Afro-Latin@ Diasporas

The Afro-Latin@ Diasporas Book Series publishes scholarly and cre-ative writing on the African diasporic experience in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States. The Series includes books which address all aspects of Afro-Latin@ life and cultural expression throughout the hemisphere, with a strong focus on Afro-Latin@s in the United States. This Series is the fi rst-of-its-kind to combine such a broad range of topics, including religion, race, transnational identity, history, literature, music and the arts, social and cultural theory, biography, class and economic relations, gender, sexuality, sociology, politics, and migration.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14759

Alan A. Aja

Miami’s Forgotten Cubans

Race, Racialization, and the Miami Afro-Cuban Experience

Afro-Latin@ Diasporas ISBN 978-1-137-57523-4 ISBN 978-1-137-57045-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-57045-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016946177

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.

Cover image © Keystone Pictures USA / Alamy Stock Photo Series logo inspired by “Le Marron Inconnu” by Haitian sculptor Albert Mangones

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Nature America Inc. New York

Alan A. Aja Brooklyn College, CUNY Brooklyn , New York , USA

Series Dedication

The 2016 publications in the Afro-Latin@ Diasporas Book Series are in loving memory of Juan Flores, teacher, mentor, scholar, and friend.

Author’s Dedication

For Wendy and Liam, mis queridos. For the Abuelos; Joaquín, Cubita (Ana), Elena, and Antonio, and mi

Abuela Kiki (Blanca Rodríguez Aja), who now rest in peace. For my parents Loyda and Tony and mi familia in Brooklyn, Santa Fe,

Loveland, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Louisville, and Miami. For those who nurtured my life trajectory and provided unconditional

support, from London to Austin to Boston to Buenos Aires to La Habana, with specifi c dedication to my Afro-Cuban herman@s.

And for my former professor and scholarly ally for racial justice, Juan Flores—1945–2014. Rest in Power.

ix

The American Ideal of Racial Progress Is Viewed by How Fast I Become White,” James Baldwin, The Cross of Redemption

Of strange coincidence, on August 13 (of 2014), the same day my father, a 1967 arrival from La Habana , Cuba, was born, I fi nished my fi rst prelimi-nary draft of this book. 1 It is also the same day that Fidel Castro Ruz was born (in 1926), the revolutionary fi gure that for so many Cuban Americans is vilifi ed and blamed for the supposed struggle we have endured since our entry into “ el exilio .” That the contrary is more true, that Cuban exiles and their children, especially “white” Cubans like my family members, live better in the USA if not the same as we did in Cuba, is a profound understatement.

In Miami, born and raised amid the occasional palm tree, small mani-cured lawns, and Cuban-owned tienditas (little stores) of Little Havana, then following the paths of “spatial assimilation” into the expanding strip malls beyond Guecheste (Westchester) and into the West Kendall suburban developments, it was this mythology to which we clung. 2 In one of the more critical books on the Cuban exilic experience, La Lucha for Cuba: Religion and Politics on the Streets of Miami , religious scholar Miguel de la Torre (2003) argues that the supposed “struggle” we have endured in Miami, the heart of the Diaspora, is best symbolized through the religious expression La Lucha (the struggle). This expression, embedded in the con-tours of an ethno-nationalism and a transplanted machismo designed to reinforce intersectional structures of gender, race and class serves as means to justify the power and privilege exiles and their children have accumu-lated over time in South Florida. This “struggle” essentially undergirded

