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This article brings a new perspective to the analysis of the wage effects of the Mariel boatlift crisis, in which an estimated 125,000 Cuban refugees migrated to Florida between April and October, 1980. The author revisits the question of wage impacts from such a supply shock, drawing on the cumulative insights of research on the economic impact of immigration. That literature shows that the wage impact must be measured by carefully matching the skills of the immigrants with those of the incumbent workforce. Given that at least 60% of the Marielitos were high school dropouts, this article specifically examines the wage impact for this low-skill group. This analysis overturns the prior finding that the Mariel boatlift did not affect Miami's wage structure. The wage of high school dropouts in Miami dropped dramatically, by 10 to 30%, suggesting an elasticity of wages with respect to the number of workers between -20.5 and -21.5. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 15 April 1980, Fidel Castro opened the port at Mariel Harbour, prompting 125,000 people to depart for the United States in search of asylum. Unlike those who emigrated from the island thirty years earlier, these refugees did not encounter empathy from the American public. Rather, Marielitos encountered hostility, as they found themselves scattered in detention centres around the United States. As refugee camps sprang up in small communities in the US South and Midwest, sensationalised accounts of crimes committed by the migrants shaped negative local perspectives of Cubans. This article complicates the legitimacy of the image of the refugee criminal, however, by describing the context within which Marielitos travelled to remote areas in the US, specifically in west-central Wisconsin. Ultimately, this study demonstrates how media reporting on the Mariel boatlift, along with the contentious socioeconomic climate that Cuban refugees encountered while detained in rural America, influenced the popular representation of their criminality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Groups working for change are met with many types of responses. Most attention has been given to reactions of overt repression or support for movements and campaigns. However, there exist a range of other pacifying responses, such as ignoring, placating, devaluing, disrupting and misinforming. These subtler forms of obstructions pose a different type of challenge and require different types of counter-strategies than violent repression. This article introduces a framework focusing on four different types of responses - 1. Validating, 2. Discrediting and attacking, 3. Manipulative and 4. Non-interfering. This model can be applied to analyse responses to all types of nonviolent campaigns from opponents and so-called third parties. The Freedom Flotilla to Gaza in 2011 serves as a case study to present the model and to analyse how the Israeli government and its supporters successfully disrupted and contained this flotilla with much more subtle means than the 2010 flotilla where nine activists were killed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the Current Population Survey, this paper describes the effect of the Mariel Boatlift of 1980 on the Miami labor market. The Mariel immigrants increased the Miami labor force by 7%, and the percentage increase in labor supply to less-skilled occupations and industries was even greater because most of the immigrants were relatively unskilled. Nevertheless, the Mariel influx appears to have had virtually no effect on the wages or unemployment rates of less-skilled workers, even among Cubans who had immigrated earlier. The author suggests that the ability of Miami's labor market to rapidly absorb the Mariel immigrants was largely owing to its adjustment to other large waves of immigrants in the two decades before the Mariel Boatlift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I analyze the effects of the Cuban exodus in 1980 known as the Mariel boatlift, in Guillermo Rosales's novel Boarding Home (1987). I argue that Mariel and the so-called marielitos are portrayed in the novel as offering a more complex view of an event that was stigmatized both by the Cuban government as well as by the American media. Marielitos, treated as the "scum" of society, were expelled from the island during a cleansing campaign ("basurización of the other" in Castillo Durante's words). As a result, their abjection (Kristeva) was reflected in the spatiality of the margin: in the boarding home in the United States to which the protagonist was sent, and in the area of Miami known as Little Havana, where many of these immigrants lived. I propose to study the boarding home and Little Havana as heterotopic places (Foucault) in which the two utopias (and dystopias) involving the revolution and exile are distorted. I conclude that Rosales appeals to literature in order to react against the invisibility and/or stigma of the exodus, turning it into an act of defiance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the local roots of the criminalised characterisation of Cuban refugees who resided in a Wisconsin detention centre during and after the so-called Mariel Exodus or Boatlift in 1980. Acknowledging the role of national media in espousing a violent and chaotic image of the Mariel Boatlift and its participants, who became known as 'Marielitos'; it examines how local Wisconsin newspapers gravitated towards this representation, compounding its negative influence. The article then explains how the economic recession and rising concerns about deviant sexuality morphed media accounts of Cuban refugee struggles and uncovers narratives not captured by Marielito criminality. By doing so, the article complicates the understandings of refugee identities and experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the 1980 Cuban Mariel migration marked a turning point in American perceptions and media representations of female Cuban immigrants, and Cuban exiles in the United States more generally. By examining how sexualized representations of Mariel women coincided with a more general stigmatization of Mariel migrants, I contend that single Cuban women arriving in the boatlift underwent a process of racialization, in which they became increasingly undifferentiated from historical stereotypes of the sexually threatening Latina immigrant in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This