The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 23 (2012)

Ethnic Community, Party Politics, andthe Cold War: The Political Ascendancyof Miami Cubans, 1980–2000

Hideaki KAMI*INTRODUCTION
Analysis of the implications of the rapidly growing Latino/Hispanic
electorate for future U.S. political life is a relatively new project for historians and political scientists.1 Indeed, the literature on Latino politics
has long considered their political underrepresentation as the central
issue for research. Many scholars in the ﬁeld have sought to explain how
the burden of historical discrimination and antagonistic attitudes toward
immigrants has discouraged these minorities from taking part in U.S.
politics. Their studies have also explored how to overcome low voter
turnout among Latinos and detect unfavorable institutional obstacles forvoicing their opinions in government.2 However, partly due to previous
academic efforts, the 1990s and 2000s have witnessed U.S. voters of
Hispanic origin solidifying their role as a key constituency in U.S. politics. An increasing number of politicians of Hispanic origin now holdelective ofﬁces at local, state, and national levels. Both the Republicanand Democratic Parties have made intensive outreach efforts to seize thehearts and minds of these new voters, particularly by broadcasting speciﬁc messages in Spanish media such as Univision.3 Although low*Graduate student, University of Tokyo and Ohio State University

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turnout among Latino voters and strong anti-immigrant sentiments
among many non-Latino voters persist, the growing importance of theLatino electorate during the presidential elections has attracted increasing attention from inside and outside academic circles.4 Hence, in 2004,
political scientist Rodolfo O. de la Garza, summarizing recent writingson Latino politics, concluded that “Latinos are now part of the mainstream and have attained the clout to inﬂuence the [U.S. political] systemfrom within.”5
Nonetheless, caution should be taken to avoid imagining Hispanics as
a monolithic community moving in the same direction with the same
purpose. The Hispanic population includes disparate groups with varying historical backgrounds. For instance, whereas thousands of undocumented immigrants from Mexico have struggled to ﬁnd the path to U.S.
citizenship, almost all Puerto Ricans have entered U.S. territory freely
as citizens. At the same time, many Cubans in the early 1960s arrived in
the United States seeking political asylum from the Castro regime,
although Cubans in the 1990s, as well as other Latinos, left their homelands for economic opportunities rather than political freedom. Becauseof these diverse historical trajectories, it is mandatory for scholars tocarefully analyze the incorporation of each subgroup into the U.S. polity
while placing it in a broader context of mass immigration from southernneighboring countries since World War II.
Among the rapidly growing but diverse population of Latinos, Cubans
in Miami (Miami Cubans) have experienced very successful political
incorporation into U.S. politics. Soon after the 1959 Cuban Revolution,
thousands of Cubans ﬂed en masse from their island and started their battle against the Castro regime and for a return to their homeland. Half acentury later, though, anti-Castro exiles and their descendants have incorporated themselves into U.S. politics and formed a solid voting bloc inSouth Florida, playing a key role in the 2000 presidential election. Although making up less than 1 percent of the U.S. national population andonly 3.5 percent of the U.S. Hispanic population, they have succeeded inelecting their representatives to local, state, and national legislatures andhave exerted a disproportionate inﬂuence inside and outside the UnitedStates.6 As of March 2011, two U.S. senators and four congressmen of
Cuban origin serve on Capitol Hill. One of them, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a
Cuban American congresswoman since 1989, became chair of the House
Foreign Affairs Committee in 2011, which makes it more difﬁcult for the
Obama administration to improve U.S. relations with Castro’s Cuba.

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How did these Miami Cubans, especially those who arrived in the
1960s, acquire such political importance in the United States? In whatways can historians narrate their rapid political ascendancy and situate
it in the larger context of growing representation by Latinos in U.S. politics?
Studies of Miami urban politics point to several notable characteristics
regarding Miami Cubans and their political activities: the demographic
and geographic conditions of Miami, the Cuban American establishmentof an economic enclave with access to Latin American capital, the migration patterns and numbers of Cubans as well as their geographical concentration in Miami, the extremely cohesive political community shapedby ethnic antagonism in the area, and ﬁnally their widely shared anticommunist ideology.7 These studies have proven invaluable for understanding the mechanism of Cuban American ethnic politics. Yet they fallshort of explaining the dynamism of ethnic politics by paying relatively
little attention to the overall importance of Cuban Americans’ earlyencounters with U.S. politics.
Here, it bears emphasizing that the political ascendancy of Cuban
Americans was far from predetermined. Until the early 1980s Miami
Cubans possessed little inﬂuence on local politics, much less on national
politics. As Judson M. DeCew Jr. concluded in 1980, it seemed unlikelythat the community would form a cohesive political force within the U.S.
political system.8 Nonetheless, around the same time, many Cuban exiles
began to deepen their involvement with U.S. politics, massively voting
for candidates from the Republican Party rather than the Democratic
Party and dramatically transforming the political landscape in the region.
Thus, in this article, I deﬁne the early 1980s as the turning point in theirpolitical history and analyze how these voters and politicians of Cuban
origin began to engage in U.S. politics, and how their early experiences
outlined their political activities thereafter. My principal aim here is toassess to what degree these early developments have deﬁned the decades-long process of Miami Cubans’ incorporation into American political life.
I not only take a long-term perspective but also an interdisciplinary
approach, combining diplomatic history, political science, and ethnic
history. I detail the intense and noteworthy interaction of the Cold War,party politics, and ethnic awareness among Miami Cubans in the early
1980s. Considering this intricate nature of the early developments of
Miami Cubans’ ethnic politics, it is obligatory for scholars to go beyond

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HIDEAKI KAMIa single discipline and to ﬁnd how their political path can be better explained in a larger context. My arguments are based on primary and secondary materials, which, however, I do not cite unless quoting directlyfrom the source. These sources include manuscripts, personal papers,
pamphlets, tabloids, magazines, journals, and newsletters, collected at
two archives in Miami, as well as governmental records, correspondence, and policy papers, available at the Ronald Reagan and George H.
W. Bush Presidential Libraries. In particular, for the analysis of elections
in South Florida, local newspapers, such as the Miami Herald and El
Nuevo Herald, as well as Cuban-exile newspapers such as Patria, La
Nación, and Réplica have proven highly valuable.9
Although the Cold War ended by 1990, I treat the period as lasting up
at least until 2000. This is because U.S.-Cuban relations in the post–Cold
War era remained hostile and continued to outline the political lives ofmany Miami Cubans in distinctive ways, as shown in the 2000 presidential election.10 I do not fully address here some of the other signiﬁcantaspects of U.S.-Cuban relations, as well as some important componentsof Miami Cubans’ self-identiﬁcation that certainly have affected theirpolitical activities; these include class, race, color, gender, and religious
values. They have been treated in more detail elsewhere.11 In this article
I analyze the political ascendancy of Miami Cubans by exploring theunderstudied yet remarkable interaction among local power struggles,
party politics, and the ebb and ﬂow of Cold War tensions, which haveshaped recent developments in ethnic politics in the United States.
I.