FOREWORD

x FOREWORD

the narrative memory of my early years in Miami, one that constantly rein-forced a myth of bootstrap success while placing direct blame on our local black and brown neighbors themselves for the economic disparities they persistently endured. This perception would also be rendered onto some of our own co-ethnics, those who arrived in 1980 (Mariel boatlift) and subsequent years, who grew up as products of the revolution and arrived with a mind not to unseat Fidel Castro and company like their earliest exilic predecessors, but to survive in an increasingly unequal, “neo-liberal” USA. It is at this nexus, when Cubans of diverse social origins would arrive for similar economic reasons as other Latin American/Caribbean immi-grants that our own “co-ethnics”, some of us argued overtly and covertly, also deserve, as if predestined, their forthcoming disparate economic position and treatment. The struggles of “the Other,” from that of local African Americans to Haitians to Nicaraguans to our own Afro-Cuban sisters and brothers, were viewed as their own fault, done by their own accord, their own deep-rooted cultural dysfunction embedded in a “tangle of pathology” 3 —our “success” was earned and deserved, however the real-ity that the Cuban exilic experience in the USA is well explained by what scholar William “Sandy” Darity, Jr., and colleagues (2001) call the “lateral mobility hypothesis,” and however this perceived “success” ignores the intersections and privileges of selective migration, occupational advantage, political and economic support by the state, exclusive ethnic networks that relied on the exploitation of women and subsequent waves of immigrants, and as consistently overlooked as determinant, our whiteness . 4

But for my family and me, this myth of success was upended once we moved outside of the insular confi nes of the Miami Cuban enclave and its sur-rounds to Louisville, Kentucky, in the late 1980s. Here, something clicked. For the fi rst time, my parents’ skill sets and job qualifi cations were questioned due to their mild Spanish accents, and when relatives and friends from Miami arrived to visit (alongside other Latinxs 5 we befriended), some with a visible and apparent “otherness” through greeting, language, or darker phenotype, we began to feel the apparent Otherness that we, as members of el exilio , had rendered onto other local groups of color in Miami, including “our own.” In Miami, we were working-class Cuban Americans, but we benefi ted from the vast social networks of the Cuban enclave alongside what Antonio López (2008) aptly calls a “reclaimed” whiteness. In Kentucky, we were socially viewed and classifi ed as “white” at fi rst interaction, but there were times that we were often treated, or at least felt, slightly “off-white.” This per-spective was actually echoed by one of my book interviewees, “Angelina”

FOREWORD xi

(see Chaps. 3 and 5 ), an Afro-Cubana who arrived on one of the same “free-dom fl ights” my mother arrived on, only to be resettled in New York by the Cuban Refugee Program (read: not Miami!). She stated: “Miami is the only place where Cubans can get away with being like the Caucasians, out-side Miami is a different ball game, they become slightly off-white.” Quite frankly, in Louisville, we were no longer sheltered as we were within the boundaries of Miami-Dade County, an increasingly pan-ethnic, global city where folks who looked and talked like us would go on to co-dominate (with non- Latinx whites) its political and economic spheres. 6

However temporary this “off-whiteness” would prove in Kentucky, given that in a coloristic frame privileged treatment toward us would render us as “visible minorities” as compared to our co-ethnics of color (and even more privileged relative to the historic to present oppression faced by African Americans), this experience would shape future trajectories for my siblings and me, one of movement away from the “re-imagined communities” of the Cuban-dominated ethnic enclave and one of negotiation of the segregated black/white dichotomy of Louisville, Kentucky. 7 At the time (late 1980s), few Latinxs lived there, although much like the southern USA, the region has experienced substantial growth via immigration and internal migration over the last 20 years. 8 Here, we encountered a region of the USA still reeling from the legacies of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and the simultaneous direct and hidden forms of racism still operating in this so-perceived “post-racial” era. Black Louisvillians were largely concentrated alongside the city’s western border along the Ohio River (literally called: the West End ), while neighbor-hoods of low- to high-income whites surrounded them from west to east in a crescent-like pattern as if designed to ensure a spatially segregated, eco-nomically isolated fate. These racially bifurcated spatial and economic realities allowed us to refl ect (expose) on the Latin America–like racial order we knew existed in Miami, but rarely if ever questioned. Seldom meeting an Afro-Cuban during my upbringing there, it was light-skinned, Cubans, Latinxs and Anglos whom we lived around and built inter-group relationships with within Miami’s institutional spheres. It was only until my parents, refl ecting on the racial exclusivity of their exilic past as they engaged in solidarity with other Latinx immigrants through faith-based community work and practice in Kentucky, that I was told during my teenage years: “son la familia no habla d’esto (the family doesn’t speak of this), but we come from a black country.”

