cuban immigration authorities had been sent there. Around 400 Cubans were given protection there for several days.

At the end of October 1980 the possibility of leaving the port of Mariel ended.

In popular culture

The decision of the Castro government is mentioned in numerous products of popular culture:

  • Against Wind and Tide: A Cuban Odyssey (1981), a PBS documentary, nominated for the Academy Award .
  • Scarface (1983) , feature film about the rise and fall of a drug lord
  • The Perez Family , a novel by Christine Bell
  • The Perez Family (1995), a feature film based on Bell's novel
  • Before Night Falls (1992), the autobiography of Marielito Reinaldo Arenas
  • Before Night Falls (2000), a film based on the autobiography

Web links

literature

  • Mario A. Rivera: Decision and Structure: US Refugee Policy in the Mariel Crisis. University Press of America, Lanham 1991
  • Kate Dupes Hawk, Ron Villella and Adolfo Leyva de Varona: Florida and the Mariel Boatlift of 1980: The First Twenty Days. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa 2014

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ boatlift Mariel , globalsecurity.org, accessed on July 18 of 2010.
  2. ↑ a b c Cuba: Right of the Stronger , in: Der Spiegel, No. 20/1980, May 12, 1980, p. 159f.
  3. ↑ a b Discurso pronunciado por Fidel Castro Ruz ... official transcript of the speech of March 8, 1980, on the website of the Cuban government, accessed on October 30, 2013 (Spanish)
  4. ^ Gretchen Bolton: Immigration Emergencies: Learning from the Past, Planning for the Future. ( Memento of the original from November 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.utexas.edu archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 202 kB), p. 9, US Commission on Immigration Reform, February 1994, accessed on October 30, 2013 (English)
  5. ↑ a b Rivera: Decision and Structure p. 6 (English)
  6. ^ Gretchen Bolton: Immigration Emergencies: Learning from the Past, Planning for the Future. ( Memento of the original from November 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.utexas.edu archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 202 kB), p. 13, US Commission on Immigration Reform, February 1994, accessed on October 30, 2013 (English)
  7. ↑ Gay Nemeti: Mariel Chronology. In: Miami Herald , accessed from LatinAmericanStudies.org on October 30, 2013.
  8. ↑ Bob Graham : Foreword to Dupes Hawk (among others): Florida and the 1980 Mariel Boatlift, p. X
  9. ↑ a b El Mariel treinta años después Magazine Temas ( Web Archive link )
  10. ↑ JAMES LeMOYNE: Most Who Left Mariel Sailed To New Life, a Few to Limbo -Special to The New York Times, April 15, 1990
  11. ^ Refugees: The Best Job, in: Der Spiegel from May 19, 1980, accessed on February 15, 2017
  12. ↑ Mariel: 30 años del éxodo cubano, in: BBC Mundo from June 1, 2010, accessed on February 15, 2017 (Spanish)
  13. ↑ Abel Sierra Madero: Memorias del Mariel: Los actos de repudio en Cuba, in: Nuevo Herald of October 29, 2015, accessed on February 15, 2017 (Spanish)
  14. ^ Rivero: Decision and Structure pp. 6f
  15. ↑ Cuba: Escape over the Sea, in: Die Zeit from May 9, 1980, accessed on February 15, 2017