ANTI-CASTRO EXILES AND THE COLD WAR IN
THE WESTERN HEMISPHEREIn the ﬁrst four years after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, more than two
hundred thousand Cubans left the island for its neighbor, the UnitedStates. The Cuban Revolution symbolized ﬁerce opposition to Americanization that had deeply penetrated into pre-Castro Cuba. What the revolution aimed for was a break from the past and the construction of a newsociety by el hombre nuevo (the new man). The revolutionary government urged people to join and contribute to this project, despised those
who left the island as gusanos (worms), and evaluated the split of thenation as “a natural puriﬁcation.”12 The government considered almost
all the exiles as traitors against the nation, conﬁscated their property, anddiscarded their citizenship.13

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On the other side, the U.S. government welcomed Cuban exiles as“freedom ﬁghters” and granted political asylum to almost all of them, at
ﬁrst for humanitarian reasons and later for political reasons. The massive
exodus became a tool for attacking the legitimacy of the revolutionary
government and a valuable source of recruitment by the Central Intelligence Agency for use in its plot to topple the Castro regime. Indeed,
the U.S. government conducted the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, which
resulted in the death or capture of approximately 1,500 exiles. The U.S.
involvement in Cuban internal affairs soon led to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis with the Soviet Union, the peak of Cold War tensions. Only
then did the U.S. government pledge to the Soviet Union that it would
not invade Cuba again.14
As the Castro regime worked to solidify its rule in the island, more
Cubans left for the United States. In the period from 1965 to 1973, nearly
265,000 Cubans arrived seeking political asylum.15 The U.S. national
media called them “golden exiles,” since most of them were consideredhighly educated, skilled, and anti-communist immigrants, suitable forlearning quickly the American way of life. Nonetheless, many residents
in South Florida were irritated by the massive inﬂow of foreigners andlooked on them as “unwanted immigrants.”16
For this reason, the U.S. government encouraged the exiles to spread
across the country and assimilate into U.S. society. The U.S. government
administrated the Cuban Refugee Program and resettled 290,000 Cubans
to other areas. From 1961 to 1973, the program expended roughly $957
million to provide Cubans with meals, residences, job training, and othernecessities for the start of their new lives in the United States.17 Furthermore, the U.S. Congress enacted the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966,
which required a refugee to stay only one year and one day in the UnitedStates before applying for permanent resident status. This special act
paved the way for the subsequent legal incorporation of Cubans into theUnited States.
While Cold War tensions gradually decreased in the Western Hemisphere after 1963, Cuban exiles struggled to establish a strong ethnic
community in Miami. By the 1970s, around 160,000 Cuban exiles
resided in “Little Havana,” the area located west of downtown Miami,
and they were soon joined by many others who had resettled in otherareas but eventually returned, looking for jobs, friends, neighbors, anda warm climate.18 In order to retain ethnic ties with the homeland, these
Cubans maintained their religious customs and created private educational

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institutions to teach their children about Cuban history. More important,they established local Spanish newspapers, tabloids, and radio programs
that denounced the adversarial regime that had made their lives in theirbirthplace intolerable. For them, opposition to Castro was not so much apolitical opinion as a moral issue. The toppling of the regime became “theCause,” something that every member of the community should not question. Sociologists Alejandro Portes and Alex Stepick aptly chose a phrase,“moral community,” to depict Miami Cubans’ ethnic community.19
Geographical concentration and a strong sense of belonging among
members of the community also nurtured an “ethnic enclave.”20 By the
1980s, the community, with its individual capabilities, social networks,
and a variety of federal loans and other ﬁnancial assistance, created eighteen thousand ethnic companies that provided capital, employment, andjob training for those who arrived later.21 Cuban-born entrepreneurs,
taking advantage of co-ethnic cheap labor, as well as abundant capital,
language abilities, and strong connection to Latin America, powerfullyenergized the local economy of South Florida. Altogether, Cuban exiles
transformed Miami, a once shabby city, into “the Capital of Latin
America,” a center for trade, ﬁnance, and aerial transportation in theWestern Hemisphere.22
Nevertheless, despite heavy geographical concentration, strong community solidarity, and extraordinary economic success, the prospect ofpolitical ascendancy for Miami Cubans still appeared far from certain.
By 1980, the majority of eligible Miami Cubans had attained U.S. citizenship, and a few of them began to hold elective public ofﬁce at a local
level as early as 1973.23 However, many Cubans still considered political participation in the U.S. system as inconsistent with their wishes forthe toppling of the Castro regime. As time passed, anti-Castro exiles
deepened their doubts about U.S. politicians, Republican or Democrat,
fulﬁlling the promise of establishing a “Free Cuba.” That the Gerald Ford
and Jimmy Carter administrations pursued détente with Castro’s Cuba
despite their opposition to the communist government merely exacerbated their mistrust of U.S. politics. At the same time, internal politicalpolarization developed among the community in the 1970s. Over a hundred young students and scholars of Cuban origin began to reevaluate
their relations with their homeland and initiated dialogue with the Castro
regime. Infuriated by these developments, intransigent anti-Castro militants resorted to indiscriminate terrorism and justiﬁed their moves aspunishment of the “deviators.”24

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If these terrorists’ activities reinforced the negative stereotypes of
Cubans, so did the 1980 Mariel boatlift, in which Miami Cubans brought
125,000 new Cubans into the United States. The Carter administration
attempted to discourage Miami Cubans from participating in the boatlift,
but it only angered those who sought family reuniﬁcation.25 The administration’s inability to control this refugee crisis resulted in tremendous
growth in ethnic tension in Miami; non-Cuban residents in Miami began
an “English-only” movement and passed an anti-bilingual resolution in
Dade County (Miami) to protest the boatlift.
This “backlash” against massive immigration heightened the exiles’
sense of ethnic awareness and set the stage for their subsequent politicalempowerment.26 With the image of freedom ﬁghters tarnished as well as
negative depictions of fellow Cubans, many exiles must have realizedthat they could no longer afford to stay away from U.S. politics. However, it is important to note that many anti-Castro exiles did not look to
the Democratic Party, the party traditionally identiﬁed as pro-immigrant,
for their party afﬁliation. In contrast to the majority of Mexicans, Puerto
Ricans, and other Hispanic groups, they chose to join the Republican
Party.
II.

A.

