The Mariel boatlift () was a mass emigration of Cubans who traveled from Cuba's Mariel Harbor to the United States between April 15 and October 31, 1980. The term "" is used to refer to these refugees in both Spanish and English. While the exodus was triggered by a sharp downturn in the Cuban economy, it followed on the heels of generations of Cubans who had immigrated to the United States in the preceding decades.
After 10,000 Cubans tried to gain asylum by taking refuge on the grounds of the Peruvian embassy, the Cuban government announced that anyone who wanted to leave could do so. The ensuing mass migration was organized by Cuban Americans, with the agreement of Cuban president Fidel Castro. The Cuban government considered the exodus a sort of social cleansing of the nations' so-called undesirables and organized acts of repudiation against prospective emigrants.
The arrival of the refugees in the United States created political problems for U.S. president Jimmy Carter. The Carter administration struggled to develop a consistent response to the immigrants. The Mariel boatlift was ended by mutual agreement between the two governments in late October 1980. By then, an estimated 125,000 Cubans had reached Florida.
Background Cuba–United States relations
In the late 1970s, U.S. president Jimmy Carter sought to improve relations with Cuba. He lifted all restrictions on travel to Cuba, and in September 1977, both countries established an Interests Section in each other's capital. However, relations were still strained because Cuba supported the Soviet Union's military interventions in Africa and the Middle East with their own. The two countries struggled to reach agreement on a relaxation of the US embargo on trade to permit the export of a select list of medicines to Cuba without provoking Carter's political opponents in the US Congress.
Ten members of Congress visited Cuba in December 1978, and the Cuban government later released Frank C. Emmick, the US manager of a business in Cuba who had been prevented from leaving in 1963, accused of being a CIA agent, and sentenced to 50 years in prison. A group of 55 people whose parents brought them from Cuba returned for three weeks in December 1978 in a rare instance of Cuba allowing the return of Cuban-born émigrés. In December 1978, both countries agreed upon their maritime border, and the next month, they were working on an agreement to improve their communications in the Straits of Florida. The US responded to Cuban relaxation of restrictions on emigration by allowing Cuban-Americans to send up to $500 to an emigrating relative (equal to $2,400 in 2023).
In November 1978, Castro's government met in Havana with a group of Cubans living in exile, agreed to grant an amnesty to 3,600 political prisoners, and announced that they would be freed in the course of the next year and allowed to leave Cuba.
Caribbean Holidays began offering one-week trips to Cuba in January 1978 in co-operation with Cubatur, the official Cuban travel agency. By May 1979, tours were being organized for Americans to participate in the Cuban Festival of Arts (Carifesta) in July, with flights departing from Tampa, Mexico City, and Montreal.
Haitian immigration to the United States Before 1980, many Haitian immigrants arrived on American shores by boat. They were not granted legal protection because they were considered economic migrants, rather than political refugees, despite claims made by many Haitians that they were being persecuted by the Duvalier regime. U.S. presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford denied claims of asylum in the United States for Haitian migrants by boat. A backlash by the Congressional Black Caucus ensued, which claimed that the U.S. government was discriminating against Haitian immigrants.
Prelude Rush to embassies in Cuba
Several attempts by Cubans to seek asylum at the embassies of South American countries set the stage for the events of the spring of 1980. On 21 March 1978, two young Cuban writers who had been punished for dissent and denied permission to emigrate, Reynaldo Colas Pineda and Esteban Luis Cárdenas Junquera, unsuccessfully sought asylum in the Argentine embassy in Havana and were sentenced to two years in prison. On May 13, 1979, 12 Cubans sought to take asylum in the Venezuelan embassy in Havana by crashing their bus through a fence to gain entry to the grounds and the building. In January 1980, groups of asylum seekers took refuge in the Peruvian and Venezuelan embassies, and Venezuela called its ambassador home for consultations to protest that they had been fired on by the Cuban police. In March, Peru recalled its ambassador, who had denied entry to a dozen Cubans who were seeking asylum in his embassy.
The embassy invasions then evolved into a confrontation between the Cuban government and the Havana embassies. A group of Cubans attempted to enter the Peruvian embassy in the last week of March, and on April 1, a group of six driving a city bus was successful in doing so, and a Cuban guard was killed by a ricocheting bullet. The Peruvians announced that they would not hand those who were seeking asylum over to Cuban police. The embassy grounds contained two 2-story buildings and gardens covering an area the size of a US football field, or 6,400 square yards. The Cuban government announced on 4 April that it was withdrawing its security forces, who were normally officers from the Interior Ministry armed with automatic weapons, from that embassy: "We cannot protect embassies that do not cooperate in their own protection." Following that announcement, about 50 Cubans entered the embassy grounds. By nightfall on April 5, that number had grown to 2,000, including many children and a few former political prisoners.
