Word: mariell
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...winds whipping the Florida Straits into a maelstrom worthy of Melville. Still they came, landing daily at Key West in sturdy shrimp boats, speedy pleasure cruisers, leaky outboards. The flotilla that had begun setting off from Florlida two weeks ago to pick up refugees at the Cuban port of Mariel had more than tripled in size by last week. Declaring the exodus an "unprecedented emergency," President Carter called off a scheduled U.S. Navy exercise near Guantánamo Naval Base and ordered the diversion of 34 ships to help the U.S. Coast Guard assist scores of boats in distress...
...from other countries to emigrate there. But after an airlift organized by Costa Rica had evacuated 678 of the 6,250 would-be exiles accepted by eight nations, including the U.S., Castro suddenly canceled the flights. Havana instead proclaimed that all the embassy refugees could leave by way of Mariel, a grimy industrial port 27 miles west of Havana; to lure boats from south Florida's large Cuban exile community to pick up the refugees, it was also announced that any Cuban could leave the island if relatives in the U.S. came to claim...
...quickly followed by Lucy, a creaky lobster boat that carried 70 people huddled on its deck. Suddenly last week, the Straits of Florida were filled with a huge makeshift flotilla, ranging from leaky skiffs to sleek schooners, that sailed from south Florida to the Cuban port of Mariel and returned home crammed with jubilant Cuban exiles. "I never, never thought we'd make it!" exclaimed Pedro Diaz, 25, breaking into a wide grin as he stood with his wife and six-month-old daughter on a Key West dock. "Now we start the new beginning...
...week's end more than 2,000 refugees had been brought to U.S. shores. Fidel Castro had unleashed the exodus by opening Mariel to foreign boats and issuing exit visas to those who wanted to leave. The impromptu rescue operation angered and embarrassed the Carter Administration, which held that the sealift was illegal and that the refugees were, at least technically, illegal aliens. To stem the tide, the U.S. Department of State warned that the skippers of the refugee boats could be liable for a $1,000 fine for each exile carried; moreover, their vessels could be seized...
...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 Americans, Castro was apparently willing to issue exit permits to any Cuban-not just the squatters at the Peruvian embassy...