THE POLITICAL INCORPORATION OF ANTI-CASTRO EXILESINTO U.S. POLITICS

Reagan Republicans during the New Cold War

The start of what later became known as the new Cold War revived
strong antipathy by the U.S. government toward Castro’s Cuba. Following the social revolutions in Grenada and Nicaragua in 1979, Central
America and the Caribbean region again became a major battlegroundbetween East and West. Grenada and Nicaragua formed close connections with Castro’s Cuba, which helped pro-Soviet inﬂuence to growwithin the region. In response, Ronald Reagan, elected as U.S. president
in 1980, condemned this communist inﬁltration as a sign of another conspiracy plotted by Castro’s Cuba and consequently launched a variety ofharsh measures against the regime. These measures included the establishment of a new pro-U.S. radio station broadcasting to the island, Radio
Martí. The administration worked in close collaboration with Cuban
exiles for the success of this radio station.27
It was these changes in U.S. Cuban policies that reinvigorated

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anti-Castro exiles and moved their political orientation in a new direction. In the Cuban-exile community, there appeared numerous stories–in
newspapers, tabloids, and magazines–that depicted Ronald Reagan as
the exile’s powerful and trustworthy friend, ally, and superhero. The
exiles’ ardent support for Reagan was well captured by one of the covers of the humor magazine Zig-Zag, which was highly popular among
Miami Cubans. The date of the issue was November 9, 1983, two weeks
after the invasion of Grenada, which the Reagan administration conducted for the defense of the Western Hemisphere from Cuban “interference.”28 On this magazine cover, the president, wearing boxer’s pants
with a picture of an elephant (the symbol of the Republican Party) andin a ﬁghting pose stands ﬁrmly in the ring, having apparently knocked
out a man representing Grenada, and in an intimidating manner shouts,“Next!”29 After years of suffering from a sense of powerlessness, antiCastro exiles had found a source of power in the ﬁgure of Ronald Reaganand sensed that the tide of their war had ﬁnally begun to turn in theirfavor.
Interestingly, Reagan’s opponents, who are standing outside the ringin the picture, include not only Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega (revolutionary leader of Nicaragua) but also Walter Mondale and Maurice
Ferré.30 Mondale was the nominee of the Democratic Party for president
in 1984, and Ferré was the mayor of the city of Miami and a supporterof Mondale. These two politicians were hardly sympathetic to Castro
and Ortega. The Democratic Party platform of 1984 ﬁrmly opposed
Cuban interference in Latin America and called for another approach toproblems within the hemisphere.31 However, in the worldview of thereaders of the magazine, Democrats were not the ones to vote for. In
other words, those who supported Reagan’s war against communism
opposed all who were against President Reagan, both inside and outside
U.S. territory.
Such polarized political reasoning was strongly encouraged by
Reagan Republicans who were reaching out to the Cuban-exile community. Already, by the 1980s, political analysts were predicting theincreasing importance of new Hispanic voters, mainly because of theirgrowing numbers, in the pivotal states in the presidential elections.32
Among these Latino voters, Cuban Americans constituted a promising
electoral bloc for the Republican Party in South Florida, a traditionallystrong base for Southern Democrats. Observing the enthusiastic response
from Cuban exiles, Reagan Republicans intensiﬁed their outreach efforts

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193

to maximize their votes. The most vivid example of such Republican
efforts was the visit of President Reagan to Miami. On May 20, 1983,
the president celebrated Cuban “independence” day with anti-Castro
Cuban exiles and made a highly emotional speech.33 He said: “Now is
the time to act reasonably and decisively to avert a crisis and prevent
other people from suffering the same fate as your brothers and sisters in
Cuba.” Referring to Democrats’ opposition to his foreign policy in Latin
America, the president emphasized the urgency to defend the region
from aggression by “the Soviet-Cuban-Nicaraguan axis.”34 The president told the audience what they had wanted to hear from a U.S. president for a long time.
The exile community, now numbering a half million, enthusiastically
responded to this outreach. Miami Cubans passionately supported President Reagan because of his foreign policy stance, not because of his
domestic agenda. An editor for La Nación, a nationalistic exile newspaper, explained its support for Reagan by stressing that Reagan wasagainst Castro’s Cuba.35 “Support President Reagan’s foreign policy,
which . . . has imparted dignity to those who patiently and persistently
ﬁght against communism every day,” stated in a pamphlet issued by the
National Association of Cuban American Women of the United States,
a nonproﬁt and nonpartisan group whose aim was to protect the rightsof minorities and women.36 Anti-Castro exiles equated support for
Reagan with voting against Castro; thus, their pattern of party registration changed dramatically. In June 1979, 49 percent of Hispanic votersin Dade County were registered as Democrats and 39 percent as
Republicans. However, in March 1988, 24 percent identiﬁed as Democrats and 68 percent as Republicans.37 Young prospective politicians of
Cuban origin followed their supporters and left the Democratic Party.
“He [Ronald Reagan] made me a Republican,” said Lincoln Diaz-Balart,
who was elected as congressman in 1992.38 This is how the Republican
Party earned loyalty from voters and politicians of Cuban origin. The
party drew more than 85 percent of their votes in 1980, 1984, and 1988
as Florida became an increasingly competitive swing state in presidential elections.39
B.

The “Hispanicization” of Miami around the End of the Cold War

Reagan Republicans powerfully swayed Cuban exiles to participate
in U.S. politics in the early 1980s. Still, it is noteworthy that these new

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citizens had been little acquainted with the U.S. political system andfound it difﬁcult to send their representatives to local, state, and national
legislatures. These new citizens had to master political skills to win theextremely ﬁerce competitions with Anglos (non-Hispanic whites) and
African Americans. Furthermore, they needed to establish a strong political base in South Florida as a stepping stone for climbing the ladder togreater inﬂuence in U.S. politics.
Miami urban politics had been long characterized by tri-ethnic politics, in which Anglos, African Americans, and Hispanics played a zerosum game for power and interests. During the 1980s ethnic tensions
among these three groups increased sharply, as local residents encountered a massive inﬂux of Cubans, a severe economic recession, and adramatic increase in drug use and crime. Furious at such an ignominious
social transformation, Anglos passed an anti-bilingual referendum andcriticized Cubans for making their lives in Miami difﬁcult and less pleasant. On the other hand, desperate to improve their living conditions,
African Americans engaged in destructive racial riots four times in thedecade. They thought it unfair that Cubans succeeded economicallymore rapidly than those who had fought in the Civil Rights Movement;
they felt exploited by Anglos and Cubans simultaneously.40
It was against this background that Miami Cubans began participatingin local politics. In an effort to defend their ethnic community, the exiles
ﬁrst engaged in spontaneous demonstrations and later expanded into
more organized formats, such as the Spanish-American League against
Discrimination. More important, newly naturalized Cuban Americans
voted in large numbers in every election, weighing candidates’ party
afﬁliation and ethnicity, supporting candidates who addressed their symbolic needs as well as daily concerns. By such means, anti-Castro exiles
began making it a rule to voice their opposition to international communism in the voting booth. It was not surprising that aspirants for elective ofﬁces frequently resorted to anti-Castro symbolic performance,
leading the Miami City Commission, a local legislature, to pass twentyeight nonbinding resolutions on foreign affairs within only sixteen
months leading up to May 1983.
Although such performances certainly contributed to anti-Castro
exiles’ growing familiarity with the U.S. political system, their ethnocentric approach often led to a backlash from those outside the community.
In 1981, Manolo Reboso, a Bay of Pigs veteran and a Miami mayoral
candidate, went to Washington for a rendezvous with President Reagan.

