Oye Loca: From the Mariel Boatlift to Gay Cuban Miami

3. Cultures of Gay Visibility and Renarrating Mariel

59 In many ways, 1980 was a year of urban anxiety that marked a transformation in Miami’s urban, racial, and sexual landscapes. Cuban Americans who had immigrated prior to 1980 were fearful that the Mariel immigrants, often referred to derogatorily as Marielitos, would tarnish their reputations as “golden exiles.” African Americans and other non-Latino black Miamians worried that their opportunities in a declining economic situation were diminished by more Latino immigrants . Anglo Americans feared that the city’s culture would never be the same, that Miami would be forever Latinized. Anita Bryant and her followers must have been equally horrified by the clearly celebratory performance of gender transgression that many Mariel gay men exhibited in their new homeland. Although gender-transgressive homosexual men received a great deal of media attention, they did not represent all homosexual men and women who entered as part of this migration. However, as I try to reconstruct here, a particular culture of gay visibility did emerge with this generation, a culture of visibility that can be understood as a reaction against historical conditions (e.g., the targeted persecution of visible homosexuals by the Cuban state). This culture emerged as a response to perceived, if not real, conditions in the United States (e.g., the belief that the United States was the land of gay freedom). In particular , this culture of visibility was constrained by the material realities of the impoverished immigrants who created and embodied it. As is reflected in the cases of “broken sponsorships” I describe in this chapter , many gender-transgressive Mariel migrants could not rely on the economic support of family and friends; simultaneously, their gender expression limited their opportunities for socioeconomic advancement. 3 CULTURES OF GAY VISIBILITY AND RENARRATING MARIEL 60 cultures of gay visibility The evidence of the gay culture of visibility established by Mariel immigrants is both sparse and controversial. The attention garnered by the Marielenas, as one of my respondents referred to the gendertransgressive Mariel population, worried many, including Cuban American leaders who sought to break the association between the Mariel boatlift and unsavory populations. According to (perhaps) well-meaning leaders, the media was simply interested in sensationalizing stories (such as those focusing on the criminal element and homosexuals), and their focus simply worsened the condition of Mariel immigrants, many of them “normal” people who would have to fight against the stigma of Mariel for many years to come. My intention is not to belittle the urgency of the battle against the stigma of Mariel. As someone who lived in Miami both before and after the Mariel boatlift, I remember how viscerally non-Cubans (re)acted toward Cubans after 1980. The English Only efforts of the 1980s that I discuss in chapter 4 are but one electoral manifestation of the anti-Cuban and antiimmigrant sentiment that festered during this period. I also remember how passionately Cuban Americans reacted and how many sought to distinguish between the good Cubans (those who came before 1980, who spoke Spanish “properly,” had been raised with “good” morals in pre-Castro Cuba, and were mostly white) with the bad Cubans (the Marielitos who were clearly corrupted products of the revolution, did not speak Spanish “properly,” and were much more dark-skinned than the “golden exiles”). Within this binaristic context, the only way to speak favorably about Marielitos was to argue that they were not all that different from previous generations, but they were just like “us,” the golden exiles. With the benefit of over thirty years of hindsight, I propose a different argument here: the Mariel homosexual generation was different— not inferior, but different. To pretend that there is no difference is to erase the history of this generation’s persecution and the political significance of their identificatory practices. Moreover, such an erasure homogenizes diverse Cuban American histories. As I argue in the previous chapters, what was most harshly persecuted in Cuba during the 1960s and 1970s was not homosexuality in general but the gendertransgressive public display of male homosexuality. Given that male homosexuality was associated with effeminacy, a wide array of gendertransgressive behavior was believed to demonstrate one’s sexuality, including wearing women’s clothing, letting one’s hair grow out too long, cultures of gay visibility 61 or wearing tight pants or colorful shirts. In Cuba, speech patterns, mannerisms, and even the people one associated with could cause suspicion and apprehension. Precisely...