The Other Shore” (1992)]1

Home , Balseros, Cuban art, Mariel boatlift, The Boatlift

Acknowledgements As I dedicate this thesis to my cohort, the Tulane Latin American Studies, Class of

2016, I want to thank them for all the support, help, and true friendship throughout these two years. To Sarah, Maile, Alex, Leanna, Vanessa, Julia, Elizabeth, Shauna, Caitlin,

Abigail, and Alex, the boy, thanks a lot.

Thanks to the Stone Center for its warm embrace, to Dr. Thomas Reese, Sue Ingles,

Valerie McGinley, Denise Woltering, Laura Wise, Barbara Carter, and many thanks to professor Jimmy Huck for his willingness to always assist and guide. Thanks also to the

Stone Center for allowing me to do summer research at the Cuban Heritage Collection at the University of Miami. And thanks as well to the faculty and staff of the CHC at the

University of Miami; the research I did there certainly enriched my investigation.

Thanks to all my professors for their teaching and care. I am greatly appreciative of Dr. Guadalupe Garcia and Dr. Grete Viddal for being of invaluable importance in the process of making this thesis and forming the best Reading Committee I could wish for. I want to truly thank my advisor in studies and in life, the mastermind of every step I took in the last two years and to whom I owe everything: Dr. Ana Lopez, mil gracias querida.

Thanks to the poet Jesus J. Barquet, for welcoming my interest in this research, and generously offering me access to his personal archive on the Mariel Generation.

Thanks to Laura Luna and Miguel Ordoqui, visual artists of the Mariel Generation, for answering my messages of inquiry.

Thanks to Jennifer Triplett, my guardian angel, not only for backing me up in this final exercise but also in every single paper I had to write during the M.A. program. Thanks to Katy Henderson for stepping away of her dissertation research in Cuba to check on my thesis.

Thanks to my wonderful friends from inside and outside Tulane for encouragement and love, with special thanks to Carolina, Sean, Elise, Jesus, Pepe, Handy, Cecilia, Daniela,

Aroldo, Javiera, Nacho, William, Caitlin, Christina, Mira, Sarah F., Mart and Ezra.

And, of course, this thesis, and everything in my life, could not be possible without my treasured ones from Cuba. Thanks to my family, my family-in-law, and my parents’ friends, because even from afar they always make me feel they are with me. Thanks to my favorite co-workers and best team ever at Estudio Carlos Garaicoa, for showing me how to work for the arts and to do work that means something. Thanks to my good friends on that beautiful island and around the world for the good energy.

Thanks to all the earthly and divine on both shores.

Thanks to the loves of my life: mami, papi and Boris, most of all, for their great patience. They are my strength and this thesis also belongs to them.

Muchísimas gracias a todos.

iii

Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... ii

LIST OF IMAGES...... v

INTRODUCTION...... 1

PART ONE: The Overture...... 11

PART TWO: The Disturbing Exceptionality...... 19

PART THREE: The Hinge...... 31 THE ARTISTS...... 41 THE STAGE...... 55

CONCLUSIONS...... 63

IMAGES...... 69

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 73

BIO...... 79

List of Images

Image 1………………………………………………………………………………...69 “The sky is falling”. Gilberto Ruiz. Oil on canvas. 88 x 153 inches, 1986.

Image 2………………………………………………………………………………...70 “Escape” Jesus ‘Cepp’ Selgas. Acrylic on canvas. 24 x 40 inches, 2009.

Image 3………………………………………………………………………………...71 “Where Tears Can’t Stop” Carlos Alfonzo. Acrylic on canvas. 95 ¾ x 128 ¼ inches. 1986.

Image 4………………………………………………………………………………...72 “The Legend of the Sese-Eribo.” Juan Boza. Installation: featuring Afro-Cuban imagery and mixed media. 1987.

Introduction

“Y al fin llegó el fatídico año 80 y mi familia fue disminuyendo como años antes pasó en Camarioca el puerto del Mariel los fue engullendo.” Frank Delgado, “La Otra Orilla” (1992).

[“And finally came the fateful year 80 and my family was diminishing as it happened years before in Camarioca the port of Mariel was engulfing them.” Frank Delgado, “The Other Shore” (1992)]1

On November 10, 2015, Costa Rican authorities broke up a smuggling operation of

Cubans trying to reach the U.S., leaving 1,600 Cubans migrants stranded in Costa Rica at the border to Nicaragua. When the government of Costa Rica tried to send them north, the authorities of Nicaragua closed the border. As more Cubans arrived daily, the number of migrants trapped there reached 4,000, with no end in sight. Media outlets around the world reported a new Cuban migration crisis. 2

After detaining migrants at the border for two months, the government of Costa

Rica announced that the first group of Cuban migrants would leave on January 12, 2016, for El Salvador, and that the Cuban migrants would then take non-stop bus transportation through Guatemala until reaching Mexico. Once in Mexico, each Cuban migrant would be granted a 20-day temporary transit visa at no cost. However, they would have to reach

1 All translations are the author’s own unless otherwise noted. 2 Because it refers to both leaving the homeland and entering a new country, I use the word ‘migration’ here to include both immigration and emigration processes.

the U.S. border on their own. Many Cubans families thus considered 2015, like 1980, a

“fateful” year.

While reading about this recent migration crisis, debates broke at in the media about what to call this current Cuban migration crisis: “Are they the ‘new Marielitos?’ or the

‘new rafters’?”3 A commenter suggested calling them the “Land-Rafters”, which I think seems quite suitable given how this event recalls both the former Cuban migration crises: the Mariel (1980) and the Balseros, or Rafters (1994).4 Even though these three Cuban migratory crises are different in many ways, they were all rooted in the same causes: 1) the difficulties of daily life in Cuba and 2) the Unites States’ migration policy toward the island. As the three migratory events have dramatically shown, neither of these two factors has truly changed in more than fifty years.

