In a speech at Kansas University, a sociology professor said Cuban exiles could be divided into distinct groups.
The Cuban exile community is composed of four distinct waves with differing political values based on when they left the island nation 90 miles off the coast of Florida.
So says Silvia Pedraza, a University of Michigan-Ann Arbor sociology professor who came to the United States from Cuba in the first wave of immigration following the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power in 1959.
She spoke Wednesday at Kansas University for the Clark Lectureship, an annual event sponsored by the sociology department.
Pedraza describes herself as a "one-five," meaning 1.5, a person who stands between the first and second generations of an immigrant family. The first generation is the one that transplants its culture to the new home country. The second is the one that assimilates to the culture of the new home country.
She was prepared for her research, which involves extensive interviews with exiles and Cubans, by playing the go-between in her family between generations and, as travel restrictions eased, between those members of her family who stayed in Cuba and those in the United States.
"I was often the only person who talked to everybody," she said.
The first wave of immigrants, Pedraza said in an afternoon lecture in the Kansas Union, were the elite employed in large farms or in American-owned businesses taken over by the Castro government following the revolution.
Part of that wave can be described as "those who wait." They were the group who expected to return quickly to Cuba with American support of a military uprising against Castro. Their hopes were dashed with the failure of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, she said.
The second group of the first wave can be called "those who escape." They are the ones who left after the failure of the Bay of Pigs.
From the first wave can be found the most conservative of the Cuban political activists in the United States, she said.
The second wave left between 1965 and 1974. They can be called "those who search." Many of them left as small businesses were taken over by the Castro government as it assumed Eastern European-style Communism.
The third wave came in the Mariel boat lift of 1978. They were mostly blue-collar and often social outcasts. They were mostly male and single. They can be called "those who hope," Pedraza said.
The fourth wave came after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to a massive crash in the Cuban economy because the primary source of foreign aid was lost. This group can be called "those who despair," she said.
The later waves of immigrants are less likely to identify with the harsh conservatism of early waves of immigrants, Pedraza said. They are more likely to support the Cuban Revolution, but want greater freedoms for the Cuban people, she said.
-- Erwin Seba's phone message number is 832-7145. His e-mail address is eseba@ljworld.com.
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