Finding Mañana

Two days after Ojito and her family arrived in Hialeah, President Carter amended his policy toward Cuban immigrants arriving from Mariel. Realizing that his “open arms” approach was resulting in a flood of Cubans the United States was not prepared to process and accommodate, Carter announced that going forward, only political prisoners and family members of Cubans already living in the United States would be accepted. It took a while for the impact of this policy to be felt, but by the end of May, 86,488 Cubans had already arrived in Florida. This amounted to the greatest mass exodus from Cuba in history: Even more Cubans fled during the Mariel boatlift than had left in 1962, the post-revolutionary year that had, up until then, seen the greatest exodus of Cuba emigrants. Many of the refugees in the boatlift, given the derogatory nickname “Marielitos,” were men who had served jail time. And yet, Ojito realized that “criminal” meant something entirely different in Cuba than it did in the United States. Although there were certainly some dangerous men among the Mariel refugees, there were also men who had been jailed for standing up to the regime, for growing their own food, or for protecting family members.

Some of the new refugees struggled to adapt to life in the United States, while others quietly moved on, got to work, and assimilated. They were not always welcomed, and there was friction between Cuban immigrants and both white and Black Miamians: White Miamians were, in some cases, loathe to “lose” even more of their city to the growing Cuban population, and Black Miamians felt that they were now even further marginalized by the influx of Cuban immigrants. Ojito realizes that Castro’s assertion that the refugees were “criminals” and “scum” was influencing public opinion, even in the United States, where she had not expected his ideological reach to extend. As public opinion turned against the Mariel refugees, Vilaboa began to receive angry calls. Op-eds and other critical articles about the refugees were being published daily, and Vilaboa was blamed for facilitating what was increasingly seen as a policy error.

Despite the backlash and the US government’s decision reversal, Castro continued to send boats out of Mariel. He was not going to halt the boatlift just because Carter did not want to accept more refugees. Additionally, he began to overload the vessels, and there were several high-profile sinkings. By May 17, there was chaos both in Mariel and in South Florida. At the same time, riots were breaking out in Miami after a Florida jury had failed to convict four white Miami police officers in the death of Arthur McDuffie, an innocent Black man whom they’d pulled over.

Héctor Sanyustiz had managed to find a spot for his family on one of the boats, and he too left Cuba through the port of Mariel. He settled in a rundown South Beach hotel, where many from the boatlift lived after arriving in the United States. During the days after his arrival, the massive influx of Cuban immigrants overwhelmed Key West, and Florida officials set up new processing sites. Bernardo Benes tried his best to help refugees in Miami, but he too was met with resistance. Crime was on the rise and Hispanic men were the demographic with the highest rates of criminal activity. Public reaction to Mariel continued to deteriorate, and the new arrivals were blamed for the increasing climate of unrest in Miami. By September, the United States government indicated to Castro that it was willing to negotiate new policy terms in order to end the boatlift. Castro, who was also tired of the chaos, sent the last boats on September 23. Mariel was effectively over. A few months later, Carter, who had been blamed for the chaos that Mariel became, lost the election to Ronald Reagan. Additionally, several thousand “undesirables” who had engaged in criminal activity after immigrating to the United States were returned to the port of Mariel.

Although Ojito struggled with homesickness for years after arriving in Miami, she ultimately found her voice. She finished college and began working at the Miami Herald. She ultimately switched to the Spanish-language version of the paper, El Nuevo Herald, where she covered the continuing saga of Mariel. Thousands of Mariel refugees remained in political limbo: Jailed for crimes committed in the United States, they were held indefinitely until Cuba would accept their deportations. Jailed Mariel refugees began to revolt against the prospect of being forcibly returned to Cuba, and Ojito was sent to Atlanta to cover one such prison riot. She recalls talking to a woman there, who, like her, had come over as part of the Mariel boatlift. Ojito was aware of the stigma of being a “Marielita,” but to her, it was a badge of honor to have been part of the boatlift. The story she wrote about the riots ran on the front page of the Miami newspapers along with her picture, as she too was part of Mariel. The government re-negotiated its policies concerning Mariel refugees who had ended up incarcerated in the United States, and the riots ended.

Bernardo Benes became a pariah in Miami because of his role in the Mariel boatlift. The earlier waves of Cubans saw the Mariel refugees not only as criminals—in no small part because Castro had successfully dominated the narrative about the boatlift—but also as decidedly more pro-Castro than the earlier waves of immigrants. They wondered why the “Marielitos” had not left Cuba earlier, but instead had stayed for 20 years after the revolution. Vilaboa too was ostracized. Both men, formerly prominent and well-connected, struggled to find work in the years following Mariel. Pinto, the Peruvian official tasked with managing the original crisis at the embassy, however, was unscathed, and his career was not impacted. Hector Sanyustiz, disabled by a series of heart ailments, ended up alone in a remote corner of Miami. His friend and co-conspirator Radamés was not able to leave Cuba until 1991.

Mariel changed Cuba, too. It showed Cubans that there were cracks in the system and that Castro was more vulnerable than he seemed. After the boatlift, a steady stream of intellectuals, artists, and other public figures defected. The stories that they told about Cuba in the 1980s, 1990s, and even the early 2000s, were much the same as those told by the Mariel refugees: Cuba was a land of political repression and state-sponsored mass surveillance. It was a place where it was not possible to safely disagree with the government and no one was truly free. The Castro regime periodically “cracked down” on the dissident population, and in 2003, there was a particularly large and well-publicized raid that saw many influential men and women imprisoned. These days, Cuban children do not learn about the Mariel boatlift in school. In Miami, it has largely lost its stigma, and 97% of those who arrived on the boatlift became law-abiding US citizens. They are now indistinguishable from other waves of refugees, with the one exception that they tend to be less interested in politics. Ojito is happy in the United States, but there will always be a part of her that holds onto her Cuban past. Being an exile is, she thinks, a lifelong condition. In her medicine cabinet, she still keeps the tube of lipstick that she brought over with her on the Mañana.