During this most recent “Land-Rafters” crisis,5 the well-known Cuban contemporary artist Tania Bruguera traveled to Costa Rica to express her solidarity and to understand the situation of the Cubans stranded at the border.6 Bruguera said in an interview published by the Costa Rican online journal Socialism Today: “I want to show my solidarity by being there with them. I have no plan; I am not anybody who is going

3 In addition to these conversations, I also discovered that a group of migrants created a Facebook page called “Let the Cubans Pass” with the aim that “the world will know their names, experiences and professions in order to contradict those who brand Cubans trying to reach the U.S. as criminals.” 4 I will explain Mariel crises at a later time. As for the Balseros (Rafters) crisis, some scholars regard it as the fourth wave of Cuban immigration (Masud-Piloto, 1996; Perez, 1999). On August 1994 Cuban more than 35,000 Cubans left the island on homemade rafts, and headed to Florida in the span of a few weeks. The 1994 Balseros Crisis was ended by the establishment of the Wet foot, dry foot policy in the U.S. (Greenhill, 2002). 5 To my knowledge, this term has not been used apart from the specific conversation mentioned above, but because of its accuracy I use it to refer to the recent migratory crisis that emerged in Costa Rica. 6 This artist has worked previously on the subject of migrants, in particular when she founded Immigrant Movement International. This is an art project conceived in 2006 and presented by Creative Time and the Queens Museum of Art. With this initiative, she proposed to initiate a socio-political movement, and she spent a year working in the multicultural neighborhood of Corona, Queens in New York City.

change any situation. But well, at least to be with them.”7 With varying degrees of formality, Cuban contemporary artists have issued critical commentaries on Cuban migration, driven by a desire for reflection. They are motivated not only by the current public visibility of the issue nationally and internationally, but also by specific events of the Cuban migratory history like the exodus of Mariel or the phenomenon of the Cuban rafters. Among these, one historical moment stands out: the Mariel boatlift of 1980. This

Cuban migration crisis shows up not only because it was the largest of its kind up to that point, but also because —although many visual artists, particularly in the last fifty years, have migrated out of Cuba— a significant number of Cuban artists and intellectuals were part of the Mariel boatlift.

I argue that the Marielitos8 were unique from previous waves of immigrants from the island because—paradoxically—their experience had more in common with non-

Cuban immigrants to the U.S. than those of Cuban immigrants who arrived earlier. The

Cuban visual artists of the Mariel boatlift came together in order to showcase their artwork, perceiving themselves as distinct from other immigrants. My research aims to uncover the extent to which immigration can influence visual artists’ social identity and, in turn, their work.

7 Quotation originally in Spanish: “Quiero mostrar mi solidaridad al estar allí con ellos. No tengo ningún plan; no soy alguien que va cambiar ninguna situación. Pero bueno, al menos estar con ellos.” “Tania Bruguera is With Cubans in Costa Rica.” 14ymedio. Noviembre 26, 2015. http://www.14ymedio.com/englishedition/Tania-Bruguera-Cubans-Costa-Rica_0_1898210166.html 8 Marielitos is the term used to name an emigrant from Cuba to the U.S. that exited the island through the port of Mariel during the mass migration of 1980. It also a pejorative term used towards these immigrants. In this work I used the term Marielitos not as a derogatory qualifier, but to point out the burden of its negative connation for the Cubans that immigrated to the U.S. through the port of Mariel. Besides, as scholar Susana Peña does in her book Oye Loca: From the Mariel Boatlift to Gay Cuban Miami, (University of Minnesota Press, 2013). I also use the term Marielito to mark this migration’s distinct identity and experiences.

An important part of the work of Bruguera and many other very well-known Cuban contemporary visual artists, including Sandra Ramos, Alexis Leyva (Kcho), Abel Barroso and Carlos Garaicoa, addresses the issue of the Cuban migration crisis and of the phenomenon of migration in general. These artists are part of two major generations of artists in Cuba, known as the Generation of the eighties and Generation of the nineties.9

The work of these two generations of Cuban visual artists started unfolding on the island while the event of the Mariel boatlift—and later on, the Rafters—took place. For Cuban artists, migration is a reality that they have lived both from outside and from within the island. Those who have not left the island have seen many others do so. Those who have left their homeland are part of the vast artistic Cuban diaspora, where the artists deal with the experience of displacement as a means of distinguishing their artistic work.10

Today, probably more than ever before, Cuba is once again deeply affected by a migration crisis, and as Cuban visual artists continue interacting closely with this phenomenon, the connection between migration and contemporary art demonstrates the deep impact of the migratory process for visual artists. This thesis explores the 1980 migratory crisis known as the Mariel boatlift and the visual artists who participated in it.

Drawing on historical sources, the first part of the thesis tells the story of the Mariel boatlift. It addresses the context in which the boatlift took place. By using mainly, the previous scholarship of historians and sociologists, I describe the three stages of the Mariel boatlift: before the exodus, during the boatlift, and soon afterwards. Explaining this context allows me to lay out the scenario in which this event developed as well as the reasons why

9 Both generations are academically known in those terms, as their names as artistic movements. 10 Canclini, Néstor García. "Migrants: Workers of Metaphors." Thamyris/Intersecting: Place, Sex and Race 23, no. 1 (2011): 23-35.

this migratory wave is unique and traumatic in the history of Cuban migration to the U.S.

Through the lens of this historical and sociological context, it becomes clearer why the

Mariel boatlift so deeply affected those who participated in it. I bring into play the attributes of the Mariel boatlift as a way to expose the political, economic, demographic, sexual and racial characteristics that identified and stigmatized the Marielitos.

The second part of this thesis presents a theoretical framework about immigration.11

I reinterpret the main theories and studies of the Mariel boatlift in relation to more comprehensive studies of the nature of immigration to the U.S. By using theories about

U.S. immigration policy, I suggest that the Mariel boatlift was exceptional within the narrative of Cuban immigration history in the U.S., but not within the narrative of the history of the U.S. immigration policy. In order to demonstrate that the Mariel boatlift fits into a wider pattern of narratives of migration to the U.S., I look at the principles applied to waves of migration from other countries to the U.S. Thus, I draw parallels between general migratory practices and the characteristics of the Mariel boatlift crisis. By doing so, I place the issue of Cuban immigration in the broader context of U.S. immigration policy and its effects on the immigration process, particularly in the context of Latin

America.