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195

The purpose of his visit was to be able to show off pictures of himself
shaking hands with the president in the Oval Ofﬁce and thus boost his
credentials in the community. This strategy worked well, and local
Spanish newspapers printed the picture on their covers, which must havestrongly encouraged co-ethnics to vote for him. The picture, however,ultimately backﬁred because it caused many African American voters tojoin Reboso’s opponents. African Americans in Miami disliked the president and found it difﬁcult to imagine Reboso serving their interests if
he were elected.41 In a tri-ethnic society like Miami in the 1980s, politicians like Reboso encountered a dilemma in ethnic politics: those who
worked energetically to appeal to their co-ethnic voters on ethnic issues
took the risk of alienating voters outside their own community.
Aspirants for ofﬁce on a greater political stage thus had to ﬁnd amethod to appeal to voters inside and outside the community simultaneously. The ﬁrst Cuban American mayor of Miami was Xavier Suarez,a thirty-six-year-old lawyer and graduate of Harvard. Young politicians
like Suarez may have lacked charisma and credibility among co-ethnics
based on their experiences in anti-Castro activities, but they were skilled
at strategizing to win elections by appealing to members of other ethnic
groups. Indeed, Suarez learned from his loss in the 1983 mayoral election when he alienated the majority of voters by adopting a “Cuban vote
Cuban” message. Two years later he refrained from such slogans andinstead appealed to Anglo voters with his clean image, capabilities, ﬂuent English, and Harvard education.42 The appearance of these youngpoliticians ushered in a new phase in Miami politics. During the 1980s
the number of ofﬁceholders of Cuban origin in the Miami metropolitan
area increased from four to forty. Cuban Americans seized administrative powers in four cities, including the City of Miami.
Around the same time, much like the political machine established byIrish immigrants a century earlier in New York City, Cuban American
entrepreneurs and businessmen began pursuing their economic interests
by making ﬁnancial contributions in the hope of receiving various dividends. For instance, they formed the Latin Builder Association to lobby
the City of Miami for favors in zoning and bidding for public enterprises,
which forced out Anglo rivals. Such practices engendered nearly chronic
corruption, but it also enabled businesses to offer employment to newcomers ﬂeeing from Cuba, Nicaragua, and other Latin American countries that were in turmoil.43 A massive and continuous inﬂow of these
Hispanics in the 1980s energized local politics, as well as the economy

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and culture, and put Anglos and African Americans on the defensive.
Most notably, the publisher of Miami’s principal daily newspaper, theMiami Herald, was harshly condemned by anti-Castro exiles as being“too soft” on communism, and the publisher was forced to put out El
Nuevo Herald, a Spanish version of the newspaper customized for the
exile community.44
By the time the Cold War ended, Cuban exiles and their descendants
had seized hegemony in almost all spheres of life in Miami. Embitteredanti-Hispanic political scientist Samuel Huntington later acknowledgedthat Miami became “the most Hispanic large city in the ﬁfty states.”45 In
the realm of national politics, anti-Castro exiles in 1989 successfully
took the congressional seat that was vacant because of the death of
Claude Pepper, a Democrat, by electing Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican. She became the ﬁrst Cuban American and the ﬁrst Hispanic
woman elected to the U.S. Congress. The election in 1989 was full ofﬁerce ethnic antagonisms among Anglos, African Americans, andHispanics. Nevertheless, with over 90 percent of Cuban American votes,
Ros-Lehtinen defeated her competitor, who had supported the Englishonly movement and received almost 90 percent of both Anglo andAfrican American votes.46 Following the election of Ros-Lehtinen, there
appeared other young politicians of Cuban origin from Miami who cameto play a crucial role in state and national politics in the United States.
III.
A.

MIAMI CUBANS AND PARTY POLITICS AFTER THE COLD WAR

Ethnic Outreach by Clinton Democrats from 1992 to 2000

Although the Cold War ended in 1990, U.S.-Cuban relations remained“frozen.” As I and others have discussed elsewhere, anti-Castro exiles
and their descendants formed a powerful lobbying group, the Cuban
American National Foundation (CANF), to support an antagonistic U.S.
policy toward Cuba, hindering a possible thaw in U.S.-Cuban relationsin the post–Cold War years.47 However, it bears emphasizing that antiCastro exiles maintained their political inﬂuence by relying on increased
political party activity in South Florida, even as CANF’s inﬂuence
declined.48 To explain this, it is necessary to observe how the Republicanand Democratic Parties responded to Cuban Americans’ seizure of
power in Miami from the late 1980s onward. The increased party competition for Miami Cubans’ votes, I argue, helped to sustain the legacy

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197of the Cold War that continued to deﬁne Cuban American ethnic politics in distinctive ways even in the post–Cold War years.
First of all, the rise of Cuban American ethnic politics contributed signiﬁcantly to the Republicans’ rapid increase in power in the Florida statelegislature. Hundreds of thousands of politically active Cuban American
voters played a pivotal role in statewide elections. Young politicians of
Cuban origin also helped Republicans gather further momentum by taking over the seats held by the incumbent Democrats. Such momentum
highly rewarded Jeb Bush, one of the most ardent of those reaching out
to Miami Cubans. In 1982, the Republican Party in Florida recruited theson of Vice President George H. W. Bush for outreach efforts to theexiles because he lived in Miami, spoke Spanish, and could use his namerecognition on local radio programs.49 Two years later he became chairof the Dade County Republican Party and was given credit for the close
victory of the Republican Party in the 1986 Florida gubernatorial election. He was then appointed by the governor as Florida’s secretary ofcommerce, and he later served as campaign manager for Ros-Lehtinen
in her 1989 election. During the vice presidency and presidency of his
father, Jeb Bush also served as an important conduit between Miami
Cubans and the White House. Although unsuccessful in his bid for the
1994 governorship, he won it in 1998 and served as governor of Florida
for eight years, with valuable support from Cuban American voters andpoliticians both before and after the elections.50
Given the growing importance of Cuban American votes in Florida,
it is little wonder that the Democratic Party also began intensifying its
outreach efforts to Miami Cubans. This was especially important for
winning presidential elections, since the party could not afford to keep
alienating these voters, whose support was necessary for winning a large
number of Electoral College votes in Florida, one of the most decisiveswing states. In 1992, Bill Clinton, as the Democratic candidate forpresident, showed his intention of reaching out to anti-Castro exiles; hemet anti-Castro lobbyists in Miami and suddenly endorsed the Cuban
Democracy Act, legislation that would reinforce the U.S. embargo
against Cuba.51 Once in power, President Clinton, considering Florida
as the most important state for his reelection in 1996, catered to the
Cuban policy wishes of anti-Castro exiles, as he candidly admitted in his
memoir.52 Indeed, the president did not embrace all anti-Castro legislation equally wholeheartedly, including the 1996 Helms-Burton Act thatfurther strengthened the U.S. embargo against Cuba, but he basically

