Here & Now

Noon Wednesday: What We Can Learn from 1980 Cuban Refugees

Marisa Wojcik:

Welcome to “Noon Wednesday,” I’m Marisa Wojcik, multimedia journalist with “Here & Now” on PBS Wisconsin. Today is August 25. As Afghan refugees begin to arrive at Fort McCoy, many are remembering the past when the only other large scale refugee relocation effort occurred in 1980. Some 15,000 Cubans came to the western Wisconsin military installation. Joining us to talk about this history is Omar Granados, an associate professor of Latin American and Latino studies at UW-LaCrosse who has been studying the 1980 Cuban refugees for many years, and, Omar, thank you so much for being here.

Omar Granados:

Thank you for inviting me.

Marisa Wojcik:

I just want to start; can you walk us through just what the first few days or weeks were like for the Cubans as they were arriving at Fort McCoy.

Omar Granados:

Right. So, the 1980 exodus of Cuban refugees to Wisconsin, and not only Wisconsin, but other military bases that were created by the Carter administration at that time were mostly characterized by chaos. You know, there was the speed at which the exodus happened out of Cuba in April of 1980. In a period of barely three months, you had over 125,000 Cuban migrants just sailing across the Floridas straits and landing in Key West. The Carter administration just had no resources at the time to deal with that massive exodus so the folks that came specifically to Fort McCoy were the folks that were in the later legs of that exodus, and there were people that have not identified relatives in the United States or friends that could act as sponsors. Fort McCoy was also the last resettlement center, which was the name given to the military bases. There was one in Arkansas. There was one in Pennsylvania. There was one in Florida, Northern Florida. The Fort McCoy welcomed the last group of refugees, and this group was, you know, mostly born by single black men between the ages of 25 and 35 years old, who had joined this exodus under very different conditions whether they had wanted to join or not and folks that also had just been pushed out of Cuba by the Cuban government to come in that exodus. They had no idea where Wisconsin was. They had no idea where they were going. Everything was very disorganized and uncertain for that group of people at Fort McCoy, which ended up being over 14,000 Cuban refugees total in the summer of 1980, and so from May 30th to September, late September, a total of 14,300 refugees approximately went to Fort McCoy.

Marisa Wojcik:

And you mentioned uncertainty. So, from your research and conversations with some of these men, can you describe what it’s like for someone experiencing this? To be leaving their home and coming to a completely foreign country.

Omar Granados:

It’s — the history of the United States and Cuba, itself, has — it goes back for, you know, hundreds of years, and so it is impossible to say that these people had — didn’t have an idea what the United States was like or what the, you know, the promise of the American dream was like. You know, growing up in Cuba, even doing the socialist period in Cuba, the United States is very present, and cultural, political, but, for me, it is always difficult to try to explain to Cubans, you know, that the immensity of the United States’ geography. People think the United States and Cuba, people think that the United States is Miami and South Florida. For these folk who are as I like to call them, island folk, imagine what it was like to just land in the middle of Wisconsin where every day of their life is just getting colder and colder and colder, and they didn’t even know it was coming after that, and so geographically, they were displaced. Culturally, obviously, they were tremendously displaced. These were folks that had experienced traumatic separation from their families, traumatic separation from their social, you know, circles. Many of them had been politically persecuted in Cuba, and many were in the gay community and persecuted by the Cuban government. Many of them were folks that had religious affiliations that were not permitted by the Cuban government at the time, and many of them, especially the young people that came, had been in some sort of trouble with the law for crimes that were considered dangerous at the time to the socialist state of the Cuban revolution, but were mostly minor misdemeanor crimes like, you know, trade in the black market, illegal gambling, you know, homosexuality, prostitution, and, you know, things that because of the ideology presented by the Cuban government as the sole way of understanding society where it was seen as dangerous to the state, and so those — a large number of young men that also had refused to join the Cuban army or the communist party and also had been put in prison, even for a temporary period of ten months, who were sent to the exodus from the cells without even having the opportunity to say good-bye to their families or knowing where they were going, and so there was, you know, both the promise of a new life, the hope of the American dream, building that dream of, you know, Cuban American community in south Florida, but also all the traumatic experience of leaving Cuba without really wanting to, for many of them. It is important to recognize that the exodus is the first time in the history of Cuban migrations to the United States where people are forced to leave Cuba. A large number of people are actually forced to leave Cuba by the government. It’s an important differentiation that I always like to make, you know, when I talk about Cuban migration to the United States.