The third part focuses more closely on Mariel visual artists. Through case studies,

I shed light on aspects of the life and work of some of the most relevant figures within this group: Gilberto Ruiz, Jesus “Capp” Slags, Carlos Alfonzo, Juan Boaz, Miguel Ordoqui and Laura Luna. These artists were selected because of the relatively large amount of

11 Here I understand ‘immigration’ as the process of entering and settling in a country different from the country of birth and/or citizenship.

information available about them, which correlates to their visibility as artists and their importance within the group. I track the first moments of their artistic trajectories in the

U.S., their spaces of settlement, the issues addressed in their works, and how they negotiate both their historical narratives and their own migratory experience while facing the changes in their identities as Cubans, immigrants, and artists. By referring to the general experience of the Mariel’s visual artists, I illustrate how the previous studies on migration and this boatlift are reflected in the dynamics of the group, in the differences and similarities among them, and in their works.

Important to this thesis are certain categories, some of which I have already mentioned in this introduction. These categories had diverse meanings depending on the disciplines, the scholars and the literature. Various forms of dislocation, such as exile, diaspora, and migration, have been productively and extensively explored in both postcolonial theory and literary texts.12 Since I frequently use them along this study, — although they are not the focus of this investigation— I would like to briefly clarify their meanings specifically for the interests of my work.

I use the categories exile and exodus without tending to express a preference or distinction beyond how the literature and much of the migrants themselves used them.

Cuban migration since 1959 has been defined as an exile by a large part of its participants

12 Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. Ed. Jonathan Rutherford, 1993; Achebe, Chinua. Home and Exile. New York: Oxford University Place, 2000, Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996; Seidel, Michael. Exile and the Narrative Imagination. New Haven: Yale UP, 1986; Braziel, Jana Evans & Anita Mannur. (Eds.) Theorizing Diaspora: A reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003; Clifford, James. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.

and the studies on the subject. 13 This is because the motivation for leaving the island was political in nature, mostly during the first thirty years after the Cuban Revolution.14 It is generally considered that the Cuban migration since 1959 self-identified as exile.15 I use also the term exodus, to refer the Cuban migration since there has been a constant, mass departure of people from the island to all parts of the world. The specific event of the Mariel boatlift is referenced here both as an exile and as an exodus. The first because of it politically charged context and the second due to its massive nature. However, I will be referring to the Cuban immigration in the Unites States and to the Mariel boatlift indistinctly as exile or exodus, maintaining the way the literature uses these categories.

Another important category in my thesis is diaspora. The term does not invoke any political connotation, and refers to all the Cuban migration before and after 1959. Precisely,

I use diaspora to refer to the Cubans that have scattered from their homeland to places across the globe, spreading their culture as they go.16 Closely related to Cuban immigration is the term Cuban-American. There are several ways to define a Cuban-American and

13 Rieff, David. The Exile: Cuba in the Heart of Miami. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993; Masud-Piloto, Felix. From welcomed exiles to illegal immigrants. Cuban Migration to the U.S., 1959-1995. New Jersey: Rowan and Littlefield, 1995; Rodríguez, Chávez Ernesto. Emigración cubana actual. La Habana: Editorial Ciencias Sociales, 1996; Eckstein, Susan. The Immigrant Divide: How Cuban-Americans Changed the US and Their Homeland. New York: Routledge, 2009; Arboleya, Jesús. Cuba y los cubanoamericanos. El fenómeno migratorio cubano. La Habana: Editorial Casa de las Américas, 2013. 14 It is to be noted that before the Cuban Revolution, the country did not had a history of significant emigration. As of 1959, it was the sixth largest recipient of immigrants in the world (Eckstein, 2009). 15 Even when –by leaving the island in the very beginning of the Triumph of the Revolution– some part if the first waves of Cuban immigrants did not suffered persecution, imprisonment, torture or death, they fear for it. Also, relevant to this self-identification, is the fact that since 1961 the Cuban state equated leaving the island with “abandoning” the country once and for all (De Los Angeles Torres 2001; Pedraza, 2007) 16 Cuban diaspora is a category frequently use in academia to refer a cultural diaspora, that is Cuban artists and intellectuals that have grown up and/or live outside the island: writers, painters, essayists, poets, musicians, filmmakers, etc. With great emphasis on literature, scholars of the Cuban cultural diaspora believe that an important part of it constitutes a movement of collective reflection that since the last century is trying to define the ideological conflicts and spiritual physiognomy of the Cuban nation through literature and other arts (Fornet, 2000; Borland, Isabel Alvarez, and Lynette MF Bosch, 2009; Herrera, 2012).

sometimes these collide. Cuban-Americans are people born in Cuba who left the island at a very young age and grow up in the U.S.17 In a more strictly legal sense, a Cuban-

American is the person that was born in Cuba and has attained U.S. citizenship after a certain time living in the U.S. However, many children born to Cuban parents in the U.S., also called ‘the second generation’, consider themselves to be Cuban-American.18 Beyond this generalization, some may reject the hyphenated identity and prefer to see themselves simply as Americans or as Cubans.19

Marielito is the most relevant category I use in this thesis. A Marielito is an emigrant from Cuba to the U.S. who exited the island through the port of Mariel during the mass emigration of 1980. Although the diminutive–or colloquial slang– suggests a derogatory qualifier, I use the term Marielito to point out the burden of it negative connation for the Cubans that immigrated to the U.S. through the port of Mariel. I also use the term Marielitos to mark the distinct identity and experiences of this wave of migration.20 Lastly, I establish that the term visual art includes different genres of expression such as painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, ceramics, installation, graphic and stage design. Since a deep analysis of the artworks is not the main object of

17 Also the “one-and-a-half” generation, this is how Cuban sociologist Ruben Rumbaut has labeled the immigrant generation of those born in Cuba who came to the U.S. as children or young adults. Furthermore, intellectual Gustavo Perez Firmat, who is part of this generation, draws on this definition, in claiming that “Cuban-American culture has been to a considerable extent an achievement of the 1.5 generation.” Firmat, Gustavo Pérez. Life on the hyphen: The Cuban-American way. University of Texas Press, 2012. 18 This happens also with the exiles' children, many of them also consider themselves to be Cuban exiles. 19 Boswell, Thomas D., and Curtis, James R. The Cuban-American Experience: Culture, Images, and Perspectives. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1984; Diaz, Guarione M. The Cuban- American Experience: Issues, Perceptions, and Realities. St. Louis: Reedy Press, 2007. 20 As scholar Susana Peña does in her book “Oye Loca: From the Mariel Boatlift to Gay Cuban Miami” (University of Minnesota Press, 2013).

this research, the term visual artists refers to this group of artists as a whole, despite their individual forms and means of expression.