Approval to emigrate Cuban officials announced through loudspeakers that anyone who had not entered the embassy grounds by force was free to emigrate if another country granted them entry. Peruvian president Francisco Morales had announced a willingness to accept asylum seekers. Diplomats from several countries met with the Peruvians to discuss the situation, including the crowd's requirements of food and shelter. An official of the US State Department stated on April 5 that the country would both grant asylum to bona fide political prisoners and handle other requests to immigrate by following standard procedures, which provided for the issuance of 400 immigrant visas per month to Cubans, with preference given to those with family members who were already in the United States.
By April 6, the crowd had reached 10,000, and as sanitary conditions on the embassy grounds deteriorated, Cuban authorities prevented further access. The Cuban government called those seeking asylum "bums, antisocial elements, delinquents, and trash." By April 8, 3,700 of the asylum-seekers had accepted safe-conduct passes to return to their homes, and the government began to provide shipments of food and water. Peru tried to organize an international relief program, and it won commitments first from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela to help with resettlement, and then from Spain, which agreed to accept 500. By April 11, the Cuban government began to furnish asylum seekers with documents that guaranteed their right to emigrate, including permanent safe-conduct passes and passports. In the first two days, about 3,000 received those papers and left the grounds. On 14 April, US President Jimmy Carter announced the US would accept 3,500 refugees and that Costa Rica had agreed to provide a staging area for screening potential immigrants.
Emigration process and violence
Soon after the embassy crisis, and the approval for general emigration for those outside the embassy, Fidel Castro commented in his May Day address on the emigration of homosexuals, prostitutes, and other Lumpenproletarians, who already tried to emigrate via the Peruvian embassy:
In the same speech, Castro goes on to comment on the differing physicalities of Cuban patriots and Cuban emigrants.
Historian Alexandra Minna Stern, asserts that this statement on the emigrants, embodies a pseudo-eugenicist attitude, that the Cuban population must embody a soldierly masculinity, or be removed from the population. This rhetoric about loyal soldierly Cubans, opposing the "scum" emigrants, became commonplace in the unfolding harassment campaigns against emigrants.
The Cuban government soon organized acts of repudiation against those who wished to leave the island. Mobs would sometimes beat their targets, force them to walk around with accusatory signs on their necks, or trash their homes. The emigrants were accused to be loafers, criminals, and drug addicts, and their expulsion was allegedly a kind of social cleansing. The physical assaults and verbal taunts that occurred during acts of repudiation were organized for months and created a sense of fear throughout Cuba. Many who participated in the violence did so to remain un-persecuted themselves, and some participants even left in the boatlift.
The Cuban government facilitated an emigration process that gave special privilege to those who were socially undesirable. People deemed homosexual would be allowed to leave the country. Those with gender non-conforming behavior were especially targeted by authorities for departure. Some of them were given the option between emigration and jail time, in order to encourage their departure from the island. Many Cubans would enter police stations and state that they engaged in homosexual behavior whether true or not, simply to be granted permission to leave the country.
Concerns of Haitian refugees The Carter administration was negotiating the legal status of Haitian refugees as the Mariel boatlift began. As Cuban refugees began to arrive in the United States, a focus was put on the treatment of Haitian refugees, and Carter declared Haitian refugees and Cuban refugees would be accepted in the same manner. The United States would label all refugees that would come in during the Mariel boatlift as "Cuban-Haitian entrants," to be approved at the discretion of the Attorney General.
Exodus + Cuban arrivals during theMariel episode by monthSource: Council for Inter-American Security. Month Arrivals (#) Arrivals (%) April (from 21 April) 7,665 6 May 86,488 69 June 21,287 17 July 2,629 2 August 3,939 3 September 3,258 3 Total 125,000 100
Airlift from Cuba At first, emigrants were permitted to leave Cuba via flights to Costa Rica, followed by eventual relocation to countries that would accept them. After news coverage of celebratory masses of Cubans emigrating by flight to Costa Rica, the Cuban government declared that emigrants had to leave by flying directly to their accepting country; 7,500 Cubans left the country by those initial flights.
Boatlift Departure from Cuba and Haiti Castro stated ultimately on 20 April that the port of Mariel would be opened to anyone wishing to leave Cuba if they had someone to pick them up. Soon after Castro's decree, many Cuban Americans began making arrangements to pick up refugees in the harbor. On April 21, the first boat from the harbor docked in Key West and held 48 refugees. By April 25 as many as 300 boats were picking up refugees in Mariel Harbor. Cuban officials also packed refugees into Cuban fishing vessels. Around 1,700 boats brought thousands of Cubans from Mariel to Florida between the months of April and October in that year.
Haitian refugees had been continuously coming to the United States before the Mariel boatlift and continued to do so with the flotilla.
United States and Cuba policy changes