The Miami Myth Machine
By
Rodolfo F. AcunaAlmost every Mexican American, it seems, has a grandparent or a great-grandparent who rode with Pancho Villa. Few know or admit having ancestors who opposed the Mexican Revolution and supported the dictator Porfirio Diaz. The events surrounding Elan Gonzalez remind me of this tragic page in Mexican American history.
Although the Cuban revolution took place over forty years ago. The Cuban exiles fervor and dreams of returning to their land and privilege still burns hot. Few Cuban Americans remember that Fulgencio Batista y Saldivar came to power as the result of a 1952 coup and that it was Batista's political illegitimacy that made the rise of Castro possible. In the process they seem to forget that it was Batista and other dictators who turned the island into a mafia fiefdom that allowed Cuba to be monopolized by international land companies like the United Fruit Company. More important, they forget that many of their leaders supported these oligarchies. Unable or unwilling to create a revolution from within, they continue to pressure Americans to fight a war that they themselves should wage. Cubans living in Miami, because of the Cold War and their alliance with the most reactionary sectors of our society, have been much more effective in controlling American foreign policy than Mexican exiles were in the first part of the 20th century. Certainly more enduring.
The appeal of Jorge Mas Canosa and groups such as the Cuban American National Foundation lies in the perception that they can control, or at least influence, American foreign policy toward Cuba. Therefore, it is not surprising that they see the Elian Gonzalez controversy as a test of this power. So they desperately fall back on their habit of myth making, blaming their every calamity on the bearded one, angrily blaming Castro for the abolishment of democracy in Cuba, as if it ever existed.
U.S. Cuban exiles spin myths such as that Cuba was democratic before Castro, and that God has destined them to free Cuba. The reality is that these people are not part of the modern Cuba. Anyone who has been to Cuba or had relations with the Cuban community in the United States would be dense if they did not notice the contrasts between the two societies just in terms of race.
I remember a Cuban American neighbor telling my wife that she had married well because I was lighter than she was and thus our children would be born of a lighter hue. She would emphasize that although working class that she was a gallega (Galician), not an African Cuban. She frequently called blacks, los morenos, as apart and less than white Cubans.
When Cuba last July, I witnessed a racially mixed society, with over two-thirds of the island black or mulatto. Almost every African-Cuban intellectual I met repeated that he or she would not have become a professor if it had not been for the revolution. In watching the talk shows from Miami on television or the crowds in front of Elian's distant relative, Lazaro Gonzalez's home, over 95 percent of the Cuban-Americans in the audiences or the mobs are obviously white Hispanics.
I make this point because Cuba of the exilados does not exist. The integration of the races in Cuba contrasts with the reality of Miami where intermarriage between white and black Cubans has been more an aberration than the rule. If they ever return to Cuba, the wanna be Cubans will find a society with different memories and values than their own.
Out of historical curiosity, we should perhaps ask how and why the Mexican exiles' fervor burned out while Cuban American community remains trapped in a cesspool of intransigent nationalism. Because of the success of extremist groups such as the Cuban American National Foundation, natural immigration and contact with the island, has been prevented. Unlike the Puerto Rican or the Mexican American, its island has not continuously nurtured and regenerated the Cuban American. Like the Truman show they find themselves trapped in time. In turn, Mexican and Puerto Ricans in the US have become more racially mixed.
The 2000 census will make clear the growing differences between Cuban Americans and other Latino American groups. Many Latinos are indeed are questioning whether Cuban Americans as a group have suffered a history of discrimination in the United States similar to that of Mexicans or Puerto Ricans. Cuban Americans have become a minority through the stretch of the "Hispanic label," which has allowed them entitlements usually reserved for Americans who suffered a history of discrimination.
Census 2000 will also count some 32 million Latinos, 21 million of whom are of Mexican origin. Cuban Americans will number a tiny fraction of this total--about 1.4 million, contrasted to about three million Puerto Ricans and three million Central Americans. The Census will also underscore these differences between Cuban Americans and the others, for example, the median age of Mexicans in the US is 24.3 whereas among Cubans it is 40.8 years (versus 26.5 for all Hispanics and 38.2 for white Americans). The age gap will make the disparity in income between Mexicans and white Americans even more glaring. The income of the Cuban American exceeds that of white Americans, while Mexican and Central Americans earn about two-thirds the income of white Americans.
Relations between Cuban American leaders and other Latino groups have always been tenuous. Privately, many Latino leaders resent the appeal of Cuban Congressional Representatives Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen to the memory of the civil rights movement, remembering that in the 1960s Cuban Americans to advance their interventionist policies crawled in bed with almost every reactionary group and leader, working and supporting the Republican party against the best interests of other Latinos. It has always been their way or no way, with the two mentioned congressional representatives resigning from the Hispanic Congressional Caucus because Mexican American Congressman Xavier Becerra was elected its chair. Becerra committed the sin of visiting Cuba without their permission.
Thus, it is not too surprising that other Latino groups do not see the Elan Gonzalez case through the same prism as the Miami zealots. Unlike the Cuban American community, the continuing immigration from Mexico and Central America has restructured and changed most Latino communities. The Cuban American community in turn has become an intellectually incestuous, unable to regenerate itself, obsessed with preserving a past that was never--even at the expense of a small six year old boy.
Because Mexican American, Central American and other Latino leaders have not spoken out, they have allowed the false impression that the Jorge Mas Canosas, Lincoln Diaz-Balarts and Ileana Ros-Lehtinens enjoy power within the Latino universe. Cuban Americans to set the record straight only comprise 4.3 percent of the 32 million Latinos in this country. They don't speak for the 95 percent. Lastly, elites always believe that they are the victims of revolution, no matter how much they contributed to it.
* * * * * * * Other articles by Porfessor Rodolfo F. Acuņa:
Rodolfo Acuņa is a Professor of Chicano Studies at California State University at Northridge. He is the author of many seminal books on Chicanos. Among these books are: 1. "Occupied America : A History of Chicanos", 2. "Sometimes There Is No Other Side : Chicanos and the Myth of Equality" and 3. "A Community Under Siege: A Chronicle of Chicanos East of the Los Angeles River, 1945-1975."