My work focuses on the visual artists of the Mariel Generation because they have been overlooked, particularly in the context of the impact of immigration on the production of art. I introduce the work of the Cuban visual artists who participated in the Mariel boatlift into a broader discussion about how artists negotiate their work in the places to which they immigrate. Consequently, this research will contribute to the field of studies on the migration of Latin American artists and the consequences of this process for them and their work. These themes of art and migration are important not only within the context of U.S. and Cuba relations but also within the complex history of Latin American immigration to the U.S. Moreover, this work has broader significance in terms of artists’ migration in general, highlighting how a variety of factors such as the process and spaces of settlement, legal status, host community and representation come to influence the life and work of visual artists once they are immigrants.

However, the experiences of the visual artists within the Mariel boatlifts is something that had not occurred with any other group of visual artist immigrants, Cuban or otherwise. In this thesis, I do not suggest that the Cuban visual artists who were part of the Mariel boatlift have substantially different elements of their lives and works when compared to migrants from other countries or time periods. Rather, what I demonstrate in this thesis is the presence of the immigration processes in their lives and works. This analysis of the Mariel visual artists and the methodological paradigms I use are useful to examine other immigrant artists by tracing the processes of their evolution in the new society and artistic scenario, the issues they show in their artworks, and the perception of

the press and art critics of the time. There are two primary reasons for my sole focus on the

Cuban visual artists who partook in the Mariel boatlift. First, as I stated previously, the information about them is scarce and fragmented, resulting in an incomplete understanding of the impact of migration on their work. Second, and more importantly, the Mariel boatlift served as a remarkable migratory event that prompted these visual artists to join the Mariel

Generation of artists and to share not only the traumatic experience but also the visibility of being artists in exile.

Part I. The Overture

“We left the way one leaves a cherished but impossible love: our hearts heavy with regret but beating with great hope.”

Mirta Ojito, “Finding Mañana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus”, (2006).

In a demographic study published by the magazine Encuentro de la Cultura

Cubana, sociologist and migration expert Lisandro Perez called the migratory wave of

Mariel “the most dramatic, intense and chaotic of the waves.”21 This characterization responds to the immediate contextual antecedents of this emigration wave, that is, to the way that the exit from the country took place. The events that led to the exodus of the

Mariel are known as “the events of the Embassy of Peru.”22 On April 1, 1980, six people in a bus crashed through the gates of the Embassy of Peru in Havana, killing one of the guards. The assailants requested political asylum.23 Peru's government refused to surrender the attackers to the Cuban authorities, and the Cuban Government withdrew its guards and radioed that it withdrew the embassy security. This meant free access to the embassy of

Peru to seek asylum outside the island. In the next 72 hours, more than 10,000 people packed into the embassy, hoping to leave the country.24 Given this situation, and at the

21 Pérez, Lisandro: “De New York a Miami. El desarrollo demográfico de las comunidades cubanas en Estados Unidos” Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana (1999-2000): 13-23, 16. 22 Masud-Piloto, 1996. 23 This incident was not isolated. During previous months, Cubans who wanted to leave the country broke into the embassies of various Latin American countries seeking political asylum in the respective countries. 24 Among those who attended the embassy were the writers: Roberto Valero, Lázaro Gómez Carriles and Nicolas Abreu.

request of the Freedom Flotilla,25 the Cuban government opened the Port of Mariel to anyone who wanted to leave the country, whether part of the refugees in the embassy of

Peru or not. From Miami, hundreds of different ships went to the Puerto del Mariel located in the southwest of the island and, on them, left all those who chose to do so, whether they had family in the U.S. or not. The exit process was disorganized, haphazard, and uncertain.

Hundreds of people, strangers to each other, got into large and small boats, carrying little or no luggage. Mariel immigrants were seeking to leave Cuba in pursuit of a better life and freedom in the U.S. The sea voyage could last for days or weeks, and for many of these

Cubans, upon their arrival in the U.S., the uncertainty and confusion of the situation did not change.

The Mariel boatlift ended up being an authorized, but massive and uncontrolled, wave of immigration that took place between the months of April and October of 1980. In that period, around 125,000 Cubans emigrated legally from Cuba to the U.S. through

Mariel. Among the thousands of Cubans who migrated to the U.S. through the port of

Mariel, some were artists: writers, musicians, actors, dancers, and visual artists, primarily painters.26 Although this was not the first exodus of Cuban writers and artists, it was the

25 The “Freedom Flotilla” was formed by Cubans living in the U.S. who bought or chartered boats to travel the 90 miles between countries and take medicine and food to the Cuban refugees in the embassy of Peru that were looking to leave the island. Later the “Freedom Flotilla” will be allowed also to move the refugees to Miami. The “Freedom Flotilla” transported about 125,000 Marielitos to the U.S. (Masud-Piloto, 1996). 26 None of the sources consulted for this research revealed an exact number of how many Cuban artists and intellectuals were part of the Mariel boatlift. In the specific case of the visual artists neither the sources indicate a complete list of all the visual artists who participate in this migratory wave. Lists of names are very uneven and vary depending on the sources. Reaching a complete list of this group of artists is one of the goals pursued by this research. So far I have found that thirty-one Cuban visual artists are identified as part of the Mariel boatlift: Carlos Jose Alfonso, Carlos Rafael, Casimiro González, Eduardo Conde, Eduardo Michaelson, Ernesto Briel, Félix González Sánchez, Florencio Capestany, Gilberto Marino, Gilberto Ruiz, Hector Nieblas, Humberto Dionisio, Jesus Selgas, Jorge Martell, José Chiú, José García Ramos, Juan Abreu Felippe, Juan Boza, Laura Luna, Luis Padirni, Manuel Fernández, Manuel Revuelta, Miguel Ordoqui, Mysora García, Nelson Curra, Pablo Hernández, Pedro Damian, Ronald Curra, Trinidad Pino.

