Word: castros
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Castro miscalculation is also a factor in the exodus. Perhaps as a propaganda gesture, perhaps simply to raise foreign currency, he admitted 100,000 Cuban Americans for short visits to relatives over the past two years. Said Enrique Torres, 36, a Havana auto mechanic: "Seeing all those watches and good clothing-it blew people's minds...
...Castro who largely decides whether refugees can start streaming toward the U.S. Why the latest exodus? It seems that Castro is using the episode as a way to vent some of the anger and frustration that have been rising in Cuba. Economic conditions have worsened after some improvements a few years ago. The selling price of sugar on the world market has fallen from 660 per lb. in the mid-'70s to a current low of 60. The tobacco crop has been nearly wiped out by blue mold. Cuba today survives on a Soviet subsidy of about $8 million...
When crowds of Cubans began clamoring to leave, and Castro decided to let them go, he publicly berated them as criminals, derelicts and misfits. Cuban officials did their best to bear out such charges. Anyone boasting a prison record could get priority passage out of Cuba: indeed, some Cuban officials did a brisk business in selling forged prison papers...
There were without question a certain number of criminals among the latest refugees. Cuban Americans who had sailed to Mariel on Castro's pledge that they could pick up relatives there sometimes returned tearfully in boats carrying some young toughs, old winos and even prostitutes (Castro had long insisted that his nation had rid itself of such vice). Armed Castro soldiers marched prisoners directly from jails to the boats, forcing them aboard whether they wanted to go or not. The American crews similarly had no choice but to accept them...
...Castro was not making the exodus easy for anyone except those on his list of preferred deportees. Many of the others were asked to pay the Cuban government back for their educations. Some paid $3,000. People owning homes could ask to leave, but when they vacated their houses, the buildings were seized by the government. If they could not get on a Florida-bound boat, they had no home to which they could return...