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maintained the hostile attitude of the United States toward Cuba evenwhile enlarging U.S. economic relations with other Communist countries such as China and Vietnam.53
At this point, the Democratic Party gained another advantage over theRepublican Party on the issue of immigration. The Republican Party certainly intended to hold on to the Cuban American votes in Florida, but
it could not resist the temptation of exploiting anti-immigration sentiments held among non-Hispanic Republican and potential Republican
voters in other states. Except for two Cuban American members of Congress, Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Diaz-Balart, all the Republican members of the House of Representatives and all of the party’s nonincumbent
congressional candidates signed the Contract with America. This 1994
Republican policy statement had an intolerant attitude toward immigranthouseholds of Hispanic descent that they claimed were living at themercy of the welfare state.54 The leading candidates for the Republicanpresidential nomination, such as Bob Dole, endorsed the reappearing
English-only movement and deepened the GOP’s xenophobic image
among voters of Hispanic origin. Consequently, President Clinton, running for reelection, received nearly 40 percent of Miami Cubans’ votes
and won Florida for the Democratic Party for the ﬁrst time since 1976.55
Furthermore, the Democratic Party also began recruiting young politicians of Cuban origin into its ranks. For example, Alex Penelas, a secondgeneration Cuban exile, became a rising star in the Florida Democratic
Party when he became in 1996 the ﬁrst elected mayor of the newly
renamed Miami-Dade County that encompassed several principal cities
of South Florida, including Miami. By 2000, the county’s population
exceeded more than 2.2 million, making it the largest county in Florida
demographically and the eighth-most populous county in the UnitedStates, with Hispanics making up 57.3 percent of the population.56 In
1992, when Penelas was the county commissioner in Dade County, heestablished his anti-Castro credentials among co-ethnics; he sponsoredcounty legislation prohibiting U.S. cargo that anchored in Cuba fromentering the port of Miami.57 Unlike the majority of Cuban American
leaders, this young politician chose to join the Democratic Party, yet heencountered few problems as long as the Clinton administration sought
to preserve its Cold War–type policy in Cuba.

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B.

199

The Elián Affair and the 2000 Presidential Election

The so-called Elián affair reversed all of the above-mentioned trends,
for a time at least. This ﬁerce confrontation between the Democratic
administration and the exile community ruined Penelas’s political careerand cost Al Gore the presidency in 2000. On Thanksgiving Day in 1999,
Elián González, a ﬁve-year-old Cuban boy, was rescued by locals on the
U.S. shore. His mother attempted to cross the Florida Straits but lost her
life at sea. The child was initially released to his relatives in Miami, but
before long, his father in Cuba demanded that Elián be returned home.
The Miami relatives fought back with the assistance of numerous Cuban
American politicians who strongly supported “Elián’s right” to stay in
the United States, not the island under the rule of their adversary.
The controversy continued to intensify even after a federal district
court’s ruling that Elián belonged with his father was upheld by the 11th
Circuit Court of Appeals. Despite an order by Attorney General Janet
Reno that the boy be returned, Miami relatives and their supporters
resisted desperately. In anticipating a showdown between the community and the administration, Miami-Dade mayor Penelas publicly vowedthat he would do nothing to assist the administration in its attempt toreturn the child to Cuba. Having observed the six-months-long crisis, theadministration ultimately gave up negotiations and ordered SWATequipped border patrol agents of the Immigration and Naturalization
Service to break into the house and take the child from his relatives.58
The Elián affair had a catastrophic impact on the exile community in
Miami and thereby held signiﬁcant implications for the 2000 presidential election. The affair powerfully awoke ethnic awareness even among
those who would never have paid much attention to their ethnic origin
otherwise. Second- and third-generation Cuban Americans joined theirparents and grandparents who rallied against the sending of the childback to their traumatized homeland under the Castro regime. The forceful removal of the child shocked and infuriated many Cuban Americans,leading them to rally around their radio spokesmen, who swore revenge
against the Clinton administration in the presidential election that was
to occur only half a year later. Fearing this development, Vice President
Al Gore, the Democratic candidate for president, departed from President Clinton on the issue by supporting legislation that would haveendowed Elián with permanent resident status in the United States.
Nevertheless, Gore felt he had to stop campaigning in South Florida

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when he saw thousands of disappointed Cuban American voters changing their party afﬁliation and politicians afﬁliated with his party, including Alex Penelas, avoiding association with him.59
In this way, the Republican Party in 2000 was greatly rewarded for its
intermittent but decades-long efforts to reach Miami Cubans. Its presidential candidate, George W. Bush, was a politician capable of reachingout to these new voters partly because of his appreciation of the importance of Hispanic votes through his experience as the governor of Texas,a state with a large number of Hispanics. Yet, his biggest victory camein Florida, which he narrowly carried by 537 votes, receiving 82 percentof the approximately 280,000 votes cast by Cuban Americans.60 On
closer inspection, the importance of Cuban American votes looks evenclearer: of the three major Florida counties where Clinton increased his
gains leading to victory in 1996, Miami-Dade was the only one where
the Democratic candidate (Gore) had considerable losses in 2000.61
Moreover, when the issue of the ballot controversy in Florida ensued
after the election, George W. Bush could rely on Cuban American activists to promptly mobilize in his support, while Al Gore could not evencontact Penelas, who supposedly could have intervened in the MiamiDade County ballot controversy in favor of Gore. Four years later theformer vice president condemned Penelas in public as “the single mosttreacherous and dishonest person” he had encountered in his politicallife.62
President George W. Bush acknowledged and rewarded Cuban American
Republicans who contributed to his close victory in Florida. In his visit
to Miami on May 20, 2002, the president reiterated his opposition to an
improvement in U.S.-Cuban relations unless the Castro regime would
hold “free elections.”63 In October 2003, the president established theCommission for Assistance to a Free Cuba (CAFC) to “plan for the
happy day when Castro’s regime is no more and democracy comes tothe island.”64 Furthermore, during his two-term presidency, he appointed
a dozen Cuban Americans to high-level government posts.65 Amongthem was Mel Martinez, the ﬁrst Cuban American cabinet member, who
served as secretary of housing and urban development. Martinez was aleading fund-raiser in Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign in Florida andclose to Jeb Bush, the president’s younger brother. When Martinez
accepted his cabinet seat in the administration, he requested to be given
a say on issues related to Cuba, which he described as “an issue of profound importance to my life, one that had been a major motivation for