first time that Cuban artists and intellectuals rapidly aligned themselves into a recognizable artistic movement and community outside the island: the Mariel Generation.27 On the creation of the Mariel Generation, literary critic Lillian Bertot writes:

This is not to say that this was the first time Cuban writers have escaped from the island. Nor it was the first time that Cuban writers denounced the Cuba regime. […] Moreover what made this group different was also the fact that soon after their arrival to the U.S. they constituted themselves as a ‘literary group’ with very clearly defined characteristics and goals. Their aesthetic expression symbolized the coalescence of the previous generation of Cuban writers who had pledged their art to both the denunciation of oppression, and to the freedom of creation.28

As Bertot explains, the Mariel Generation was a watershed for the Cuban cultural diaspora. The main interest of this group was not only to publish and present their independent work, but also to have joint projects based on the production of a Cuban culture outside the island. Besides, the fact that many artists and intellectuals with well- established careers in the island were part of the Mariel Generation, gave to the Cuban cultural diaspora even greater importance. The Mariel generation represented a new challenge for scholars of Cuban culture and society.

Studies about the Mariel Generation mainly revolve around the work of its writers.

This is due to their high visibility, particularly of writers such as Reinaldo Arenas and

Carlos Victoria. However, there is a gap in the study of the visual artists who were also part of this exodus and the Mariel Generation. This is likely because the visual artists

27 The Mariel Generation was not an “association” in the legal and official sense, but rather an informal yet regular gathering of its members regarding shared experiences—the repression in Cuba and the Mariel boatlift—as well as a platform for discussing artistic criteria and principles as they related to Cuba, regarding art projects and other activities like book launches, exhibitions, plays and very important the publication of the magazine Mariel. 28 Bertot, Lillian D. The Literary Imagination of the Mariel Generation. Miami: The Cuban-American National Foundation, 1995, 16-17

within the Mariel boatlift have little in common with each other in terms of aesthetics, technique, work, and scope.29 Most of these artists were born in the early 1950s or in the

1960s; and studied at art schools in Havana (Escuela Nacional de Arte, Instituto Superior de Diseño, and Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes “San Alejandro”). Their time as students and also the beginning of their careers occurred mainly during the 1970s, a period known as “the times of the revolutionary Cuba”.30 Part of this epoch was also referred to as the

Grey Period, characterized by an increasing control of the artistic life and a severe censorship, growing shortages led to a hierarchy of cultural priorities.31 Not much has been written about these artists or their work within the context of the Mariel immigration crisis.32

The “Mariel experience” was pivotal for these artists to bind together, and at the same time, it was an exceptional event within the narrative of Cuban immigration history in the U.S.33 The Mariel boatlift was not only “the most dramatic, intense and chaotic of the waves”, but also a very mixed migratory wave in terms of race, sex, age, and

29 It is worth noting that among the writers of the Mariel Generation there were also not strong links of style and literary genre. However, because some of them were identified as leading figures of the Mariel Generation and founded the Mariel magazine, they have received more attention from scholars of Cuban culture, and its diaspora. 30 “Los tiempos de la Cuba revolucionaria” is a phrase used to refer to the first two decades after the 1959 Revolution. It was a period characterized mainly by the many political, economic and social reforms that were conducted by the new government lead by the former Cuban president Fidel Castro. 31 The Grey Period (El quinquenio gris) is a term used initially by Cuban intellectual Ambrosio Fornet to refer to the cultural context between 1971- 1975 in Cuba. It was a stage of ideological struggle during which extremists and bureaucrats placed in key positions enforced strategies and standards related to artistic, literary and cultural production in Cuba. Also known as The Black Decade (El decenio negro), it was time during which many intellectuals and artists were marginalized. 32 Lama and Clark 1983; Fuentes-Pérez et al. 1989; Viso et al. 1997; Barquet 1998; De la Nuez 1998; Santiago 2005. 33 I use the phrase “the Mariel experience” to refer to the whole process of immigration to the U.S. through the port of Mariel in Cuba in 1980. This experience includes: leaving the country, the sea voyage, the arrival of the immigrants, their reception by the Cuban-American community, and their life as immigrants in the U.S. while Cuban artists.

educational level. Most importantly, it was very different from earlier Cuban immigration waves. Those waves to the U.S. were neither massive nor uncontrolled, and the immigrants were mostly white, upper-middle class, and had networks of family and friends to assist them upon arrival.34 These differences led to the rejection and the stigmatization of “those from Mariel.”35 The rejection happened because Marielitos were not considered by the vast majority of the Cuban-American community as similar to them, which was white, upper- middle class and highly educated Cubans.36 Consequently they did not deserve the same welcome to the U.S. While the immigrants from Mariel received a very poor reception in the U.S., they were simultaneosly stigmatized in Cuba. In Cuba, President Fidel Castro called them “scum” and much of the press and population of the U.S.—most notably the

Cuban community in Miami—singled them out as marginal, crazy, illiterate, and sick people.