Years later, beyond my time at the University of Kentucky where I was among a handful of Latinx undergraduates, and after a year in South London where I worked with Latin American and East African youth

xii FOREWORD

of color who sought shelter from violence and political upheaval, I was afforded the opportunity of a lifetime. In earning a master’s degree in sustainable international development at Brandeis University, in lieu of a traditional thesis, we were required to spend the second year of the pro-gram conducting experiential work in our potential career fi elds. After a few months of human rights work with Amnesty International in Buenos Aires as the fi rst part of the practicum, I received an email communication from a US-based non-profi t organization looking to support environmen-tal education exchange initiatives in Cuba. Without hesitation, I traveled to Cuba and spent a few months there fi nishing the degree: interviewing government offi cials, environmental educators, citizen- activists, and others who sought to “normalize” relations with the USA with hopes to share ideas and practices on ecological sustainability given the imminent adverse effects of climate change. Notwithstanding that relations were ever “nor-mal” to begin with given historical presence of the USA as imperial power in Cuba, I stayed with relatives who, by choice or circumstance, never made it out of the revolution and into the Diaspora.

That experience, described briefl y in Chap. 1 , would go on to yield questions that I began to formulate the following years while working as a labor union organizer in the cities of Austin and El Paso, Texas. During the day, my job was to support human service and mental health work-ers, child protective offi cers, and other state workers as they organized for better wages and improved workplace conditions. At night and early mornings, I worked with janitors and maintenance workers of the state’s public universities, and did so during a time of persistent budget cuts and increased privatization of public services. Through this experience, I noticed that amid the social diversity of Texas, light-skinned Latinxs, alongside whites (non-Latinx), were overrepresented in the middle- and upper-income offi ce jobs of state government as well as among gradu-ate students of the public universities where I served as union organizer. 9 Meanwhile, darker-skinned Mexican-Americans, Latinxs, and African Americans alike worked in the lower-paying sectors of the state workforce. My own non-scientifi c observations and lingering questions of this appar-ent pigmentocratic, segmented occupational and educational structure inspired me to pursue a doctorate in public and urban policy at the New School for Social Research in New York City, where I delved in the vast literature on inter-group disparities with focus on the economic and spa-tial realities of the dynamic, socially diverse US Latinx community. Here, I revisited the role of the “ethnic enclave” in the economic lives of Cuban

FOREWORD xiii

immigrants by wave of arrival, paying specifi c attention to the few black Cubans who lived in Miami- Dade County. Like other scholars, I found that the ethnic enclave indeed produces a segmented economy, where some do benefi t (owners, predominantly earlier arrivals, and men) while most remain in exploited conditions (employees, predominantly later arrivals, and women). But through an updated methodology, I integrated Afro-Cubans into the equation, fi nding that they fared considerably worse than their white co-ethnics in Miami-Dade County, but there was so few in the Census samples that it was diffi cult to test relationships between sev-eral variables so as to enrich my thesis. I then asked the question, as policy students are trained, what should be done? What courses of action should be taken given not the declining, but increasing signifi cance of race and wealth inequality in the USA, realities that require dynamic, bolder, more radical policy responses and collective interventions.