Marisa Wojcik:

And so, when you talk about how the idea of the US might have been largely kind of the Florida, Miami area, the culture and language barriers of coming to Wisconsin, Western Wisconsin, was even greater.

Omar Granados:

Absolutely. The difference that we see today between the first wave of migrants in the exodus, the people that came in the first two weeks, three weeks of the exodus, and the people that came after is significant, and that was mostly as a result of the way in which those who arrived in Key West and benefited from the work of voluntary organizations that were already ready waiting for them in Key West, those were mostly families and people who had relatives in the United States. About 29% of that group had family in the United States, and for them, the transition was very easy to, you know, Cuban social-economic networks across Miami and Tampa and other Cuban settlements, but about, you know, 70% of the group, even when they did not have family, they were able to resettle very fast into the Miami area, and, you know, integrate into the social fabric of Miami and the work force. More importantly because of how prevalent spanish was and knowledge of immigration and, you know, legal services that an American community already had in regards to what those folks needed to get their paperwork in order. Now, if you are a black immigrant, a black migrant who lands in Wisconsin who doesn’t know spanish, your faith is going to be very different. Voluntary organizations that are helping out in Wisconsin have very limited knowledge of the legal processes that were necessary for the folks to come to the base. They had limited resources in terms of language, spanish interpreters, and the people that were doing the translations, the legal translations, the people doing interpreting as all the refugees were coming in and basically intaking this key information that’s going to decide the fate and life of this person for the next 50 years were high school students. Wisconsin high school students with their teachers, who were volunteers that could speak some spanish, and that created many, many errors and many, many problems for folks that we still see today are struggling to get their paperwork in order because of the errors that were made at Fort McCoy. That’s one aspect of it. The rush to resettle that group of refugees out of the Fort also brought about the, you know, mismatch, as I like to say, refugees with sponsors, people wanted to help people in Wisconsin volunteer, churches, families, volunteers, but , FEMA and the US government, which at the time were coordinating, you know, all of these efforts didn’t really inform families carefully, didn’t really, you know, give all permissions necessary of how this refugee should have followed up in their immigration proceedings in order to get the specific forms, and, you know, don’t miss any deadlines, and in all honesty, many of the refugees never wanted to stay in Wisconsin after that, and so they — we had many cases where these folk were, you know, finding a sponsor, and we can talk about that process a little bit later if you want of how it was to find a sponsor if you didn’t have any family, but as soon as they left the base, they were just, like, jumping a bus and go try to go to Miami or New Jersey or New York where bigger groups of Cuban immigrants were already, you know, settled.

Marisa Wojcik:

So, like 1980, today, there are so many Afghan people coming in such a short amount of time, and the disorganized haste can cause short term and long-term detriments based on some of the things you just described. Do you foresee that potentially happening with the current Afghan refugees that are now flowing very quickly into the United States?

Omar Granados:

I mean, it’s a very — it’s a very different situation. I mean, it is a very different group of migrants with very different cultural, you know, background and a different idea of the United States and a different experience in regard of what their lives have been during the last 40 years in Afghanistan. I think Afghan refugees might have a very different perception of the United States in terms of the relationship that they had with the United States, which has been very militarized relationship. That’s one aspect. When the Cuban immigration happened, it was, you know, mostly a result of a Cold War scenario where this 125,000 people were, unfortunately, victims of, you know, the political wars between Cuba and United States. This is a very different scenario. These folks are leaving a war zone under very real, very real threats of, you know, violence. I think that’s the most important part in terms of, you know, considering the whole group, who they are, what are the specific needs of the group, the women, the families, unaccompanied minors that might come in that group, obviously, religious orientation is going to play a significant role in how refugees are welcomed into the United States. The language is going to present an even more significant barrier, you know, than what we think about spanish in the way in which spanish is spoken in the United States today. It’s not going to be that easy to find interpreters and translators for these populations. There’s a lot of women that have experienced trauma and abuse, and that has also — it’s a very important requirement of how we manage this exodus in terms of qualified personnel, but in my opinion, you know, there’s always this rush to go help and provide food and shelter. I think, actually, listening in and, you know, trying to empathize with the group and trying to understand what the actual needs of the group are might be a more beneficial way to just kind of taking a pause and thinking about, you know, what are the actual needs of the population in terms of not just food and shelter, but beyond the trauma they are experiencing at the time, and, you know, the repercussions that that trauma is going to have and how to resettle into US communities. It is tremendously important that we understand, really, the suffering and not just think about food, shelter, job, and education. You know? Oftentimes in the history of refugee migration, that is the aspect that gets lost in the rush and aspect that gets lost in the human, you know, trauma that is attached to having to leave your, you know, everything behind and land in a place you just don’t know at all. That’s my opinion. I know it’s a very complicated issue, but that’s the first thing that I think about when — as a refugee myself. [laughter]

