The ideological socialization process that incorporates new migrants into South Florida's uncompromising political culture is relentless. The identity of the community seems to depend on maintaining a cold war position on US/Cuba relations.
Cuban Americans are maintaining an attitudes towards US/Cuba policy which mirrors the policy initiatives of the Biden administration.
Cuban Americans and their opinions about key national issues and the performance of President Joe Biden.
Which are the links that Cuban Americans have with family on the island? Here we present what we learn from these questions.
How Cuban-Americans in South Florida View U.S. policies toward Cuba, critical national issues and the upcoming elections?
On how the Democrats failed and how they could regain the trust of Cuban-Americans.
Until Biden establishes and implements his own vision, he is simply continuing to promote a world-order defined by Trump.
At least on some of policy issues, Cuban Americans do not see eye-to-eye with today’s Republican Party. The question is, can the Democrats take advantage of the misalignment?
The reality is that Cuban Americans are immigrants, not exiles, and that has been the reality since the 1970s. We just can’t imagine life without the old story.
Cuban-American Republicanism is a result of specific social processes that, when inspected can provide Democrats a way forward in organizing Cuban Americans. Here are four lessons from the Republicanization of Cuban Americans that might assist Democrats in reversing the trend.
On December 29, 1962, President John F. Kennedy stood on a stage at the Miami Orange Bowl. A member of the Brigada 2506 handed him a folded Cuban flag. From the stands watched a capacity crowd of Cubans, including survivors of the Bay of Pigs debacle and their friends and families. He began the 14-minute speech by welcoming the brigadistas on behalf of "his government and his country" and assuring them that the flag just received "will be returned to this Brigade in a free Havana." This was, of course, a fiction. There would be no other serious attempt to overthrow the Cuban Revolutionary government, and diplomatic options were curtailed by the severing of relations in 1961 and the establishment of the full embargo in February of 1962. The fate of the exiles' Cuba was, like the flag, in the hands of the American government. In 1966, the exile reality received another blow. That year, with irrevocable institutional authority, the passage of the Cuban Adjustment Act created the existence of the category of Cuban-Americans as immigrants, not exiles. The government Kennedy represented in his short gig as president became our government. Su casa es mi casa. The Kennedy ritual in 1962 initiated the exile story, which still...
Part I of this text was published previously by OnCuba. The Republican Party Factor Trump’s success among Cuban Americans is surprising only if you believe that Cuban-American Republicans, because they are Hispanics, should behave differently than other Republicans. But why hold Cuban Americans to a different standard? Republicans all over the United States support Trump in a cult-like manner. The Gallup Poll measuring the approval rating of the President released in August, when we concluded our FIU Cuba Poll, reported that Republicans nationwide gave Donald Trump a 92% job approval rating. We didn’t ask the job approval question directly, but we did ask Cuban Americans how much they approved or disapproved of President Trump’s handling of specific national issues (immigration, healthcare, race relations, national protests, Covid-19 crisis, the economy, China policy and Cuba policy). Although Cuban-Americans are clearly “all in” as far as Trump’s handling of these national concerns, the support among Cuban-American Republicans ranged from 72% (national protests) to 92% (the economy). Even the support for his handling of the Corona crisis mirrored the national Republican support: 82% approval by Republicans nationwide vs 83% approval among Cuban-American Republicans. So, by Republican standards, Cuban-Americans are in the mainstream. In the...
Every four years Cuban-Americans in Miami become “los bravos de la pelicula.” Heroes of a movie running since the Cold War year with little updating. Politicians and their posses descend on South Florida talking tough about Cuba and make promises about what they will do about its deviant government. It is as if Cubans care about nothing else other than US/Cuba policy and they only care about this every four years. Cuban-Americans play their role well and predictably. After some tension about whether generational shifts or the rising new waves of immigrants will change the political calculus, the hardliners reassert their domination. The cries for a “Cuba Libre” echo off the class walls of the Versailles restaurant. The Republican Party triumphs. The Democrats say ‘it is what it is.’ The end. To be continued. For close to thirty of those long years I have conducted the FIU Cuba Poll, usually during these periods when everyone wants to know how Cubans are going to vote. Our poll tries to understand the attitudes of Cuban-Americans about U.S./Cuba relations and other ancillary policies linking the South Florida diaspora to the motherland. The tension between supporting policies of engagement or policies of isolation is...