This is the product, a few years later, of those questions raised, this time with integration of the lived experiences of Afro-Cubans in Miami- Dade County. While the study of public policy, as a considerably new “disci-pline,” is informed largely by neo-classical economics and driven in theory and method through quantitative analysis, an increasing number of scholars have turned to narrative to underscore the impact, from initial policy design to the intended to unintended consequences, of the decisions the “power-elite” make. 10 Those in power in Miami-Dade County are, for a large part, white Cubans and other light-skinned Latinx or white (non-Latinx) allies; thus, here I rely on numeric analysis, observations, and interviews, altogether interweaved using narrative format, so as to best understand the Afro-Cuban American experience in Miami-Dade County in relation to their white Cuban counterparts. I not only hope this book serves as addendum to understand-ing the Afro-Latinx condition in the USA (see Román and Flores 2010), with mind to contribute to the growing literature on the economic and social incorporation of black immigrants and their children in the country (see, for example, Anderson 2015; Greer, 2013; Pierre, 2004; Shaw-Taylor and Tuch 2007), and that my fi ndings will raise new and important policy-related questions. Given the profound disparities and racialized treatment humbly demonstrated in the pages herewith, written amid a neo-liberal con-text that begets growing wealth inequality in the USA that equally operates amid a putative “post-racial” era, I ask how can we best engage in inter-group coalition and policy formation to improve conditions not just for all future generations, but with specifi c race-conscious attention? I hope you will help me answer these questions.

xv

However the individualistic myth of book authorship, they are collective constructions impossible without multiple levels of surrounding support. Wendy, my witty partner and wife who was unconditionally patient with this project, provided invaluable feedback and insight, deserving fi rst and foremost credit. We met in graduate school amid New  York nights of dancing salsa, talking roots and folk music, refl ecting on the strange coin-cidence of being the children of a Presbyterian and Episcopalian minister, respectively, and perhaps boring to some, discussing our shared concern over the mass privatization of “public goods.” During the writing of this book, Wendy carefully critiqued my analysis given her own experience and expertise working in the New York City government and non-profi t sectors, a career trajectory shaped by an upbringing that would yield an impassioned moral fabric that society must better empower underserved communities. Wendy took the time out of her own stressful schedule to read chapter drafts while equally ensuring that we enjoy our lives together even in the diffi cult economic context that is New York City. Liam Elián Antonio, our son, with his curious spirit and abundant energy provided necessary reprieve, timely reminders of the joys of life and wonder. They, in essence, are the very reasons I wrote this book—to help build a world of not just inter-group tolerance, the latter a term with somewhat superfi cial meaning, but one of empathy, inclusion, and restorative and redistribu-tive justice, driven by meaningful practices that can uproot deep-seated structures of oppression so as to build more just and equitable societies. I wrote this for them, for my family, even for my critics who believe that

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

xvi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

we and we alone, as individuals, construct our relative gain and privilege, processes independent of the economic, physical, and ecological cost of others and our surroundings.

This book would also not be possible without the unconditional sup-port of my parents, Loyda Puig Aja and Antonio Juan Aja. Both 1960s’ arrivals from Cuba who met at Miami Senior High School in Little Havana, they initially interrupted pursuit of their college degrees to give their children a better standard of living in Miami. Then, moving us defi -antly to Louisville, Kentucky, to attend seminary and subsequently work-ing with Latinx immigrants in the area while we struggled economically, they altogether taught us that social, economic, and environmental jus-tice should remain at the center of any personal philosophy. Thank you Mami y Papi! My sister Vanessa Aja-Sigmon and her husband David, who alongside Wendy, would patiently listen and respond to arguments of this book as I introduced them at the most inopportune of moments (e.g. din-ner with the family, vacation afternoons, and subway rides to museums). They humored me and provided valuable feedback as astute observers of social relations in their own lives. Their children, my nephews, Lucas Joaquín and Jesse Miguel, both whose second names were given to honor Miami relatives and loved ones, whose joy and bonding with my son Liam provided the necessary removal and laughter I needed at times from the book. My brother Bryan and his life-partner, Misti, who as far away as San Francisco would both offer moral support as he himself pursues a doctoral degree of his own. I must thank Wendy’s family, especially her mother Pamela McCrory who marched in the civil rights movement and contin-ues to seek to provide affordable and supportive housing for homeless families in Colorado and New Jersey even into her retirement years. She is the granddaughter of the famed Enid Charles and Lancelot Hogben, both of whom challenged the eugenics movement of the early 1920s in their own works and daily lives, and Pamela would often send me their works so as to compare how racist social policies have changed little since those years. Wendy’s father, Scott was keenly interested in the outcome of this book project, reading the earliest versions of a chapter with advice and interest, a support so too extended by his partner, Sheldon, during trips to their home in Philadelphia. My in-laws, James, Dona, and my niece Taylor Clementine, cheerleading from the Colorado Front Range, extended the same inter-familial support as did Andy and Kathy from their home in the Ottawa Valley.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xvii

