Miami's Forgotten Cubans [electronic resource] : Race, Racialization, and the Miami Afro-Cuban Experience /
Aja, Alan A.author.
This book explores the reception experiences of post-1958 Afro-Cubans in South Florida in relation to their similarly situated "white" Cuban compatriots. Utilizing interviews, ethnographic observations, and applying Census data analyses, Aja begins not with the more socially diverse 1980 Mariel boatlift, but earlier, documenting that a small number of middle-class Afro-Cuban exiles defied predominant settlement patterns in the 1960 and 70s, attempting to immerse themselves in the newly formed but ultimately racially exclusive "ethnic enclave." Confronting a local Miami Cuban "white wall" and anti-black Southern racism subsumed within an intra-group "success" myth that equally holds Cubans and other Latin Americans hail from "racial democracies," black Cubans immigrants and their children, including subsequent waves of arrival and return-migrants, found themselves negotiating the boundaries of being both "black" and "Latino" in the United States.
Description based upon print version of record.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Introduction: "What if Elián was black?" -- 1 "It's Like Cubans Could Only Be White," Divided Arrival: Origins of a Racially Bifurcated Migration -- 2 Beyond El Ajiaco: Eviction from el Exilio (1959-1979) -- 3 "You ain't black, you Cuban!"- Mariels, Stigmatization and the Politics of De-Racialization (1980-1989) -- 4 "They would have tossed him back into the sea," Balseros, Elián and Race-Gender Matters in the Miami Latinx Millennium -- 5 From la Cuba de Ayer to el Miami De Ayer: The Cuban "Ethnic" Myth in Contemporary Context -- 6 Between "Laws and Practice," Blacks, Latinxs, Afro-Cubans/Latinxs and Public Policy.   .
This book explores the reception experiences of post-1958 Afro-Cubans in South Florida in relation to their similarly situated "white" Cuban compatriots. Utilizing interviews, ethnographic observations, and applying Census data analyses, Aja begins not with the more socially diverse 1980 Mariel boatlift, but earlier, documenting that a small number of middle-class Afro-Cuban exiles defied predominant settlement patterns in the 1960 and 70s, attempting to immerse themselves in the newly formed but ultimately racially exclusive "ethnic enclave." Confronting a local Miami Cuban "white wall" and anti-black Southern racism subsumed within an intra-group "success" myth that equally holds Cubans and other Latin Americans hail from "racial democracies," black Cubans immigrants and their children, including subsequent waves of arrival and return-migrants, found themselves negotiating the boundaries of being both "black" and "Latino" in the United States.
Ethnology-Latin America.
Latin American Culture.