Mariel boatlift facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
Mariel boatlift

Part of the Cuban exodus
Cuban refugees arriving in crowded boats during the Mariel boatlift crisis
Date	15 April – 31 October 1980 (6 months, 2 weeks and 2 days)
Also known as	Exodo del Mariel (English: Mariel exodus)
Participants	Government of Costa Rica Government of Cuba Government of Peru Government of United States People from Cuba People from Haiti
Outcome	Around 125,000 Cubans and 25,000 Haitians arrive in the United States.

The Mariel boatlift (Spanish: éxodo del Mariel) was a mass emigration of Cubans who traveled from Cuba's Mariel Harbor to the United States between 15 April and 31 October 1980. The term "Marielito" (plural "Marielitos") is used to refer to these refugees in both Spanish and English. The exodus was triggered by a sharp downturn in the Cuban economy.

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 arrival of the refugees in the United States created political problems for US President Jimmy Carter. The Carter administration struggled to develop a consistent response to the immigrants, and many of the refugees had been released from jails and mental health facilities in Cuba.

The Mariel boatlift was ended by mutual agreement between the two governments in late October 1980. By then, as many as 125,000 Cubans had reached Florida.

Evolving legal status

Most refugees were ordinary Cubans. Many had been allowed to leave Cuba for reasons that in the United States were loyalty-neutral or protected, such as tens of thousands were Seventh-Day Adventists or Jehovah's Witnesses. Some had been declared "antisocialist" in Cuba by their CDRs. In the end, only 2.2 percent (or 2,746) of the refugees were classified as serious or violent criminals under US law and denied citizenship on that basis.

In 1984, the Mariel refugees from Cuba received permanent legal status under a revision to the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966. Haitians were instead considered to be economic refugees, which made them unable to get the same residency status as Cubans and therefore subject to deportation. Two years later, under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, all Cuban-Haitian entrants who had immigrated in 1980 were able to apply for permanent residency.

By 1987, several hundred Marielitos were still detained because they were inadmissible under immigration law. Local police departments had also arrested around seven thousand Marielitos for felonies committed in the United States. Those arrested there served their prison sentences, only to be detained by INS as candidates for deportation.

The United States-Cuba Migration Agreement of 1987 allowed for 3,000 former political prisoners to emigrate to the United States and allowed for the deportation of undesired Marielitos. After news of the agreement broke, many detained Marielitos in Oakdale and Atlanta prisons rioted and took hostages. The riots ended after an agreement was reached to stop deportations until all detainees were given a fair review of their deportation case. After 1987, the United States would continue to deport Marielitos who were deemed undesirable.

Later developments

By June 2016, 478 remained to be deported; according to the Department of Homeland Security, some are elderly or sick, and the Department had no desire to send these back to Cuba. Under a 2016 agreement with the Cuban government, the U.S. will deport the final remaining migrants deemed as serious criminals.

Effect on political attitudes

Fidel Castro stated that those leaving in the Mariel boatlift were undesirable members of Cuban society. With Castro's condemnation and reports that prisoners and mental health patients were leaving in the exodus it was believed by some that Marielitos were undesirable deviants. Opponents of then U.S. President Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party would hail the Mariel boatlift as a failure of his administration. Ronald Reagan would instead praise Marielitos in his ideological campaign against Cuba. The boatlift would also help spark policy demands for English-only government paperwork after Miami Dade County residents voted to remove Spanish as a second official language in November 1980. Former U.S. President Donald Trump's senior policy adviser Stephen Miller used the boatlift as evidence of the dangers of unchecked immigration.

Initially, many Americans disapproved of the boatlift. According to a June 1980 poll conducted by CBS and the New York Times, 71% of Americans disapproved of the boatlift and allowing Cuban nationals to settle in the United States.

In popular culture

The boatlift has been the subject of a number of works of art, media, and entertainment. Examples include:

• Against Wind and Tide: A Cuban Odyssey (1981), a PBS documentary film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature
• Scarface (1983), a dramatic film about a Marielito
• The Perez Family, a novel by Christine Bell; a group of Marielitos who share the same last name pretend to be a family
• The Perez Family (1995), a film based on the novel
• Before Night Falls (1992; English translation 1993), the autobiography of Marielito Reinaldo Arenas
• Before Night Falls (2000), a film based on the book
• 90 Miles (2001), an American documentary film and memoir, written and directed by Marielito Juan Carlos Zaldívar
• Finding Mañana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus (2005), a memoir by Mirta Ojito
• Voices From Mariel (2011), a documentary film that tells the story of ten families
• Voices from Mariel: Oral Histories of the 1980 Cuban Boatlift

The events at the Peruvian embassy are depicted in:

• Todos se van (Everyone's Leaving) (2006 in Spanish; 2013 in English), a novel by Wendy Guerra
• 'Cuerpos al borde de una isla; mi salida de Cuba por Mariel (2010), a memoir by Reinaldo García Ramos about his experiences during the Boatlift

Notable Marielitos

Notable Mariel boatlift refugees include:

See also

In Spanish: Éxodo del Mariel para niños