Several people whom I asked advice of deserve their proper recognition: Susan Eckstein, Susan Greenbaum, Darrick Hamilton, William “Sandy” Darity, Jr., Mirta Ojito, Alexandra Lutnick, Lisandro Pérez, Tamara Mose, Daniel Bustillo, Antwuan Wallace, Patrick Mason, Tim Shortell, Shonna Trinch, and Edward Snadjr. Stephen Steinberg, whom I talked through my fi ndings at times over email and occasional Union Square “Socratic walks” and lunches, provided invaluable advice, as did Michelle Hay, over phone conservation, and Ramón Grosfoguel, over email given his own important work on racialized groups in the USA. I must extend utmost gratitude to William Simoneau, my research assistant, for the quantita-tive analyses portion of this book. William worked patiently with me over a year as we muddled through various versions of descriptive statistics with mind to provide the most robust analyses given the challenges of complex data sets. William is now a doctoral candidate in political sci-ence at Washington University in St. Louis and has a bright future in academia. Our departmental interns, made possible through work-study resources via the CUNY Diversity Grants, Gisely Colón López, Laura Morales, Denia Valenzuela, and Selyna Quiñones, conducted background research or transcribed oral histories and interviews I recorded, sometimes from Spanish to English, with utmost effi ciency and interest in learning about their own Afro-Latinx roots. I owe a great deal of gratitude to the blind reviewer and editors, whose critiques and suggestions were essential. Co-editor of this series Natasha Gorden-Chipembre, along with Shaun Vigil and Erica Buchmann at Palgrave, were most patient with me as I fi nished multiple drafts, as was Miriam Jiménez Román, even during the most diffi cult times, for which I am most grateful. Finally, Julia Fernández, whom I hired as a last-minute “sources” editor prior to fi nal submission, was a godsend.

Departmental colleagues María Pérez y González, Antonio Nadal, Vanessa Pérez Rosario, Miranda Martínez, Virginia Sánchez Korrol, Irene Sosa, and Matilda Nistal remained supportive throughout the years this book was under construction. As our Chair, María would consistently advocate for “reassigned time” and fellowship opportunities when avail-able to allow me to fi nish the book, which came alongside support from a PSC-CUNY grant, the Provost and Dean’s offi ce of Brooklyn College and, thankfully, a faculty fellowship from the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (Centro) at Hunter College. The Center’s director, my former dissertation Chair Edwin Meléndez, knew that I wanted to fi nish this book among other projects and granted me the opportunity as did our departmental appointments committee who gave me their blessing.