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201

me to enter politics in the ﬁrst place.”66 Bush responded afﬁrmatively
and later appointed him and Secretary of State Colin Powell co-chairsof CAFC. He, subsequently in 2004, became the ﬁrst Cuban American
elected to the U.S. Senate and the ﬁrst Hispanic chairman of the Republican Party in November 2006. Martinez announced his retirementin 2009, yet his senatorial seat was taken by Marco Rubio, another Republican and second-generation Cuban American. Skillful in coordinating his campaign, Rubio seized an opportunity to gain endorsement fromthe rising Tea Party movement and achieved an overwhelming victoryin the midterm election of 2010.
CONCLUSION
The process of political incorporation of Cuban exiles, particularly
those who entered the United States in the early 1960s, was a uniquedevelopment. Their political trajectory can only be explained by referring to such interconnected factors as the Cold War, local power struggles, and party politics. First of all, it was the Cold War that profoundly
shaped Cuban exiles’ worldview and their political attitudes. In collaboration with the U.S. government, the exiles ﬁrst attempted to topple theCastro regime by force. They failed and had to stay in the United States
for a much longer period than expected. Yet their hostility against theregime remained, ultimately to be evoked powerfully by the Reagan
administration’s ﬁght against communism in Central America and the
Caribbean region. As I have stressed, the rise of Cold War tensions in
the early 1980s strongly promoted Miami Cubans to rally to the anticommunist ﬂag of Reagan Republicans. In the eyes of anti-Castro exiles
working to overthrow the regime, there might have been little contradiction in becoming U.S. citizens and supporting U.S. foreign policy
while maintaining ethnic attachment to their homeland. In hindsight,
such enthusiastic response to Ronald Reagan in the 1980s by Miami
Cubans and the subsequent shift in their party afﬁliation became the single most important achievement for the Republican Party in its outreachefforts to Latinos in the decade.
While the new Cold War drove Cuban exiles into U.S. politics, local
power struggles in South Florida accommodated their ﬂedging ethnic
politics in line with the U.S. political system in the later period. Alreadyby the late 1970s, many of these exiles, who were geographicallyconcentrated in the region, obtained U.S. citizenship and succeeded

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HIDEAKI KAMI

economically in South Florida. Nevertheless, it was the renewed conﬁdence in the U.S. political system among Cuban exiles that dramaticallyaccelerated “the Hispanicization of Miami” during the 1980s.67 New citizens of Cuban origin displayed strong interest in election after election
and rapidly broadened their political base beyond the ethnic community.
During the process, old activists were replaced by young professional
politicians who were educated in U.S. institutions, able to speak English
ﬂuently, and capable of appealing to both Cuban and non-Cuban residents in Florida.
Along with the Cold War and local power struggles, party politics
played an important role in deﬁning the political trajectory of Miami
Cubans. The Republican Party poured much energy into its outreachefforts to the exile community and fortunately was able to recruit competent persons like Jeb Bush for such purposes. The signiﬁcance of these
efforts might be clariﬁed if the case of Miami Cubans could be comparedwith that of Cuban Americans in New Jersey, the state with the next
largest Cuban Americans population. In the absence of the Republican
Party’s intensiﬁed efforts at the level observed in Florida, and probably
for several other less decisive reasons, the Democratic Party maintained
the party loyalty of many of the prominent Cuban American leaders in
New Jersey.68 Still, this does not mean that these leaders have been lessinterested in Cuba or less passionate in voicing opposition to the Castro
regime. For example, Robert Menendez, now a U.S. Senator for New
Jersey, has been the most powerful voice within his party against the lifting of the U.S. embargo of Cuba.
Furthermore, the Republican outreach to Miami Cubans brought in a
new competition for the hearts and minds of these new voters from the
Democrat Party in the later period. Aware of their strategic importancefor winning reelection, Bill Clinton, the ﬁrst U.S. president in the postCold War years, made signiﬁcant efforts to make inroads into the exile
community in South Florida and achieved his objective. However, his
handling of the Elián Gonzalez affair reminded Cuban Americans of
their historical trajectory, leading them to rekindle their fervor against
the Castro regime. Once again, the issue of their homeland dominatedthe minds of anti-Castro Cuban American voters, who demonstrated
their accumulated capabilities within the U.S. political system in the2000 presidential election when they supported George W. Bush. Regardless of Clinton and his intentions, the increased competition for
Miami Cubans’ votes insured that their rapidly developing ethnic politics

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203

would further enlarge their political importance beyond their community.
By paying special attention to the early 1980s, in this article I haverevealed that both U.S. foreign policy and party politics in this period
profoundly shaped ethnic awareness among Cuban exiles and that thissense of self-understanding signiﬁcantly outlined their political activities thereafter. The Elián affair and the 2000 election clearly illustrates
that ethnic politics evolved not only in response to changing external circumstances but also in ways constrained by the past trajectory. Perhaps
this is the principal reason why many Cuban exiles have demonstrated
remarkably different political orientations from other Latinos to this day.
In the case of Miami Cubans’ encounter with American political life, it
can be characterized by the political nature of their migration to theUnited States, the highly politicized formation of their ethnic awareness,and the intensive outreach efforts from both the Republican and Democratic Parties. Their experiences have been certainly without parallel
when compared to those of other immigrants from Latin America.
Nevertheless, this is not to say that ethnic politics did not develop
within the evolving context of the larger society. A growing number of
new Hispanic immigrants, both Cuban and non-Cuban, have entered
South Florida since the 1990s. Together with a new generation of Miami
Cubans, they have begun transforming political conﬁgurations in theregion. In response, the Democratic Party has once again intensiﬁed its
efforts to seize Republican strongholds in South Florida by attracting the
support of these new voters. Moreover, although U.S.-Cuban relations
have been locked in a hostile confrontation, U.S.–Latin American relations in the post–Cold War era appear to be moving in a new direction,
albeit slowly and incrementally. Cuban American ethnic politics will
ultimately have to be reexamined in light of these new developments.
Such efforts will be of great use for analyzing the dynamic interactionof U.S. foreign policy with ethnic politics as well as projecting the future
political trajectory of Miami Cubans.

