THE CUBAN REFUGEE CRIMINAL: MEDIA REPORTING AND THE PRODUCTION OF A POPULAR IMAGE.

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]