New Cuban exodus quieter and bigger

Posted on Tue, Jul. 11, 2006

CUBAN IMMIGRANTS
New Cuban exodus quieter and bigger

A new wave of Cubans, larger than the one that came during Mariel, is
adapting to life in South Florida in their own way, mostly shunning the
political zeal that defined earlier waves of exiles
BY OSCAR CORRAL
ocorral@MiamiHerald.com

A sense of isolation came suddenly to Tamara Saavedra as she ended a
phone call from her husband and stared at the empty Hialeah video rental
store where she works the late shift.

Tears welled up in her eyes, even as a loud Latin music concert played
on the television set near her: a somber mood for a woman surrounded by
the latest Cuban government-produced DVDs of popular TV shows on the
island, Hollywood movie releases and flashing screens of electronic slots.

Saavedra, 31, is a recent arrival from Cuba, one of tens of thousands
who have come to the United States since 2000. More Cubans have arrived
during the last six years than during the entire Mariel boatlift in
1980, quietly reshaping the Miami area.

Like so many immigrants, Saavedra has struggled to cope with the sense
of dislocation of a new land. The problems she worries about are common:
having enough money to buy medicine for her sick daughter, pleasing a
husband she sees only a few minutes a day and finding ways to
materialize the dreams she envisioned for herself when she left Cuba behind.

Forging ahead in her immigrant life, she doesn't always see the
proverbial light at the northern end of the Florida Straits.

''The American dream no longer exists,'' she said, as she swept the
floor of the store. ``But I'm never going back to Cuba to live, not
while Fidel Castro is alive.''

Unlike immigrants who come from other parts of the Americas, newly
arrived Cubans in their 20s and 30s have to overcome an unusual
handicap. Children of the Castro revolution, they were mostly raised in
the ''special period'' of economic turmoil that roiled Cuba in the
1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

They were taught and survived in a communist system so far removed from
the capitalism and democracy that govern the United States that they
often feel lost in the shuffle of competition and assertiveness.

At least 130,000 Cubans have come to the United States -- the vast
majority to South Florida -- since 2000. Most have entered legally
through the U.S. ''lottery'' that allows 20,000 Cubans each year, but
some have made the dangerous trek by sea, too. Many now reside in
Hialeah, long a working-class gateway for Cubans and other immigrants.

Their entry has been quieter, more measured, and into a Miami area far
different than the one that greeted the Mariel arrivals a generation
ago. In 1980, Cubans were the major Hispanic group in Miami. The city
and nation reacted mostly in horror to the unchecked immigration, which
included a few thousand Cubans with criminal records.

Today, Cubans remain the largest immigrant group but no longer the
majority of Hispanics here. And few people have batted an eyelid at the
arrival of this new subgroup in the exile diaspora.

QUIET POLITICS

The political energy that characterized the first wave of Cuban exiles
seems subdued among these new arrivals. Most of those interviewed for
this article know little or nothing of South Florida politics, and keep
their criticism of Castro's government to a minimum.

Ariadne Quiñones, 27, arrived barely a month ago. To her, Miami is a
mere ''country town'' compared to Shanghai in China, where she spent six
months singing in Mandarin to wealthy Chinese nationals in 2003 --
thanks to the Cuban government.

''I don't like politics,'' she said. ``In Cuba, you leave when you can,
not when you want to. It's all the same to me. All systems have good and
bad things. You have to be happy where you live.''

For Barbarita Herrera, 39, assimilation into American life, Miami style,
has been a culture shock. Even the water tastes different than the
''parasite-laden'' water she said flowed from Havana pipes. But unlike
others, Herrera has a hatred of the government she left behind, a system
she believes is bound to change.

''Sometimes I feel like just giving up and going back,'' she said. ``But
I can't go back to that system. Castro really has to fall. You don't
realize how bad things are there until you get here.''

One of the few politically charged new arrivals is Manuel Vásquez
Portal, a dissident journalist who served time in a Cuban prison before
he went into exile last June. He says the political apathy of newly
arrived exiles is a product of their disillusionment with the Cuban
system, which led them to immunize themselves from politics.

''The economic deterioration on the island, a direct result of bad
politics, has made living on the island a nightmare,'' Vásquez Portal
said. ``No one feels love for a nightmare, so they try to forget it.''

As Herrera put it, ``I'm just looking for a better life.''

She seems to have found it. In her apartment: two televisions with
satellite connections, an air-conditioning unit and a computer with
Internet access, all donated.

Herrera said she and her daughter, Rocio De La Torre, were smuggled out
of Cuba on a go-fast boat on a quiet evening off the coast of Guanabo in
September. She says her daughter never paid the $10,000 smuggling fee.
But the chaos on the craft -- packed with 33 people who boarded after
swimming 100 yards -- was so great that the smugglers didn't notice the
extra body until the drop-off point in Dry Tortugas.

Some Cubans come with visas, some as political refugees. Some sneak
across the Florida Straits or the Mexican border. But they all have a
rare privilege: U.S. residency practically guaranteed a year after arrival.

More Cubans gained U.S. residency last year, about 36,000, than in any
year since the early 1980s. This year, the U.S. Border Patrol is on pace
to detain more Cubans who sneak into the country than any year in the
past decade. They usually spend a day or two detained before being
paroled into freedom.

LIFE IN HIALEAH

Hialeah has a sophisticated infrastructure to ease the transition for
Cubans: video stores that rent copies of Cuban government-produced TV
shows, movies and cartoons, thrift stores that sell quinceañera and
wedding gowns for $20, restaurants and other businesses that keep their
doors open to new arrivals who need work.

L & J Video on East Ninth Street -- where Saavedra works -- rents Cuban
television shows and movies, such as Punto y Coma, De Cubano a Cubano
and Elpidio Valdés to new arrivals nostalgic for a dose of communist-era
programming. Nayibi Pérez, 22, who arrived four months ago, scooped up
10 videos on a recent visit.

''This is the best thing on Cuban TV,'' she said, holding up a video of
a Cuban detective series. `You can't even watch TV in Cuba without [the
political show] Mesa Redonda interrupting it. Everyone wants to leave
there. The food is no good. You don't get paid enough. I used to talk a
lot when I was there about coming here and making money just by kicking
over rocks. But few people come here and actually face this reality.''

Pérez's boyfriend, Elpidio Amores, 40, who came from Cuba during the
1994 rafter crisis, told her that in Miami the only thing that can bring
success is hard work.

Pérez and Amores paid the $20 and hauled away their slices of Cuban
nostalgia.

''I love these shows. They remind me of all the lies,'' Pérez said. ``In
Miami, life is hard. But it's not a lie.''

Read Oscar Corral's blog Miami's Cuban Connection in the blogs section
of MiamiHerald.com or at http://blogs.herald.com/cuban_connection/

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