The so-called woke mainstream media think Florida Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nu帽ez, a Republican Cuban-American, recently said right-wing GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis is set to bus even Cuban migrants to Delaware if they鈥檙e undocumented.
OK, maybe that is what literally came out of Nu帽ez鈥檚 mouth on Miami Spanish-language radio last week. But it was actually a Freudian slip 鈥� one I had to reach back 22 years to understand.
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The day before Easter in 2000, Cubans in Miami erupted in sometimes violent anger on the streets of Little Havana to protest the feds鈥� seizure of six-year-old Eli谩n Gonz谩lez. At one point I waved away the police tear gas long enough to ask one demonstrator: Why?
Why the petulant insistence that international child custody law (most Cuban-Americans, you鈥檒l recall, were furious about Eli谩n being returned to his father in Cuba) somehow didn鈥檛 apply to them? Why were they now throwing rocks at cops after they鈥檇 left the feds no choice but to raid the house of the little boy鈥檚 Miami relatives and whisk him away?
鈥淏ecause,鈥� the young Cuban-American man told me through the choking haze, 鈥渨e鈥檙e not going to tolerate being treated like some damn minority.鈥�
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As a journalist relatively new to Miami at the time, it took me hours if not the next few days to process that.
At first it sounded, well, admirably defiant. Cubans had chafed under their share of anti-Latino bigotry here; Miami-Dade County had only recently repealed its law mandating government business be done solely in English. A lot of Cuban-Americans believed they were, as many kept repeating during the Eli谩n drama, 鈥渁s persecuted as the Jews鈥� or Black Americans.
Except they weren鈥檛. Which is why I realized that what that young Cuban man was really telling me was this: 鈥淲e鈥檙e white, too.鈥� Not Latino 鈥� not 鈥渟ome damn minority鈥� 鈥� so how dare America treat us as if we鈥檙e anything less privileged than that.
To understand Nu帽ez's gaffe, I had to reach back 22 years, to the moment when a Cuban-American protester advised me he wouldn't "tolerate being treated like some damn minority."
And who could blame him for feeling that way?
Since they began arriving here en masse in the 1960s to escape the communist dictatorship in Havana, Cuban-Americans have been anything but 鈥渁s persecuted as the Jews.鈥� Jews fleeing Nazi genocide being turned away by the U.S. in 1939 鈥� after their ship had first been snubbed by Cuba 鈥� that鈥檚 what 鈥減ersecuted as the Jews鈥� means. Cubans, in stark contrast, enjoy a Cold War fast-track to U.S. legal residency 鈥� until a few years ago they only had to set foot on dry land here 鈥� that desperate migrant groups like Haitians can only dream of.
It鈥檚 why so many Cuban-Americans have come to consider themselves something other than, something whiter than, Latinos. And it鈥檚 why by extension they鈥檝e long considered Cuban migrants something light years apart from other Latin American and Caribbean migrants: entitled refugees, not invading 鈥渋llegals.鈥�
JOS脡 MART脥 OPTICS
That is, perhaps, until the past few years 鈥� when the lion鈥檚 share of Cuban migrants are showing up not by sea in Florida but by desert in Texas. And this is where Nu帽ez鈥檚 radio rhetoric discharged that subconscious slip.
When Cubans come here by boat or raft, it carries a certain heroic cachet. Even the 125,000 who arrived in the 1980 Mariel boatlift 鈥� a horde whom many first-wave Cuban exiles still look down their noses at 鈥� were eventually issued their enemy-of-Castro credentials.
But the record number now coming by foot, alongside all those 鈥渋llegals鈥� from Central America? The optics just aren鈥檛 as Jos茅 Mart铆, y鈥檏now? No matter that they too are fleeing Cuba鈥檚 political repression and economic depression. It鈥檚 just too hard to tell them apart from Hondurans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans. It is, bottom line, just a lot harder to set them apart 鈥� the way that protester in Little Havana demanded Cubans be set apart 22 years ago.
Which helps explain why Nu帽ez, the daughter of a first-wave Cuban exile, made her gaffe while talking to Cuban-American radio host Augustin Acosta 鈥� himself a reactionary disinformation-monger who never misses a chance to tell listeners that President Biden is letting millions of 鈥渋llegals鈥� into the U.S. to make them Democrats and replace white Americans.
You see, when Nu帽ez said DeSantis was itching to boot those Cuban migrants out of Florida once they arrive here, she was just unconsciously mistaking them for some damn minority.