xviii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Most important were the members of Miami-Dade County’s Afro- Cuban community who helped me begin this study: Barbara Gutiérrez David Rosemond, Henry Crespo, Roberto Poveda, all of whom were interviewed for this book, helped me through the diffi culty of fi nding other Afro-Cubans in South Florida to be a part of this book project. My Aunt Lidia E. Puig Famadas who gave me food and shelter during my research stays in Miami, and our beloved Tio Migue and his partner Millie, who would equally provide nourishment in our shared favorite Miami res-taurants. Religious scholar Miguel de la Torre, who coincidentally used to work in real estate alongside my father in South Florida in the 1980s, read an earlier version of a chapter and offered advice and suggestion. Lisandro Pérez, now at CUNY-John Jay, who connected me to two of this book’s interviewees, as did Oilda Martínez of New York City, offered keen insight and support. Antonio López, at George Washington University, read ear-lier paragraphs and offered invaluable advice given his own research on Cuban anti-blackness, not to mention his outstanding work which is often referenced in the following pages. Corinna Moeibus, an anthropology doctoral student and walking tour guide in South Florida, came during the fi nal phases of this book with a necessary critical eye. Mirta Ojito, whose award-winning piece has become a staple reading in my courses, offered suggestions on parts of a chapter and also recommended several people to contact and interview, as did Ann Louise Bardach with gracious advice. Others, including Brooklyn College colleagues Carolina Bank Muñoz, Joseph Entin, James Davis, Prudence Cumberbatch, Gaston Alonso, Peter Weston, Ernesto Mora, Martha Nadell, Carlos Cruz, Jeremy Porter, Jeanne Theoharis, and countless others, were instrumental bas-tions of background and moral support for publishing this book. Lastly, the folks at ALC alimentari in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, particularly Stephanie and Michael, who in my view make the best version of a southern Italian–infl uenced sanwich Cubano east of Union City and allowed me to work in their space amid the busiest of times. There are some I very likely forgot to mention, for which I apologize.

NOTES 1. My father, the Reverend Dr. Antonio Juan Aja, was born in the Santo Suarez

section of Havana. He arrived in Miami in 1967 with his father after spend-ing over a year in Madrid before being given an entry visa into the USA. He is currently a Presbyterian pastor in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xix

2. Here, I invoke the local Spanish pronunciation of Westchester ( Guecheste ), which is equally located in La Saguesera (the southwest quadrants of Miami). To understand this spatial transition and its surroundings, see Richard Blanco’s The Prince of los Cocuyos , which poetically captures the economic dimensions of the suburban “white” Cuban American experience.

3. I am using “tangle of pathology” here with intentional critique of the vast “culture of poverty” literature. The term, fi rst used by Kenneth Clark in his description of urban poverty in Dark Ghetto (1965), was borrowed by Daniel Patrick Moynihan in his often- referenced study “The Negro Family: The Case of National Action” (1967). For recent critiques of this recurring theoretical explanation for persistent urban poverty, see Steinberg (2011) and Aja, Bustillo, Darity, Jr., and Hamilton (2014).

4. By the lateral mobility hypothesis, I am referring to William Darity, Jr.’s (1989: 334-3) original argument, when he posited that “the highest social status attained by adult generations that constitute the bulk of migrants” will have a determining effect on the economic position of subsequent gen-erations of the same group in their new country of reception. For more on the lateral mobility hypothesis, see Darity, Jr., Dietrich and Guilkey (2001), and Darity, Jr. (2005, 2014).

5. My mother, Loyda Puig Aja, was born in Camaguey, Cuba and lived in the Marianao neighborhood of La Habana prior to migration. She arrived in a “freedom fl ight” in 1966 with her parents and a sibling, settling initially in Little Havana. Until a few years ago, she was the highest ranking Latina in the Presbyterian Church (USA) organization in Louisville, Ky., and now resides with my father in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

6. Throughout the book, I attempt to apply the gender-inclusive, non-fi xed binary-based term “Latinx” when writing in my own voice. I also use “Latin@,” “Latino,” and “Hispanic,” sometimes as interchangeable, when quoting interviewees, referencing other scholars, or amid analysis of local usage and meanings of these terms. I am aware that the term “Latinx” is not without limitations, and hope we continue to engage in a collective, intersectionality-based politics that empowers our search for more inclusive language. For more on the origins of the term “Latinx,” see Scharrón-del Río, M.R. (forthcoming, 2016). Latina/o Americans and Transgender Identity. In K. Nadal (ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Psychology and Gender . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. For an excellent scholarly blog see Johnson, Jessica Marie. 2015. Thinking about the ‘X.’ African American Intellectual History Society. December 12. http://www.aaihs.org/thinking-about-an-x/ .