Marisa Wojcik:

So now you touched on this a little bit, but archives and old news reports talked about how Castro emptied out his prisons, and these Cuban men were mostly criminals and how people at first in the La Crosse area were very welcoming, but then it turned to mistrust. Now, would you say that that’s accurate that so many of them were criminals, and can media have a detrimental impact on our perceptions, and in what kind of media literacy should we think about for today’s afghan refugees coming to the US?

Omar Granados:

That’s a really, really important question, too, to think about the role of the media in all of this. When we think about what happened in 1980 with the Cuban population, the — one of the biggest pitfalls of that was precisely the role played by US national media and western Wisconsin local media in terms of reporting, you know, the exodus and Cubans and, no, it’s been researched and documented today that about only 7% of that population that came in the exodus had criminal records of, you know, considered seriousness. Many, many of those people had been in jail for reasons that wouldn’t qualify as a crime in the United States. Now, all of that information was lost in the translation, to say it in a way. One of the steps, and I imagine this will be the same for after Afghan refugees, and one of the steps of coming out of Fort McCoy was an interview with the IRS and interview with the FBI where this person would be asked, you know, are you a remember of the communist party? Yes, of course. There was no way to not be a member of the communist party in Cuba. That would put you in jail or in a position where you would be, you and your family would be socially ostracized and kids in school put in chains because you said no to that, and so to an FBI agent saying, well, this person is a member of the communist party, so there was a clear misunderstanding there, and I really hope that that 41 years later we’ve come to be better than that. You know, things like stealing food or selling stuff in the black market or activities by the Cuban government, and many of the people that came in the exodus, in the Cuban exodus, because they wanted to leave Cuba, they actually lied about their homosexuality, lied about criminal records, just so they could be sent to the exodus because they wanted to leave anyways, and so they’d say, yes, Im a homosexual, when they were not really, but so the records that the US government were receiving, if at all from Cuba, were completely inaccurate and very confusing to use a kind word for US authorities. Now, once the press, Cuban press actually was the, you know, the body that started that narrative about this is the scum of Cuban society that we don’t want. We are sending them out. These are the people that are the enemies of the revolution. There’s a famous Fidel Castro speech saying, we don’t want them, we don’t need them, let them go. That was never dismantled by the American press. In fact, it was solidified. It was magnified. There were scenes of mostly black men, you know, displaying violent behavior images of the camps. There was a famous riot early that summer that was completely taken out of proportion by the “New York Times,” and so if you are a family had Wisconsin and thinking about, you know, welcoming, opening your home and you have children, reading the news, and, you know, reading there’s stabbings and there’s, you know, the sexual violence against minors within the fort, which there was, you know, what do you think is going to happen when you put 14,000 people cramped in a space without knowing where they are going or what their fate is going to be, you know? Of course, violence is inevitable to a certain degree, but, you know, at the same time, there were a lot of other positive things that were happening in the base that the press totally ignored. There was a lot of detail influence to the population, the composition of the population that the press, Wisconsin press, ignored. In 1983, you have the movie, “Scar Face,” which becomes, perhaps, the most violent film of the ’80s, you know, now an icon of American culture featuring precisely a refugee this is king of cocaine in Miami and this just completely violent, ruthless, displaced individual who actually turns this image of the immigrant gangster as a family man, but, you know, you don’t have the “god father” eating with his family, but now you have a latino individual who doesn’t like family and just all by himself, and he’s the baddest guy on the planet, and so that transformed that idea of who they are in the American public, you know? There’s a large group of Haitians coming in at the time through Miami and South Florida as well, and so the press is also somewhat mixing and overlapping those racial imaginaries of Haitians and Cubans. Up to that point, everything Americans know about a Cuban is “I Love Lucy,” and that guy is pretty white, and he’s a musician and kind, nice guy. A family man. Now the press is, you know, discussing Cubans and Haitians as in the same group of migrants, merging those racial imaginaries and completely presenting them in the negative light to the American public so that was very, very detrimental to the way in which this group of Cubans experienced resettlement in areas like La Crosse, Sparta, you know, where at that time, having 200, you know, black men walking around the streets of La Crosse, going to bars where the same, you know, college students or biker gangs were going wasn’t going to end up well, you know, and so, indeed, many of these folks were ending up in trouble with the law, and many of those confrontations with neighbors or, you know, cases of fights, bar fights were started by white Wisconsin residents, but what you have in the red bird is the many, you know, court cases that were for Cuban refugees. In particular, in La Crosse County.

