Word: costas
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...deeply embarrassing to the Cuban President. With the world watching, he had no choice but to grant them exit visas. Eight nations eventually agreed to admit 6,250 of the exiles; the U.S. said that it would take 3,500, the largest single group. To hasten the exodus, Costa Rica organized twice-daily flights from Havana to San José, where the refugees could then be screened and sent on to the other nations...
After three days of airlifts and the evacuation of 678 exiles to San José, Castro abruptly ordered the Costa Rican flights suspended. Henceforth, Cuban authorities insisted, all refugees had to go directly to the countries where they planned to settle. Castro reportedly was annoyed that Costa Rican President Rodrigo Carazo himself welcomed the first planeload of refugees. More important, Castro was furious about the bad publicity Cuba was reaping in the Latin American press. To counter it, he staged a massive rally commemorating the anniversary of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. More than a million Cubans marched through...
Whether Castro anticipated what would happen after he suspended the Costa Rican mercy flights is unclear. What is certain is that he took full advantage of what began as a long-shot attempt by several Cubans now living in Miami to fetch some relatives and embassy refugees by boat. When Dos Hermanos and Blanchie III returned from Cuba with the exiles aboard, word raced through south Florida's community of 600,000 Cuban Americans that Castro was allowing boats to enter the port of Mariel, 27 miles west of Havana, to pick up refugees. Most important to the Cuban...
...pair of incompetent criminals (Zack Norman and Michael Emil) make off with the day's take of the Mob's New York gambling operations and make their way toward Miami and a rendezvous with a seaplane that is supposed to take them to a haven in Costa Rica. Indeed, the first glimpses of this enterprise are inordinately depressing: the shooting and editing are tacky, and the dialogue meanders witlessly from one half-improvised notion to another...
...where the exhausted exiles were welcomed by Peruvian Foreign Minister Arturo Garcia y Garcia; an Iberia jet flew 50 more refugees directly from Havana to Spain. The overwhelming majority, however, indicated a preference for resettlement in the U.S. "All 10,000 would like to go to Miami," observed one Costa Rican official. "But we can't satisfy everyone...