An “Exile” That Isn’t

In this city of Miami, where I’ve lived for more than 50 years, words and their meanings are generally inverse. What is affirmed as true is almost always a lie. What is proclaimed to be grandiose is, most of the time, insignificant. Where unanimity is described, it is almost always that of a minority.

Years ago, at the start of the Cuban Revolution, quite a significant number of people associated with Fulgencio Batista’s regime arrived in Miami, fleeing justice. Some of them were embezzlers, others were murderers. They ran from Cuba in the first days and months of 1959. Here, they met with the Cuban immigrants already living in this city. Most of them had immigrated to the United States in search of a better life for purely economic reasons that were far removed from Cuba’s political problems.

It’s true that there was also a group of political exiles, but the greater part of these exiles returned to Cuba immediately after the revolutionary triumph. And so it was that the criminals of the Batista regime and their partners in crime, together with the embezzling thieves who came with them, created the basis for what is now known worldwide as Miami’s community of Cuban “political exiles.” But I wonder, exiles?

In reality, the start of all this so-called “exile” was nothing more than a series of delinquents, murderers and embezzlers who were able to escape to another country. Fleeing justice, they sought refuge in a place that opened its doors and accepted them. They are not people who sought asylum in another country after having experienced persecution by the authorities of their own county on the basis of political reasons. They are people who committed common crimes and then left the country to avoid justice. This cannot truly be called political exile. The best definition for it is a sanctuary of delinquents.

Shortly after the arrival of these fugitives from justice, Miami began to see the arrival of people who — despite having committed no crime — opposed the revolutionary changes that were being carried out in Cuba. They were members of the bourgeoisie who could not accept losing some of their privilege, people who did not agree with a deep social revolution, or the occasional “revolutionary” who was only disposed to accept a limited revolution.

At the start, Batista’s supporters and the more recently arrived didn’t mix. Rather, each group was repelled by and suspicious of the other. There were more than a few misunderstandings between them. A smaller but not insignificant group arrived because they had acted against the Revolutionary Government and had to abandon the island due to their activities.

The majority of those who emigrated in the early years were those who didn’t agree with the new system being developed on the island, not people fleeing political persecution. Many had their businesses confiscated, but none their homes. None had been obliged to leave Cuba. They left as emigrants, not as political exiles. And there lies the lie in the terminology. It was made to look as though all who left Cuba did so for political reasons. If this were true, then we would have to rename all the Latin American communities that live in the United States: the Mexican exiles, the Dominican exiles, the Honduran exiles, the Salvadoran exiles, along with the Italian exiles, the Irish exiles, the British exiles and so on for all of the distinct emigrant communities that make up this great nation.

As the years passed, the name of Cuban “political exiles” has been repeated so many times that everyone calls them this, although there is no exile. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans travel to Cuba every year. Dozens of flights leave weekly from the Miami airport to different Cuban cities. There is no exile here, only a community of Cuban emigrants who are working for a better life and who share the city with a group of shameless rouges and anti-Cuban activists that make a living out of this tale, cheating money out of the taxpayers of this country in order to damage Cuba.