Marisa Wojcik:

So based on the extensive knowledge you have of 1980 and what we understand only a fraction of the Cubans that came to Wisconsin came to Fort McCoy and ended up resettling. What is the best way to support this huge population of Afghan refugees, whether they will be here temporarily or they settle permanently, and what did we get wrong in 1980 that we have the opportunity to get right today?

Omar Granados:

Right. So I think a big problem in 1980 was educating this population and the actual steps, not only the refugees, but the sponsors, whether it is an organization, whether it is a family, I think one of the biggest, you know, errors of the time was that FEMA, which was, you know, handling day-to-day operations at Fort McCoy along with the US Army, of course, basically leaves this refugee to an organization and a family and never actually require them to follow up, never actually require them to go through any sort of training to what’s next, you know, and, again, just assuming that that person is going to be okay with food and shelter. It’s not enough. I mean, this is, particularly in the case of somebody who doesn’t speak english, you know, there has to be ESL language access to them. I think language access, I mean, it’s probably one of the most important things. Today, we have a population of about 40 refugees who still live in the La Crosse area and have tremendous difficulties with english and tremendous difficulties with any sort of social or legal service because they never got it right from the beginning. Educating the families that are going to welcome these folks, if they do, indeed, stay in the area, which is unknown at this time, educating the organizations in terms of, like, what actual steps are necessary for these people to get their refugee and asylum status in the period of time that is required by the immigration laws. What sort of support do they need in terms of education, not just getting any job, but actually having access to higher education, having access to funds from the state to be able to participate equally in an equitable way rather than just say, okay, they are fine, you know, they’re with the family, they’re going to be okay. I think now is one of the biggest problems at the time. I think another big mistake made was, again, as we discussed the way in which the press approached the exodus. There was always a government official and, you know, anybody that has to respond to their constituents or viewership is always very careful in the way they discuss or present an issue because they, obviously, don’t the to lose support of that population. I think it is important to remember that there is a human aspect to welcoming the refugees that needs to put that, you know, beyond any sort of, you know, duty or responsibility that you have to your audience, and, you know, educating the population, you know? There’s — these populations, I think, actually has many more similarities with Hmong refugees that settled in La Crosse during the ’70s than the group that came from Cuba because of, you know, and Im guessing that these will be more families, this will be more women because of the situation in Afghanistan as opposed to the group that came from Cuba, which was mostly single men, and so there’s a lot of education that needs to happen at places like, you know, University of Wisconsin campuses, just a lot of work that students and faculty can do, a lot of organizations that can, you know, it’s not just up to religious groups to come out and help. I think, you know, anything that the press can do to educate on this situation. Afghanistan, apart from the role of the United States’ Army and the failure of the Biden administration and anything like that, just the history of the trauma, you know, showing people what it’s like to grow up in a country that has been at war for 40 years. Americans, we think about war as something that takes place elsewhere, you know? It’s very hard for us to imagine we have war at home, and so I think just, you know, with my students sometimes I tell them, what do you guys want to talk about this semester? You know, anything, climate change, feminism, this and that, but war is never an issue that comes up, and Im, like, you’ve been at war since you were born. Only difference is it’s not happened at home so it is hard for you to visualize and imagine what it’s like to think about, you know, you know, somebody who grew up and was born and grew up in a country at war, and so, you know, I plan to talk about with my students about that this semester just to get them started on that way of thinking, you know, thinking about the other in terms of, you know, in terms of a mirror of yourself. There’s a lot of education to be done, especially up here where islamophobia and racism is so visible in our communities.

Marisa Wojcik:

Well, we need to leave it there. Omar Granados, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your knowledge of this history and experience. We really appreciate it.

Omar Granados:

Thank you.

Marisa Wojcik:

For more from “Here & Now” and PBS Wisconsin, you can visit pbswisconsin.org/news, and thank you so much for joining us on “Noon Wednesday.”