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NOTES
I beneﬁted from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) for its ﬁnancial
assistance: Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellow (22–1907). I am also grateful to anonymous
reviewers for their insightful comments on my manuscript.
1
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, there is no clear difference between“Hispanics” and “Latinos.” Persons of Latin American origin in the United States canvoluntarily use or refuse the one or the other, or even both. In 1997, the U.S. government adopted both of them for ofﬁcial use. Although there remains a controversy about
the terminology, here I will use Hispanics and Latinos interchangeably.
2
See for example, Rodney E. Hero, Latinos and the U.S. Political System: Two-Tiered
Pluralism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992); Lisa García Bedolla, Fluid
Borders: Latino Power, Identity, and Politics in Los Angeles (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 2005). For case studies see, F. Chris Garcia, ed., Latinos and thePolitical System (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988); and Rodolfo
Espino, David Leal, and Kenneth J. Meier, eds., Latino Politics: Identity, Mobilization,
and Representation (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008).
3
On the growing attention to the Latino electorate from the Republican and Democratic Parties, see Louis DeSipio, Counting on the Latino Vote: Latinos as a New Electorate (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996); Stacey L. Connaughton,
Inviting Latino Voters: Party Messages and Latino Party Identification (New York:
Routledge, 2005); and Marisa A. Abranjano, Campaigning to the New American Electorate: Advertising to Latino Voters (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010).
4
On the earlier writings, see Rodolfo O. de la Garza and Louis DeSipio, eds., From
Rhetoric to Reality: Latino Politics in the 1988 Elections (Boulder, CO: Westview,1992); Rodolfo O. de la Garza, Martha Menchaca, and Louis DeSipio, eds., Barrio
Ballots: Latino Politics in the 1990 Election (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994); Rodolfo
O. de la Garza and Louis DeSipio, eds., Ethnic Ironies: Latino Politics in the 1992
Elections (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996); Rodolfo O. de la Garza and Louis DeSipio,
eds., Awash in the Mainstream: Latino Politics in the 1996 Elections (Boulder, CO:
Westview, 1999); and Rodolfo O. de la Garza and Louis DeSipio, eds., Muted Voices:
Latinos and the 2000 Elections (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littleﬁeld, 2005).
5Rodolfo O. de la Garza, “Latino Politics,” Annual Review of Political Science 7(2004): 116.
6
For the population and other statistical proﬁles of Cuban Americans, see Pew
Hispanic Center, “Hispanics of Cuban Origin in the United States, 2009,” May 26, 2011,
http://pewhispanic.org/ﬁles/factsheets/73.pdf (accessed August 8, 2011).
7
For the standard literature on Cuban American politics, see Dario Moreno, “Cuban
Americans in Miami Politics: Understanding the Cuban Model,” in The Politics ofMinority Coalitions: Race, Ethnicity, and Shared Uncertainties, ed. Wilbur C. Rich
(Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996), 127–45.
8
Judson M. DeCew, Jr., “Hispanics,” in Florida’s Politics and Government, ed.
Manning J. Dauer (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1980), 321–30.
9
The two archives in Miami, the Cuban Heritage Collection, University of Miami
Libraries, and the Special Collections, Florida International University Libraries(hereafter cited as SC-FIU), provided many published and unpublished documents that proved
beneﬁcial for writing this article. For my analysis of U.S. Cuban policy based on the
Reagan administration’s documents, see Hideaki Kami, “The Ebb and Flow of Cold War
Tensions: The U.S. Government and Anti-Castro Exiles from 1980 to 1992,” PacificETHNIC COMMUNITY, PARTY POLITICS, AND THE COLD WAR

205

and American Studies 11 (March 2011): 51–71. For presidential speeches and party platforms, I rely on the American Presidency Project website,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ (hereafter cited as APP; all accessed February 27,2011).
10
For the periodization of the Cold War, see Robert J. McMahon, The Cold War: A
Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). For detailed analysis
on Cuban exiles’ participation in U.S. Cuban policy, see Kami, “Ebb and Flow.”11
For U.S. Cuban policy, see Lars Schoultz, That Infernal Little Cuban Republic: The
United States and the Cuban Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2009), chaps. 4–10; and Morris Morley and Chris McGillion, Unfinished Business: America and Cuba after the Cold War, 1989–2001 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Important books about socioeconomic and cultural components of
Miami Cubans’ self-identiﬁcation include: María Cristina García, Havana USA: Cuban
Exiles and Cuban Americans in South Florida, 1959–1994 (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1996); Guillermo J. Grenier and Alex Stepick III, eds., Miami Now!
Immigration, Ethnicity, and Social Change (Gainesville: University Press of Florida,1992); Alex Stepick, Guillermo Grenier, Max Castro, and Marvin Dunn, This Land Is
Our Land: Immigrant and Power in Miami (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2003); Guillermo J. Grenier and Lisandro Pérez, The Legacy of Exile: Cubans in the
Unites States (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2003); Gerald E. Poyo, Cuban Catholics in the
United States, 1960–1980: Exile and Integration (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press, 2007); and Susan E. Eckstein, The Immigrant Divide: How Cuban
Americans Changed the U.S. and Their Homeland (New York: Routledge, 2009).
12
UPI, “Raul Castro Rallies People,” New York Times (hereafter cited as NYT ), July23, 1961.
13
Maria de los Angeles Torres, In the Land of Mirrors: Cuban Exile Politics in the
Unites States (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 50–54.
14
García, Havana USA, 30–35.
15
Felix Masud-Piloto, From Welcomed Exiles to Illegal Immigrants: Cuban Migration to the U.S., 1959–1995 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littleﬁeld, 1996), 61–66.
16
Sheila L. Croucher, Imagining Miami: Ethnic Politics in a Postmodern World(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997), chap. 4; Torres, In the Land of
Mirrors, 73–77.
17
Silvia Pedraza-Bailey, Political and Economic Migrants in America: Cubans and
Mexicans (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), 41.
18
Raymond Mohl, “Miami: The Ethnic Cauldron,” in Sunbelt Cities: Politics and
Growth since World War II, ed. Richard M. Bernard and Bradley R. Rice (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983), 71.
19See, their City on the Edge: The Transformation of Miami (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1993), 107.
20
Alejandro Portes and Robert L. Bach, Latin Journey: Cuban and Mexican Immigrants in the Unites States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 203.
21
Mohl, “Miami,” 78.
22
Barry B. Levine, “Miami: The Capital of Latin America,” Wilson Quarterly 9, no.
5 (1985): 47–69.
23
García, Havana USA, 113–14.
24
Ibid., 137–45; Torres, In the Land of Mirrors, 100–102.
25
David W. Engstrom, Presidential Decision Making Adrift: The Carter Administration and the Mariel Boatlift (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littleﬁeld, 1997).
26
Portes and Stepick, City on the Edge, chap. 2.

