D2 makes an interesting point in a comment here. So, if Cuba is so uniquely awful (not that I think it is, there are places worse: N. Korea and currently Zimbabwe come to mind) why is that all the refugees seem to aim for Florida, not Jamaica or the Dominican Republic?
I’ve always wondered why there are no (like almost literally zero)
Cuban refugees in Jamaica or the Dominican Republic (which are at least
as close to the eastern end of Cuba as Florida is to the western end),
and suspected that this lends support to the economic migrant theory.
Vietnamese boat people scattered all over the South China Sea looking
for refuge, rather than making a bee-line uniquely toward Hong Kong.
So I thought I would try to find out why this was so. I think I have:
Those escapees are not over endowed with motor transport and so, when they strap a plank to their backs, sit on an inner tube or build a small raft then they are relying upon the ocean currents to take them somewhere, anywhere. Now I agree that my geography is not the very best but that would seem to imply that if you do that, you’re going to get to the US, the Bahamas or the Turks and Caicos islands.
Ah:
More than one-hundred Cubans at
refugee camp in the Bahamas have begun a hunger strike to protest
against living conditions and to demand visas to third countries.
So they do end up there as well. Just to show that neither my nor D2’s theory is perfect:
More than two dozen Cuban refugees were
picked up by a cruise ship off the coast of Jamaica, the Houston
Chronicle reported Monday.
…
The same Carnival cruise ship picked up 22 Cubans headed for the United States near Cancun, Mexico, late last month.
Perhaps this thing about currents isn’t a 100% thing: or perhaps the escapees do indeed try to get to places like Jamaica? Or even, as the US is the only place that will actually allow such people in, it makes sense to try for the US, the current helping matters, but that it doesn’t always quite work?
There is another view possible, of course:
The myth of the refugees was forged to support the
counter-revolutionary interest of discrediting the Cuban socialist
model and was strengthened by the application of strategies aimed at
straining US-Cuba relations.
Finally, I’m not really all that impressed with the idea that "they’re only economic migrants" as an explanation. I’ve been an economic migrant, moving from the UK, to Russia, to the US and now in Portugal as a way of bettering either my income or lifestyle. D2 has been one, descending from some hill farm in Wales to the civilization of the City. It’s not just that it seems a little odd to dismiss others for doing what we have already done: we most certainly did not risk drowning, being eaten by sharks nor imprisonment if caught in order to do so. I agree that D2 had to move out of the comfort zone of the 15th century, but still not at any great personal risk. That people are risking these dangers rather seems to say something about Cuba, don’t you think?
Leave a Reply