Previous scholarship on the Mariel boatlift successfully and critically analyzes this event within the history of Cuban immigration, and within U.S. history, and within the history of the relations between Cuba and U.S.37 As said before, prior to the Mariel exodus

34 From 1959 and until the so-called October Crisis of 1962 (when direct flights between the U.S. and Cuba were suspended), “pre-revolutionary well-to-do Cubans” quickly fled the country’s radical makeover. Businesspeople, managers, and professional, who had comprised 9 percent of the labor force pre-1959, made up a third of the Cubans who moved to the U.S. in the first three years of Castro’s rule. The 1960s émigrés were typically conservatives Catholics and 97 percent of these defined themselves as White (Eckstein 2009). On October 10 of 1965, Fidel Castro opened the port of Camarioca in northern Matanzas, allowing 4, 993 persons to depart the country before November 15. Camarioca ushered in a second migrant wave from revolutionary Cuba. After this, a regular air bridge between Cuba and U.S. was established. These so-called Freedom Flights transported 260, 561 Cubans to the U.S. Although most of the Camarioca and Freedom Flights’ refugees were white city dwellers, they were predominately female, older and less educated than earlier ones (Duany, 2011). This airlift lasted until 1973. 35 Immediately after the 1980 boatlift, the term used to denote “those from Mariel” was Marielitos. See Susana Peña, Oye Loca: From the Mariel Boatlift to Gay Cuban Miami. University of Minnesota Press, 2013. 36 Cros, Sandoval Mercedes. Mariel and the Cuban national identity. Miami: Editorial SIBI, 1986, 12. 37 Pedraza, 1995; Masud-Piloto, 1995; Rodríguez-Chávez, 1999; Duany, 2011; Arboleya, 2013. For more on the bibliography of Mariel boatlift see Boswell, Thomas Downing, Manuel Rivero, and Guarione M. Díaz,

both major waves of Cuban immigrants were predominantly ‘white’38 and middle- or upper-class. Nevertheless, the sociological reality of the Mariel boatlift more closely represented the sociological reality of Cuba.39 In terms of race, age, gender, education, and occupation, Marielitos were more representative of the Cuban population.40 Paradoxically, this reality was not well accepted by the Cuban community in Miami, or the rest of the

U.S. Mariel’s diversity regarding race, social class, education level, and age was typical of Cuba but very different from what was represented in the U.S. by earlier waves of immigration from Cuba. The Mariel boatlift became the most visible Cuban migration due to its scale, the demographics of its migrants, and the fact that it occurred in such a short period of time.

Cuban and Cuban-American scholars assert that the hostility of Miami Cubans towards Mariel immigrants was due to the fact that Cuban Americans inwardly blamed the

Mariel boatlift for shattering the perfect, romantic, and nostalgic image of Cuba and Cuban

Bibliography for the Mariel-Cuban diaspora. No. 7. Center for Latin American Studies, University of Florida, 1988. 38 This ‘whiteness’ has been a social construction of the Cuban society related mostly with the fact that there are Cubans that ‘look white’ although it is known that Cuban population is the result of a process of mixing of different ethnic groups, cultures, and races. Because most of the indigenous population was exterminated during the Spanish colony, the major sources of immigration to Cuba, were Europe and Africa, namely Spain and West and Central Africa, Congo, Guinea, etc. Chinese immigration is another source from Cuban nationality in a lesser degree. The colonial past determined that ‘white people’ had a higher economic level and therefore is the bulk of the Cuban Immigration to the U.S. before and after the Triumph of the Revolution. Cubans with mostly financial resources and lighter skin Cubans were more likely to migrate (De la Fuente, Alejandro. A nation for all: Race, inequality, and politics in twentieth-century Cuba. Univ of North Carolina Press, 2001; Rodríguez, Baltar, Enrique Marroni, and María da Gloria Villafuerte Solís. Viejas y nuevas migraciones forzadas en el sur de México, Centroamérica y el Caribe. Universidad de Quintana Roo, 2013). 39 Pérez, Lisandro. “De Nueva York a Miami. El desarrollo demográfico de las comunidades cubanas en Estados Unidos.” Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana (15) (1999): 13-23. 40 Bach, David, Jennifer Bach, and Timothy Triplett.1981/82. “The Flotilla Entrants: Latest and Most Controversial.” Cubans Studies/Estudios Cubanos 11:2 9-48.

realities, that the Cuban-Americans had presented to the rest of the U.S.41 Historian Felix

Masud-Piloto explains the chaos of the situation in legal terms:

Under the Refugee Act of March 1980, passed only five weeks before Mariel, the U.S. had placed a yearly quota of 19,500 refugees from Cuba (…) technically and legally, the Cubans from Mariel were simply undocumented aliens seeking asylum, not refugees. (…) The longer Cubans stayed in the processing centers, the more frustrated they became. They had come to the U.S. in the ‘Freedom Flotilla’, but thousands were detained and some were imprisoned.42

The boatlift was not only a crisis for the Cubans who participated in it, because they were stuck with murky legal statuses, or for the community of Cubans in the U.S., whose perfect image had been ruined, but also for the U.S.

Besides the rapid escalation of this boatlift, authorities discovered that a number of the refugees had been released from Cuban jails and mental health facilities. This fact brought disproportionate levels of speculation from the U.S. press and its people in general,43 which led to the rejection of the Mariel immigrants in the U.S. But, contrary to media reports, less than two percent of the immigrants were common criminals, though twenty five percent had been imprisoned in Cuba for various reasons, including ideological differences with the Cuban government and antisocial behavior such as public displays of homosexuality.44 As a consequence, this rejection and stigmatization were suffered not only by the Cubans who actually had criminal or psychiatric records, but also by anyone

41 Sandoval, Mercedes Cros. Mariel and Cuban national identity. Editorial SIBI, 1986. 42 Masud-Piloto, 1995, 71. 43 Initially, the media’s frame of coverage was positive: the Mariel immigrants were political refugees fleeing Cuba and needing help. Coverage changed and grew negative upon reports that Castro was sending criminals and other undesirables among these immigrants. (Hufker, Brian, and Gray Cavender, “From Freedom Flotilla to America's Burden.” The Sociological Quarterly 31, no. 2 (1990): 321-335.) 44 Duany, Jorge. Blurred borders: transnational migration between the Hispanic Caribbean and the U.S. Univ of North Carolina Press, 2011.

who was not recognized as white and middle-class or as having family already in the U.S.

