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A bit of self-selection here. Those two million Cuban-Americans were more likely to have been upper class Cubans (or descendants of upper class Cubans). Not onl
by Throwaway23412 10y ago
A bit of self-selection here. Those two million Cuban-Americans were more likely to have been upper class Cubans (or descendants of upper class Cubans). Not only would upper class and upper middle class Cubans be the only ones to afford to flee Fidel Castro's dictatorship, but they would also be the ones most affected by Castro's communist policies and redistribution of wealth.
- marcoperaza 10y agoExactly. There's no denying that especially at first, Cuban refugees were skewed toward the middle class. But no matter what they came from, they almost all came with nothing. Which is what my point is. It's not the money, it's all of the cultural things that correlate with it.
- LionessLover 10y agoIt seems to me that was precisely the point he tried to make.
- namenotrequired 10y agoIt seems to me that if it was his point, he'd have mentioned it.
- mc32 10y agoThe "Mariel" people were not upper class Cubans. Many were petty criminals and mental health patients. So, just so people who might think they were all people who escaped back in '59, no, most were not those people.
- pjmorris 10y agoThe Mariel numbers were around 150,000 people, a small fraction of the 2 million or so Cubans who emigrated. In the upper middle class circles I traveled in in South Florida, my Cuban friends from the emigree generation and the generation that grew up in South Florida very much fit the mold of leaving comfort to start over with nothing.