Cuba in a Global Context: International Relations, Internationalism, and Transnationalism

17. Cubans without Borders: From the Buildup to the Breakdown of a Socially Constructed Wall across the Florida Straits

17 Cubans without Borders From the Buildup to the Breakdown of a Socially Constructed Wall across the Florida Straits Susan Eckstein In recent decades Latin Americans have accounted for about half of all immigrants to the United States, and once in the States these newcomers tend to remain deeply enmeshed in ties with their homeland. In particular, they often generously share earnings in their new country with friends, and especially family, back home, even when they struggle to make do in their new land. Between 1959 and 1989 Cuban immigrants were an exception to this tendency . In 1990, when Latin American immigrants as a whole remitted $5.7 billion to their home countries, members of the Cuban diaspora sent a mere $50 million—even though Cubans at the time constituted the second-largest foreign-born group in the United States. Moreover, few Cuban immigrants made trips home to visit the friends and family they left behind. According to a study of immigrants from eleven Latin American countries, only Guatemalans made fewer trips.1 Only since 1990 have Cubans followed the example of other Latin American immigrants. By 2003 remittances to Cuba were estimated to have reached more than a billion dollars, 80 to 90 percent of which came from the United States, where nearly 90 percent of Cuban émigrés settled. After 1990 the number of émigrés who visited Cuba also increased. Between 1990 and 2003 the number of trip-takers rose from an estimated 5,000 to 7,000 to more than 120,000.2 What accounts for this sudden, dramatic rise in Cuban American crossborder bonding and generosity?3 The Cuban experience demonstrates that immigrants do not necessarily enmesh their lives across borders. Studies typically point to certain characteristics of immigrants to explain variability in homeland ties, such as motivation for migration (economic versus political), time elapsed since uprooting, family remaining in the home country, country-oforigin language retention, and income.4 Yet Cuban immigrants remitted little Susan Eckstein 288 even though they were, on average, the wealthiest Latin American immigrants. They sent little even though they continued to have close family in Cuba, and even though they continued to speak Spanish after resettling in the United States.5 The Cuban experience points to the import of institutional and cultural forces to transnational engagement, at both the macro level and the informal level at which people’s lives transpire.6 For three decades formal and informal barriers stood in the way of Cuban immigrant transnational engagement. It took the crisis that ensued in Cuba when Soviet aid and trade ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union to break down, first, people-to-people, then state-to-state, barriers to such ties. The impetus for the breakdown in barriers came initially from Cuba. Institutional and Informal Barriers to Transnational Ties, 1959–1989 People-to-people ties, including visits and income sharing, might be assumed to be a personal matter, of personal choosing. But during Castro’s first three decades of rule—years during which 7 percent of the Cuban population had immigrated to the United States—both institutional and informal barriers constrained such ties.7 Institutional Barriers Both the U.S. and Cuban governments imposed barriers. Washington, opposed to the revolution, instituted an embargo in 1962 that constricted visits to, plus investment and spending in and trade with, Cuba. The embargo was intended to strangulate the Castro-led regime to the point of collapse. President Jimmy Carter (in office 1977–81) lifted the travel ban and permitted Cuban immigrants to remit up to $500 quarterly to their island families. President Ronald Reagan (1981–89), however, reinstituted bans on homeland visits and remittance sending. Both U.S. and Cuban authorities also made mail and telephone communications difficult. In his concern to consolidate the revolution, Castro, in turn, instituted means to keep Cubans on the island from associating with those who, opposed to the country’s radical makeover, had fled the country. Along with restricting émigré visits, except in the period under Carter, he discouraged cross-border ties by stigmatizing those who left. He portrayed émigrés as worms, scum, and traitors. His government also penalized Cubans with (known) diasporic ties. They were denied access to the Communist Party— and membership in the Party was a prerequisite for attaining prestigious highlevel jobs. Through simultaneously outlawing the possession of U.S. dollars, Cubans without Borders 289 the government...