The Mariel boatlift brought issues of race, class, gender, religion and sexuality onto the stage of Cuban migration to the U.S. because the social, cultural and class identities of

Mariel migrants contrasted with previous Cuban migrations:

(...) The irony of this ‘wave’ is that although Mariel exodus has been characterized in the most simplistic terms, especially with negative generalizations and stereotypes, it is actually the more heterogeneous and diverse surge in terms of a profile by age, socioeconomic status, gender, and race, and consequently that the most representative social democratic profile of the Cuban population in Cuba.45

Furthermore, according to anthropologist Jorge Duany, this socioeconomic profile of the Mariel exodus deepened the rifts between “old” and “new” Cubans in Miami, the city where most of the Marielitos settled.46 This difficulty can be seen in the rejection and stigmatization towards the participants of this boatlift and in the hard time that many of these immigrants had to be able to leave the refugee camps, to find jobs, and to be accepted by U.S. society and Cuban-American community. This was a phenomenon that had not occurred with previous waves of Cuban immigrants to the U.S. Because scholars primarily emphasize how different the Mariel exodus was from former Cuban immigration in the

U.S., the Cuban immigration issue is often removed from a broader discussion of U.S. immigration policy, and how it affects Latin American migrants more broadly.

45 Pérez, Lisandro. “De Nueva York a Miami. El desarrollo demográfico de las comunidades cubanas en Estados Unidos.” Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana (15) (1999): 13-23. 46 Duany, 2011, 45.

Part II. The Disturbing Exceptionality

“The refugee question has hurt us badly. It wasn’t just in Florida, but it was throughout the country. It was a burning issue. It made us look impotent when we received these refugees from Cuba” James Carter, (Public Papers, 1980: 2693)

On May 5, 1980, U.S. President James Carter stated: “Ours is a country of refugees.

We'll continue to provide an open heart and open arms to refugees seeking freedom from

Communist domination and from the economic deprivation brought about by Fidel Castro and his government.”47 However in the same sentence, the former president referred to two different phenomena: the passage of the U.S. Refugee Act of 1980 and the Mariel exodus.

With these words, Carter conflated the Refugee Act with the Mariel boatlift without imagining the chaos that this association would bring to both countries.48

On one hand, the U.S. Refugee Act of 1980 was an amendment to the earlier

Migration Refugee Assistance Act of 1962 and the Immigration and Nationality Act of

47 Masud-Piloto, Felix Roberto. With open arms: Cuban migration to the United States. Rowman & Littlefield Pub Inc, 1996. 48 Because so few policymakers in the Carter administration knew of the Camarioca crisis, they did not examine the dynamics of this event which provided a tailor-made example of an early boatlift and the policies employed by the Johnson Administration to deal with it. The Camarioca boatlift offered relevant lessons that the Carter Administration did not explore. (Engstrom, David Wells. Presidential Decision Making Adrift: The Carter Administration and the Mariel Boatlift. Rowman & Littlefield, 1997.) The Camarioca boatlift followed a period of economic turnmoil, and the suspension of commercial flights between Cuba and the U.S. In September 1965, Fidel Castro announced that any Cuban who had relatives living in the U.S. would be allowed to leave the island via the port of Camarioca located on Cuba’s northern shore. Camarioca remained open until 15 November 1965. Those migrants, who were still at the port, numbering in the thousands, were ultimately taken by officially chartered passenger vessels to Florida. Soon thereafter the U.S. and Cuban governments negotiated what became known as "Freedom Flights" using commercial aircraft to transport those Cubans who wished to immigrate to the U.S. safely (Masud-Piloto, 1996).

1965.49 The 1962 Act allowed the effective immigration and incorporation of refugees who were admitted and the 1965 Act created a stable and organized procedure for the admittance of refugees of special concern to the U.S.50 Thus, the 1980 act, which did both of these things, reflected a continuation of the historic policy of the U.S. towards refugees.51 On the other hand, in 1980, the Mariel exodus was a consequence of the uneasy situation of life under Cuba’s communist system, and of the material shortages Cubans faced in their daily lives.52 It was thought that this massive exodus would destabilize Fidel

Castro’s government, but it actually started to have negative political, social, and economic implications for the U.S to the point that it became a refugee crisis.53 As scholar Roger

Daniels says: “the admission of refugees has been the wild card in the immigration policy of the U.S. ever since the end of World War II.”54 With the Mariel boatlift this “wild card” turned into a crisis because the U.S. was supposed to grant refugee status to hundreds of thousands of Cubans in just a few months.

49 The 1980 Refugee Act was incorporated into the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and assumes refugee status under international law. The INA, also known as the Hart–Celler Ac marked a radical break from the immigration policies of the past. The Hart–Celler Act abolished the quota system based on national origins that had been American immigration policy since the 1920s. The new law maintained the per-country limits, but it also created preference visa categories that focused on immigrants' skills and family relationships with citizens or U.S. residents. The bill set numerical restrictions on visas at 170,000 per year, with a per- country-of-origin quota. However, immediate relatives of U.S. citizens and "special immigrants" had no restrictions. 50 At this time the Cold war was torrid so the special concern to the U.S was mostly and almost exclusively those who “sought of freedom from Communist domination” whom Carter pointed out in his words. Those immigrants where an important part of those considered as “special” by the 1965 INA. 51 Refugee Act of 1980. Pub. L. 96-212. 94 Stat. 102. 17 March 1980. Print. 52 Portes and Clark 1986; Masud-Piloto 1996; Aja 2001; Pedraza 2007; Arboleya, 2013. 53 Carter Administration officials took more than three weeks to generate a policy response, one that never adequately dealt with the crisis. And it took almost two months to approach the Cuban Government about talks to normalize immigration -something that with the Camarioca boatlift the Johnson Administration had did in within a month- and the subsequent accord was signed after the Mariel boatlift ended many months later. (Engstrom, 1998) 54 Daniels, Roger. Guarding the golden door: American immigration policy and immigrants since 1882. Macmillan, 2005. Page 190.

