Cuban success story

The Cuban success story or sometimes referred to as the myth of the golden exile, is the idea that Cuban exiles that came to the United States after the 1959 Cuban Revolution were exclusively political exiles who were largely economically successful and politically conservative. The idea garnered traction starting in the 1960s via rags-to-riches stories in the national news media, and became widely promoted within the Cuban American community. The idea has been criticized as an inaccurate depiction of Cuban Americans that ignores historical fact.[1][2]

Myth

Background

In the years 1959 to 1962 various Cuban exiles would leave the island and become referred to as "golden exiles". Most of the exiles in this period were anti-communist and upper-class who were successful under the regime of Fulgencio Batista and were fleeing the dangers of the successful Cuban Revolution. The US government and national media began promoting an image of the exiles as exceptional people worth of Americans' sympathy, and birth the idea of the Cuban success story. Later emigration waves would not consist of the same homogeneous upper-class population and not garner the same public sympathy, especially the emigrants of the Mariel boatlift.[3] The Cuban success story also became popular in Cuban exile circles. The idea that Cubans in the United States were economic successful was embraced as a tool to convince Cubans in Cuba of the advantages of emigrating.[2] The Cuban success story's popularity allowed it to become accepted in various academic circles, policy making groups, and journalist organizations.[4]

By the time of the 1980 Mariel boatlift the image of Cuban immigrants as "golden exiles" began to fade as popular media began to characterize Marielitos as lone males, criminals, and homosexuals.[5]

Narrative

The narrative of the Cuban success story goes that Cuban exiles left the country after the 1959 revolution for solely political reasons. Cuban exiles firmly disagreed with the communist government of Cuba and had no intentions of emigrating for better economic opportunities outside of Cuba. The exiles were mainly middle class and highly skilled, with occupational skill, high education, and language abilities that they brought with them to the United States. Most of the emigrants were light skinned and encountered little if any racial prejudice in the United States.[6] In general Cuban exiles were economically successful and conservative[2] becoming a perfect model minority[6] in the United States, and a prime example of the accessibility of the American dream.[2]

Criticism

Political motives

Sheila L. Croucher has argued that the propagation of the Cuban success story was a propaganda tool that supported the interest of North American capitalists, the U.S. government and even some Cuban exiles.[3]

Sociologists Francisco Hernández Vázquez and Rodolfo D. Torres have asserted that the story also helped ease the worries of Americans that may have doubted why the government gave Cubans immigration privileges and federal aid.[2]

Scholar Gregory Helmick has noted that some early Cuban exiles adopted the term "Golden exile" to differentiate themselves from later Cuban exiles such as those of the Mariel boatlift. This identity emphasized their ideological purity, machismo, and racial whiteness.[7]

Historicity

Scholar Maria Vidal de Haymes argued in 1997 that the relevance of the Cuban success story ignores recorded economic realities. The story ignores that general Cuban American household incomes have been recorded as substantially lower than general non-Latino household incomes in the United States. It also ignores the high rates of poverty among recent Cuban immigrants, Afro-Cubans, and Cuban-American children.[8] Scholar Lisandro Perez has noted in 1986 that the Cuban success story popularizes the idea of a skyrocketing economic mobility for Cubans that is not based in fact, but Cubans have been recorded as having a much higher average income that other Hispanic groups in the United States. This disparity is so much so, that it is far greater than the disparity between the incomes of Cubans and non-Latinos.[9]

Scholar Jorge Duany has argued that Cubans are not as economically successful as propagated in the Cuban success story, and Cubans must suffer through cultural assimilation difficulties that every immigrant group goes through. He also argues that the story only resembles the reality of the early Golden exile and not of other working class Cubans that came in later emigration waves.[4]

References

1. Nicolás Kanellos (1994). Handbook of Hispanic Cultures in the United States: Sociology. Arte Publico Press. p. 134. ISBN 9781611921656.
2. Francisco Hernández Vázquez; Rodolfo D. Torres (2003). Latino/a Thought: Culture, Politics, and Society. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. p. 295–296. ISBN 9780847699414.
3. Michelle M. Cobas (2001). "Mass media ethics vs. ethnicity : the Cuban American National Foundation's battle with the Miami Herald". digitalcommons.lsu.edu.
4. Jorge Duany (1999). "Cuban communities in the United States: migration waves, settlement patterns and socioeconomic diversity". Pouvoirs dans la Caraïbe Revue du Centre de Recherche Sur les Pouvoirs Locaux dans la Caraïbe (11): 69–103. doi:10.4000/plc.464.
5. Performing Exile Foreign Bodies. Intellect Books Limited. 2017.
6. Jorge Perez-Lopez (1993). Cuban Studies 23. University of Pittsburgh Press. p. 168. ISBN 9780822970361.
7. Helmick, Gregory (2016). Archival Dissonance in the U.S. Cuban Post-Exile Novel. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 43–44. ISBN 9781443887588.
8. Vidal de Haymes, Maria (1997). "The Golden Exile The Social Constructionm of the Cuban American Success Story". Journal of Poverty. 1. doi:10.1300/J134v01n01_05.
9. Perez, Lisando (1986). "Immigrant Economic Adjustment and Family Organization: The Cuban Success Story Reexamined". The International Migration Review. 20 (1): 4–20. doi:10.1177/019791838602000101. JSTOR 2545681.