7. I am applying Benedict Anderson’s (1991) often-used descriptor here of the efforts of Cubans in Miami to creatively reproduce images, icons, and prac-tices as expressions of nationhood and cultural identity.

xx ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

8. According to a Pew Research Center analysis of 2000 and 2010 Census data, Kentucky was among several southern states to experience triple-digit growth (122 %) of the Latino population over the last ten years. See Passel, Cohn, and López 2011.

9. As an organizer for CWA-Local 6186 (Texas State Employees Union), I organized workers from several state government agencies and universities. These included physical plant and custodial units at the University of Texas-Austin and the University of Texas- El Paso.

10. This is an application of C. Wright Mill’s (1956) classic analysis of the elites who control the tri-fecta of institutions: the military, the economy (corpo-rations), and the government, and their effects on society.

xxi

CONTENTS

1 Introduction: If Elián Were Black? 1

2 “It’s Like Cubans Could Only Be White,” Divided Arrival: Origins of a Racially Bifurcated Migration 27

3 Beyond El Ajiaco: Eviction from el Exilio (1959–1979) and Miami’s (White) Cuban Wall 61

4 “You Ain’t Black, You’re Cuban!”: Mariels, Stigmatization, and the Politics of De-Racialization (1980–1989) 107

5 “They Would Have Tossed Him Back into the Sea,” Balseros, Elián, and Race Matters in the Miami Latinx Millennium (1990-present) 143

6 From la Cuba de Ayer to el Miami De Ayer: The Cuban “Ethnic Myth” in Contemporary Context 175

xxii CONTENTS

7 Between “Laws and Practice,” Blacks, Latinxs, Afro-Cubans/Latinxs, and Public Policy 209

Bibliography 231

Index 237

xxiii

LIST OF FIGURES

Graph 2.1 Year of arrival for black and white Cubans in Miami-Dade County, 1959–2010. Census 2000, 5 % sample and *ACS 2010, 1 % sample combined 43

xxv

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1 Distribution of eras of immigration for Cubans by race in Miami- Dade County, 1990, 2000, and 2010 45

Table 3.1 Selected summary demographic statistics—Cuban exiles by race in Miami-Dade County—1980 Census, 5 % sample (all ages)—1960–1979 73

Table 3.2 Selected summary socioeconomic statistcs—Cuban exiles by race in South Florida, 5 % sample, 1980 76

Table 3.3 Comparison of 1965–1974 Cuban exile arrivals by race in Miami- Dade County, 1980 5 % Census sample 77

Table 3.4 Selected summary socioeconomic statistcs for demographic groups in Miami-Dade County, 1980 Census, 5 % sample 79

Table 4.1 Selected summary demographic statistics—Cuban immigrants by stage of arrival and race in Miami-Dade County—1990 Census, 5 % sample 124

Table 4.2 Selected summary socioeconomic statistics, Cuban immigrants by stage of arrival in Miami-Dade County, 1990 Census, 5 % sample 126

Table 4.3 Selected summary socioeconomic characteristics by demographic group and race—Miami-Dade County, Florida, 1990 128

Table 5.1 Selected summary demographic statistics—Cuban immigrants by race and stage of arrival in Miami-Dade County—2000 census, 5 % sample 156

Table 5.2 Selected summary socioeconomic statistics—Cuban immigrants by race and stage of arrival in Miami-Dade County, 2000 census, 5 % sample 158

xxvi LIST OF TABLES

Table 5.3 Selected socioeconomic characteristics of all Cuban immigrants by gender and race in Miami-Dade County—census 2000 159

Table 5.4 Selected socioeconomic statistics of racial and ethnicgroups in Miami-Dade County, 2000 census, 5 % sample 160

Table 6.1 Selected socioeconomic characteristics of demographic groups in Miami-Dade County, Census ACS sample, 2010 (1 %) 198