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Monday, October 07, 2013

Exodus of Cubans fuels clash of new and old

Posted on Sunday, 10.06.13

Exodus of Cubans fuels clash of new and old
BY CHRISTINE ARMARIO
ASSOCIATED PRESS

MIAMI -- At a small store on Eighth Street near Miami's Little Havana,
Armando Perez paid $25 to activate his daughter's cell phone in Cuba.
Store owner Laura Benitez sat behind a glass window, typing in the phone
numbers for Perez and others calling Cuba.

"I call my daughter every week, even if it's just for her to say, 'Papi,
I love you,'" said Perez, a thin man who left the island on a boat in 2008.

Benitez, who fled with her parents shortly after the 1959 Cuban
Revolution, doesn't have family in Cuba. Many of her clients, however,
grew up under the communist system and immigrated in the last 10 years.

"They need to go back to Cuba to see their family," Benitez said. "I
don't understand because my parents are here. Maybe if they were in Cuba
I would go back."

Some 46,662 Cubans left the island legally and permanently last year,
the largest migration in a single year since 1994, according to figures
from Cuba's National Statistics Office. Since 2002, the number leaving
has hovered around 30,000 annually, making the last 10 years the largest
exodus since the start of the revolution. That's in addition to an
estimated 7,000 to 19,000 who leave Cuba illegally each year — some by
boat and many with the U.S. as their final destination.

The influx of new arrivals is evident throughout Miami, the heart of
Cuba's exile population, from myriad shops offering cell phone services
to street fliers about performances by artists who still live on the island.

Cubans arriving today grew up on the island after the revolution, and
their relationship with their homeland is different than the wave of
immigrants who arrived immediately after Fidel Castro took power. Their
growing numbers are bringing those stark contrasts to the fore, leading
to moments of friction between groups and putting into question what it
means to be a Cuban "exile."

The clashes surface in a big way when older Cuban Americans protest
outside concerts and sporting events featuring Cuban musicians and
athletes who draw throngs of fans who grew up listening and watching
them. The rifts are also apparent in small exchanges at shops like
Benitez's.

Benitez's mother was a Jehovah's Witness and spent three years in jail
for preaching before fleeing on one of the Freedom Flights, the twice
daily flights that carried more than 265,000 Cubans out of the island
between 1965 and 1973.

"My mom said we were refugees," Benitez recalled. "If she could have
gone back, I don't think she would have. How can we go back to a country
that did not want us?"

By contrast, Cubans fleeing today rarely cite political persecution.

"In Cuba, I didn't live so badly," said Perez, a 63-year-old truck
driver who walks around with a Bluetooth device in his ear. Perez came
to America on a boat with 30 other people to reunite with his son, who
had fled several years ago.

At the strip mall where Benitez's store is located, tax accountant Irka
Ducasse Blanes recalls how, when she lived in Cuba, she did not
understand why Cuban Americans called themselves "exiles."

Blanes, 40, worked in finance at the Hotel Habana Riviera in Cuba. She
lived relatively well, traveling internationally for work twice a year.
In 2007, she came to America when she was six months pregnant, bringing
with her a 7-year-old daughter. Her husband soon followed.

The family wanted a better future for their children, and today Blanes
does identify with the term "exile."

"The word 'exile,' I think, means you're in a place where you can't go
whenever you want to your birth country," she said.

Many Cuban immigrants today do return, however, some quite frequently.
According to the Cuban government, about 500,000 U.S. visitors travel to
the island every year, the majority Cuban Americans.

Their reasons for immigrating — primarily economic and not political
persecution— combined with frequent visits home, raise questions about
whether they can be accurately called "refugees." U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services define refugees as "generally people outside of
their country who are unable or unwilling to return home because they
fear serious harm."

Some immigration activists and politicians have said it's time to
revisit policies that offer generous privileges to Cubans immigrating to
the U.S., like the Cuban Adjustment Act, by which Cubans who reach U.S.
soil are allowed to stay and are fast-tracked toward residency.

"I don't criticize anyone who wants to go visit their mom or dad or
their dying brother or sister in Cuba," U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, a
prominent Florida Republican born in Miami to Cuban parents, told the
American Society of News Editors earlier this year. "But I am telling
you it gets very difficult to justify someone's status as an exile and
refugee when a year and a half after they get here they are flying back
to that country over and over again."

Emilio Morales, a market researcher in Cuba before immigrating to the
U.S. in 2007, characterized the relationship between revolution era
exiles and today's arrivals as "bad." He said recent arrivals are not
interested in politics, and don't feel that something was taken from them.

Cubans have come to American in three general waves: Post-revolution
immigrants who faced persecution in Cuba, those coming in the 1980s,
when thousands were permitted to leave by boat, chiefly in opposition to
the communist government's policies, and those who have come since 1994,
largely for economic reasons after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

All seven Cuban Americans in Congress come from families that immigrated
shortly after 1959, and the majority support hard-line policies toward
the island, in line with the views of the generation they represent.

The older generations of Cuban exiles "don't have anything in common
with us, culturally, politically, nothing," said Morales, 44, who now
runs his own consulting business in Miami.

Rafael Gonzalo, 69, who came to the U.S. in 1959 when he was 15, said
Cubans who came decades ago rarely interact with recent arrivals. Cuban
Americans today are immigrants, not exiles, Gonzalo said, and their
differences range from how they talk and dress to their work ethic.

"Those who come don't like to work a lot," he said. "You have to look
for the root of the problem. The problem is, in Cuba they don't work."

Instead, he said, they survive by "resolver," which in Cuba means having
to invent or barter to make ends meet.

Blanes cringes when she hears comments like that. She spent long hours
studying at night while caring for two young daughters to re-establish
her career here. Many of the unemployed have struggled to find jobs, but
do want to work, she said.

Back at the store, Benitez empathizes with her clients, but feels
compelled to remind them of the freedoms they enjoy here.

Although he doesn't mention it, Perez was once arrested for illegally
selling meat he butchered in Cuba, she said. Still, she recognizes that
persecution was not Perez's main motivation in leaving.

"Hunger is hunger," Benitez said. "Necessity is necessity. The freedom
is somewhere in there, but your stomach is first."

-

Follow Christine Armario on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/cearmario

Source: "MIAMI: Exodus of Cubans fuels clash of new and old - Cuba -
MiamiHerald.com" -
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/10/06/v-fullstory/3673155/exodus-of-cubans-fuels-clash-of.html

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