reflection is a reportage, some would say stream-of-consciousness piece, giving some insight into the thinking and action I committed to, as part of the International Freedom Flotilla mission of September/October 2016. The Women's Boat to Gaza (WBG) was the first allwomen international solidarity flotilla mission, since flotilla's set sail to deliver humanitarian aid to the illegally blockaded Gaza Strip. The WBG was a different kind of mission in that the 15 meter-long yatch was not carrying any food or money or medical supplies, as flotillas before had done. The WBG was a boat of 13 women from around the world who represented the many ordinary people who remain aware of the injustices in Palestine and are willing to act to organize action, further than the protest marches, discussions, documentary film screenings - which ensure that the plight of Palestinians remain in the consciousness of people around the world. This was a mission, as are many international solidarity efforts, which required commitment, resources, and lots of behind the scenes work to make possible. The collective effort meant that many people engaged in developing an action that was hopeful, while at the same time also potentially horrific. I kept the diary that follows in the hope that it would provide some reflection on the experience of participating in a solidarity mission from the perspective of a South African activist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay I defend the importance of resolute enforcement in sustaining generous immigration policy, particularly America's singularly high lawful admission levels and relatively successful immigrant integration record. Drawing on my experiences in government service, I explore the risks to humane policy when the public perceives that migration is out of control. The public backlash to the 1980 Mariel boatlifi, Congress 's enactment of harsh enforcement measures in 1996, and the Obama administration's stern response to the child migrant crisis of 2014 illustrate the point. Though the current public reaction is relatively quiet, that situation is fragile, highly dependent on the relatively low net inflow of unauthorized migrants. I then examine specific ideas for building an effective and sustainable enforcement system. All would work better if accompanied by an expansive statutory legalization program; removing long-resident unauthorized immigrants as targets would facilitate resolute enforcement against newer violators. The specific recommended changes include: (1) mandatory E-Verify, but with added steps to address that system 's serious vulnerability to identity fraud, (2) stronger enforcement against visa overstays, which does not require that the nation build a wasteful biometric exit monitoring system; (3) revitalized and carefully designed cooperation with state and local law enforcement agencies, built upon lessons learned from Secure Communities - a fundamentally sound and efficient program that wound up losing support through mistakes in implementation, bad timing, and skillful litigation attacking immigration detainers; and (4) restoration of wider versions of discretionary relief from removal administered by immigration judges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to be admissible to the International Criminal Court (ICC), a case must meet the gravity threshold of Article I7(1)(d) of the Rome Statute. The gravity of a case is analyzed by four quantitative and qualitative factors set forth by the Office of the Prosecutor, including the scale of the crimes, nature of the crimes, manner of commission of the crimes, and impact on victims and affected populations. It is critical that the ICC continues to make transparent and consistent decisions related to gravity in order to select the most serious crimes for prosecution and to justify its intrusion on national sovereignty. This article begins by discussing cases involving gravity-based admissibility findings that have been challenged by defendants, as well as recent situations that the Prosecutor has found grave enough to warrant further investigation. The article then focuses on the Freedom Flotilla situation and the Prosecutor’s decision not to proceed with an investigation based on insufficient gravity. Finally, the article discusses the Pre-Trial Chamber’s recent decision asking the Prosecutor to reconsider its decision not to investigate. The article argues in favor of the Prosecution, explaining that based on the four quantitative and qualitative factors used in the gravity analysis and in comparison with previous gravity decisions by both the Prosecutor and the Pre-Trial Chambers, it is clear that the Freedom Flotilla does not meet the gravity threshold of Article 17(1)(d). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In public diplomacy, states are often called upon to defend themselves rhetorically when they are blamed by foreign actors for untoward action. Why do states engage in rhetorical defense and how do they go about it? To answer this question, the author employs social accounts theory to theorize the motivation and structure of rhetorical defense. Following a discussion of social accounts, he analyzes the tactics of blame avoidance and argues that they are constructed from validity claims of truth, rightness, and sincerity, as stipulated by Habermas in his theory of communicative action. This structure of rhetorical defense as accounts is then examined in a case study of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s defense of his government’s actions in the 2010 Turkish flotilla incident. The empirical study suggests that rhetorical defense is indeed composed of validity claims, but more specifically that these revolve mostly around norm-in-context claims, namely arguments that seek to establish a fit between norms and situations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the history of the Krome detention center in South Florida, which was used by the U.S. government to detain Haitian and Cuban refugees after the 1980 Mariel boatlift, in light of U.S. imperialism in the Caribbean region. Topics include the creation of Krome as a Nike Hercules missile base during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, legal discrimination against Haitian refugees by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and poor sanitary and environmental conditions at the Krome site, which was located in swampland. An attempt to move refugees to Fort Allen on Puerto Rico is noted.