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On Radio Martí, see Kami, “Ebb and Flow,” 61–63.
National Security Decision Directive 110A, 23 October 1983.
29
Zig-Zag, November 9, 1983. Although I tried to contact the publisher of the magazine for permission to reproduce the image, I could not reach him. The magazine is tobe found in Cuban Archive, box 25, SC-FIU.
30
Ibid.
31
Democratic Party Platform of 1984, APP, July 16, 1984.
32
Rodolfo O. de la Garza, et al., Latino Voices: Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban
Perspectives on American Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1992), 2–4.
33
Whereas Castro’s Cuba declared national independence on January 1, 1959, antiCastro exiles claim that the country became independent on May 20, 1902.
34
Ronald Reagan, APP, May 20, 1983.
35“Nuestra Opinion: Lo de Cuba es Primero,” La Nación, September 30, 1983.
36
Letter, Ana María Perera to the president with Brochure of National Association of
Cuban American Women of the U.S.A., July 29, 1981, no. 034899, Federal Government
Organizations 006–01, WHORM: Subject File, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library(hereafter cited as RRL). Translation is mine.
37
Dario Moreno and Christopher Warren, “The Conservative Enclave: Cubans in
Florida,” in de la Garza and DeSipio, From Rhetoric to Reality, 132.
38
Jay Nordlinger, “Meet the Diaz-Balarts: A Couple of Castro’s ‘Nephews’—in Congress,” National Review, March 10, 2003.
39
For the ﬁgures, see García, Havana USA, 146, 156.
40
John F. Stack Jr. and Christopher L. Warren, “The Reform Tradition and Ethnic
Politics: Metropolitan Miami Confronts the 1990s,” in Grenier and Stepick, Miami
Now!, 171–73.
41
R. A. Zaldivar, “Picture This: Reboso at the White House,” Miami Herald (hereafter cited as MH ), November 7, 1981; “Reagan apoya a Reboso ofrecio ayuda federal,”Patria, November 6, 1981.
42
See esp., George Volsky, “Cuban Refugee Elected Mayor in Miami Vote,” NYT,
November 13, 1985.
43
Portes and Stepick, City on the Edge, chap. 7.
44
Stepick, This Land Is Our Land, 45–50.
45
Samuel Huntington, Who Are We?: The Challenges to America’s National Identity(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), 247–51.
46
In this election Cuban Americans had a much higher turnout than the other twogroups. See esp., Ronnie Ramos, “Ros-Lehtinen Refuses to Debate ‘Racist’ Foe,” MH,
August 18, 1989; Jeffrey Schmalz, “Ethnic Split Fuels Miami Campaign,” NYT, August29, 1989.
47
See Kami, “Ebb and Flow”; Schoultz, Little Cuban Republic; and Morley and
McGillion, Unfinished Business.
48
Although scholars of ethnic lobbies predicted that the Cuban American lobby would
lose its inﬂuence, they often failed to see the momentum of anti-Castro electoral politics. For example, see Eric M. Uslaner, “American Interests in the Balance?: Do Ethnic
Groups Dominate Foreign Policy Making?” in Interest Group Politics, 7th ed., ed. Allan
J. Cigler and Burdett A. Loomis (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2007).
49
Helga Silva, “A Bush by Any Name Is Just Good,” MH, May 21, 1982.
50
Jeb Bush often lobbied on behalf of Miami Cubans, expressed his views on Cuban
policy, and forwarded letters from Cuban American individuals to the administration.
At times, he also informed his father of Republicans’ efforts to reach out to Miami
Cubans. For example, Letter from Jeb Bush to George H. W. Bush, n.d. (signature of28

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207“GB” dated May 16, 1982) with an attached study report, “Focus Group, April 12, 1982,
Cuban American Perceptions, Dade County, Florida,” in Name File, “Jeb and George
Bush,” Ofﬁce of Vice President George Bush, Bush Vice Presidential Records, George
H. W. Bush presidential library (hereafter cited as GHWBL). A dozen other correspondences can be found in RRL and GHWBL.
51
Clinton’s endorsement caught the incumbent president George H. W. Bush by surprise, leading him to declare his support for the legislation even though he would nothave wished to do so otherwise. On Clinton’s motives, see Patrick J. Haney and Walt
Vanderbush, The Cuban Embargo: The Domestic Politics of and American Foreign
Policy (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), 88–89.
52
Bill Clinton, My Life (New York: Knopf, 2004), 727.
53
For Clinton’s Cuban policy, see Schoultz, Cuban Republic, chap. 13. On the HelmsBurton Act, see Patrick J. Kiger, Squeeze Play: The United States, Cuba, and the HelmsBurton Act (Washington, DC: Center for Public Integrity, 1997); and Joaquín Roy, Cuba,
the United States, and the Helms-Burton Doctrine: International Reactions (Gainesville:
University of Florida Press, 2000).
54
For the text of the Contract with America, see the U.S. House website,
http://www.house.gov/house/Contract/CONTRACT.html (accessed February 27, 2011).
55
Dario Moreno and Christopher Warren, “Pragmatism and Strategic Realignment in
the 1996 Election: Florida’s Cuban Americans,” in de la Garza and DeSipio, Awash in
the Mainstream, 218–20.
56
U.S. Census Bureau, American FactFinder,
http://factﬁnder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en(accessed February 27, 2011).
57
Penelas appeared at the House hearing on the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 andsubmitted his legislation for the record. House Committee on Ways and Means, Cuban
Democracy Act of 1992; and Withdrawal of MFN Status from the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Trade of the Committee on Ways andMeans, 102nd Cong., 2nd sess., August 10, 1992.
58
For analysis of the Elián affair, see Grenier and Pérez, Legacy of Exile, chap. 8; andLillian Guerra, “Elián González and the ‘Real Cuba’ of Miami: Visions of Identity,
Exceptionality, and Divinity,” Cuban Studies 38 (2007): 1–25.
59
See esp., Elaine de Valle, “Cuban Exiles Sadly Resigned to Elián’s Fate Protest Voteagainst Democratic White House Urged in November,” MH, July 24, 2000; and David
Adams, “Elián Swings Cuban Voters Back to GOP,” St. Petersburg Times, November
5, 2000.
60
Andrés Oppenheimer, “Growing Hispanic Vote among the Big Election Winners,”
MH, November 9, 2000.
61
Kevin A. Hill and Dario Moreno, “Battleground Florida,” in de la Garza and DeSipio,
Muted Voices, 220.
62
Beth Reinhard, “Gore Says Penelas Betrayed Democrats,” MH, June 6, 2004.
63
Remarks on the 100th Anniversary of Cuban Independence in Miami, Florida, APP,May 20, 2002.
64
Remarks on Cuba, APP, October 10, 2003.
65
Pete Kasperowicz, The Bush Administration, Cuba, and the Cuban-American Lobby(Washington, DC: Center for National Policy, April 2002).
66
Although Martinez lived in Orlando, Florida, not Miami, he also left the Democratic
Party to join the Republican Party during the Reagan era. See his biography, Mel
Martinez, A Sense of Belonging: From Castro’s Cuba to the U.S. Senate, One Man’s
Pursuit of the American Dream, with Ed Breslin (New York: Crown Forum, 2008), esp.

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218 (for a quote). Also see, Richard E. Foglesong, Immigrant Prince: Mel Martinez and
the American Dream (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2011).
67
Huntington, Who Are We? 247.
68
For Cubans in New Jersey, see Yolando Prieto, The Cubans of Union City: Immigrants and Exiles in a New Jersey Community (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University
Press, 2009).