Abstract
While the United States long represented a safe haven for Cuban political exiles, the Cuban Revolution and its Cold War context accelerated the tendency of disaffected Cubans to flee the island for Yankee shores. As the main destination of those that left Cuba in the decades following the revolution, Miami and its émigré community played an increasingly important role in exile politics, and later US national politics. This article looks at how the first-wave of migrants to Miami established an outsized influence there and continued to dominate politically and culturally, even as subsequent waves representing more diverse perspectives on the Cuban Revolution set down roots in Florida. It does so by considering the attempts by one segment of the exile community to start a dialogue with the island during the Carter administration and another section’s establishment of the propaganda station Radio Martí in Reagan years. These examples highlight the fluidity between political violence and soft-power subversion in maintaining the hegemony of an antagonistic position to the Cuban Revolution.
Highlights
While the United States long represented a safe haven for Cuban political exiles, the Cuban Revolution and its Cold War context accelerated the tendency of disaffected Cubans to flee the island for Yankee shores
Daniel Walsh’s An Air War with Cuba shows the relative merit to Gonzalez’s assumption. He argues that Radio Martí acted as glue that held together disparate opposition groups in the Cuban exile community, which it achieved by providing a concrete task to work toward outside of the long-term goal of removing Castro from power. While he contends that Radio Martí brought these elements together, their own attempt at independence from Voice of America was a double-edged sword, as it allowed those involved with the station’s operation to curate content directly applicable to Cuba, but their time removed from the island meant that their understanding of the changes wrought by the revolution was incomplete at best
These recommendations cut to the heart of the intent of a propaganda station like Radio Martí, as it is clear the producers never sought a balanced appraisal
Summary
University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA Connor Harney is a PhD Candidate in History at the University of North Carolina of Greensboro. His research on Cuban–US relations examines how the island’s pre-revolutionary ruling class has maintained hegemony within the exile community in Miami and influenced US foreign policy toward their former homeland
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