The Cuban Diaspora in the United States has been repeatedly charged with political opacity and racial discrimination towards its members. A highly inflexible community as far as racial acceptance and internal economic mobility are concerned, this Diaspora gives rise to controversies in both media and literature, especially since it plays a major role in the socio-political relations between the two countries. Bearing in mind that the issue of racial discrimination in the last century ran different paths in Cuba and in the United States, and relying on a various set of articles and documentaries, this paper examines the processes and causes underlying the racial tensions within the Cuban community. The Revolution which took place in Cuba in the late 1950s and whose aftermath was the establishing of a Communist régime under the rule of president Fidel Castro, led to several waves of exiles and later immigrants, most of them settling in the United States, especially in the region of Florida, where they formed a thriving community in what became to be known as the most significant Cuban-American enclave, Miami. There are four waves that make up the Cuban exile, although the last wave may be classified as migration rather than exile. The first wave left right after the Revolution, between 1959 and 1961 and represented the country's economic elite, among them supporters of the old Batista régime. The second left through the so-called Freedom Flights in the late 60s and early 70s. Both waves were mostly composed of white, high class Cubans. [1] The next exodus took place in 1980 and is known under the name the Mariel boatlift, followed by a massive migration in 1994, during the height of the Special Period, Cuba's decline after the fall of the Soviet Block. The four waves differ among themselves along lines of racial composition, professional and economic status, and consequently patterns of integration not only as a community within the United States, but also within the group as a whole. Racial discrimination was carried by Cuban exiles to the US, where Afro-Cubans are voiceless within the white, elitist Diaspora. [2] The Cuban-American community is not homogenous, but diverse, with "recent nonwhite émigrés (…) being less likely to be received with open arms by the predominantly white Cuban community in Miami" (in Woltman: 71). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This narrative recounts the events that unfolded around the Gaza Freedom Flotilla as witnessed by an anthropologist invited onboard one of its ships. It shows a pervasive preoccupation of neocolonial states with Othering violence. This is defined as the ability to transform spaces of liberation and solidarity into spaces of deviation and imprisonment. The choice to be an outspoken participant-observer opens up novel spaces for reflection and research otherwise left to the sensationalist tendencies of journalism and the propaganda machinery of states. Moreover, acting as witnesses to events such as these, in our professional academic as well as in our personal capacity, could also be a last line of defence against expanding Othering violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses U.S. Cold War foreign policy and U.S. citizenship among Cuba's homosexual exile community from 1978 to 1994. The author focuses on the tension between the Cold War imperative of welcoming anti-Communist exiles and the immigration policy of barring homosexuals. The author explains how homosexuals were considered "undesirables" in Cuba under the leadership of Fidel Castro, but in 1980 the Immigration and Naturalization Service regarded homosexuality as grounds for exclusion from the U.S. Cubans who entered the U.S. from Cuba's Mariel harbor are focused on.

Abstract: Cistaceae consist of eight genera and about 180 species. Some taxonomic limits and relationships within the family remain unresolved when relying exclusively on morphological data. In the present study, a phylogeny was reconstructed and divergence times were estimated for 47 species representing various groups in Cistaceae and using coding (rbcL) and spacer (trnL-trnF) sequences of plastid DNA. The firm set of morphological synapomorphies that indicates the monophyly of the family is supported by both Bayesian and parsimony analyses. Five major lineages can be distinguished within the Cistaceae: (1) an early-diverging lineage containing Fumana species; (2) the New World Lechea clade; (3) the Helianthemum s.l. clade, containing two sister groups, one of species from the New World (Crocanthemum, Hudsonia) and the other with species from the Old World (Helianthemum s. str.); (4) the Tuberaria clade; and (5) a cohesive complex consisting of Halimium and Cistus species. Evolutionary shifts in 12 key characters of Cistaceae are inferred based on the most plausible phylogenetic hypothesis. Reconstructing the evolution of ovule position supports anatropous ovules as the ancestral condition within the Cistaceae, which is currently found only in Fumana. The Cistus-Halimium assemblage is consistently obtained as a natural clade and further supported by a cytological synapomorphy (chromosome number n=9). Optimisation of ancestral distribution areas and estimates of divergence times reveal an early divergence (10.17–18.51Ma) of the Mediterranean-European genera, which may be related to subtropical vegetation, as complemented by paleobotanical data. In addition, the occurrence of multiple, independent migration events from the Old World to America between the Middle Miocene (8.44–14.7Ma; Lechea) and the Upper Miocene (5.15–9.20Ma; Crocanthemum/Hudsonia), and to the Canary Islands in the Pleistocene is inferred. We argue that the Mediterranean basin has been the main centre of differentiation of Cistaceae. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The study examines the mediating effects of gender, race, and class in the Mariel Cuban immigrant adaptation process. It explores the significance of the Mariel identity by comparing the experiences of pre-1980 arrivals with those of the Mariel cohort (1980–1981) and post-Mariel arrivals (1982–1990, 1990–2000). The central question of the study is the extent to which the Marielitos’ experience as a group with stigmatization and being labeled as “different” and pathological has persisted in having a different effect on their adaptation to the U.S. from that of other Cuban arrivals before and after Mariel. This study bases its definition of stigma on sociologically grounded theoretical orientation of the construction of a social identity in which a dominant group(s) attribute an undesired difference from what was anticipated to an out-group such that it leads to varieties of discrimination that reduce one's life chances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and its release of Report Number 51/01 which examines the case of Rafael Ferrer-Mazorra et al. v. United States which deals with the 1980 Mariel Cubans flotilla program and excludable Cuban aliens. The detention of several Cubans in the U.S. following the Mariel boatlift program is addressed, including claims of violations against several Articles of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man.