Daniels and others scholars have a more specific approach to the discourse of the migratory history of the U.S.55 These studies, in relation to the Mariel boatlift, expose the consequences of the Mariel boatlift that are also apparent in that discourse. By putting the

Mariel boatlift in a different context, I ask different questions about the causes and consequences of this event: is the Mariel boatlift crisis also related to a context outside the history of Cuban immigration in the U.S.? That is, what does the reception of this boatlift say about the principles of U.S. immigration policy? Why it was so hard for the Cuban refugees from the Mariel exodus to find among the U.S and the Cuban-American population those “open hearts and open arms” that President Carter talked about? By answering these questions, I look critically at the Mariel boatlift to better understand why this event affected all participants including the artists.

I support this claim by interpreting the Mariel boatlift through broader theories about the nature of U.S. immigration. I frame Mariel in this way because I believe Mariel fits into a broader pattern of migration narratives that apply to migrants coming from other countries to the U.S. My aim is to use key contemporary scholars’ theories on immigration in the U.S to prove this. Thus, I’ll draw parallels between what some of these theories argue and the characteristics of the Mariel boatlift crisis. By doing so I will place the Cuban immigration issue in a broader discussion about the principles of U.S. immigration policy

55 Ngai, Mae M. Impossible subjects: Illegal aliens and the making of modern America. Princeton University Press, 2014; Spickard, Paul. Almost all aliens: Immigration, race, and colonialism in American history and identity. Routledge, 2009; Daniels, Roger. Guarding the golden door: American immigration policy and immigrants since 1882. Macmillan, 2005; Coates, David. Getting immigration right: what every American needs to know. Potomac Books, Inc., 2009; Hernández, Kelly Lytle. Migra!: A history of the US border patrol. Vol. 29. Univ of California Press, 2010.

and its effects on the immigration process, with a particular focus on Latin American migration.

Experts in U.S. immigration history and policy, such as Alejandro Portes, Mae M.

Ngai, and Paul Spickard, among others, have explained how it has profoundly shaped ideas and practices about citizenship, race, and state authority.56 They illustrate the complex relationship between ethnic identity and race, slavery, and colonial expansion, and how comprehensive migration control is based in ideas about race, gender, social class, educational background, and political expediency.

Historian Mae Ngai argues that since the 1920s, the immigration policy of the U.S. realigned and hardened racial categories into law. In particular, the 1924 Johnson-Reed

Act, which excluded Chinese, Japanese, and other Asians from immigration on ground that they were racially ineligible for naturalized citizenship, solidified the legal boundaries of the whiteness. Furthermore, Paul Spickard’s work reinforces this theory by explaining how race has historically been a central issue in U.S. immigration history: “The history of

American immigration has thus almost been portrayed as a series of one-way migration by successive waves of European but non-English peoples, from and Old Country (…) to the

New Country.”57 The U.S. immigration system carried on with this principle of deciding who can and who can’t be an immigrant in the U.S. until contemporary times. On this matter, sociologist Alejandro Portes point out how these policies have affected U.S. immigration in the late twentieth and twenty-first century: “It is by now a commonplace in

56 Portes, Alejandro, and Ruben G. Rumbaut. Immigrant America: a portrait. Univ of California Press, 2006; Ngai, Mae M. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton University Press, 2014; Spickard, Paul. Almost all aliens: Immigration, race, and colonialism in American history and identity. Routledge, 2009. 57 Spickard, 2009

the field of immigration to note that periods of high migration inevitably trigger a nativist reaction in the form of restrictions policies, xenophobic pamphlets, and generalized anti- immigrant rhetoric.”58 It can be understood that the handling of the Mariel boatlift was exceptional for the Cuban community in the U.S. but “normal” in terms of the U.S. immigration policy.

Many of these Cubans had no family, acquaintances, documents or possessions in the U.S. For immigrants, documents serve to inform host countries of who is entering the country. Social, emotional or professional networks also serve to integrate immigrants into the host society with less probability of becoming a burden for the national economy. All these factors usually diminish the cost of the immigration.59 The fact that many immigrants from the Mariel boatlift arrived without legal identification or familial connections made it difficult to have accurate data about how many and who they were.60 Besides, and very importantly, this situation contributed to their rejection by the host community, because the unknown brings uncertainty. A society that does not know its members -including the new and foreigners- does not know what to expect from them. Most of the Marielitos that were undocumented and disconnected from the Cuban-American community stayed in refugee camps for a long time and some of them were subsequently detained in U.S.

Federal Correctional Institutions.61 However, with or without legal documents and

58 Coates, David, and Peter Siavelis. Getting Immigration Right. (2009). 59 Tilly, Charles. 1990. "Transplanted Networks." Pp. 79-95 in Immigration Reconsidered: History, Sociology, and Politics, edited by V. Yans-McLauglin. New York: Oxford University Press. 60 For over more than three decades, many distinguished scholars of all areas of study have been devoted to collecting and analyzing this type of information. Still, some discrepancies in numbers and figures can be found, both in the literature in Cuba and in the U.S. 61 Pedraza, 1995; García, María Cristina. Havana USA: Cuban Exiles and Cuban Americans in South Florida, 1959-1994. Univ of California Press, 1996.

relatives, the majority of the Marielitos were able to gain refugee status, though they had to wait for months or even years.62

At the time, among the community of immigrants in the U.S., the refugee status of

Marielitos had a great impact on the Haitian community in Miami. Academics such as Alex

Stepick have shown how anti-immigrant sentiment during the 1980s focused more on poor, black migrants from Haiti, and that their petitions for political asylum were routinely dismissed, unlike those for Cuban “refugees.”63 Jorge I. Dominguez also explains that the

U.S. Coordinator for Refugee argued that “strict standards for asylum would prevent many of the Cubans and Haitians from qualifying for admission.”64 As Masud-Piloto also argues,

“if the federal government followed tradition and granted refugees status to the Cubans, it would seemingly have to do the same for the estimated 30,000 illegal Haitians in the state.(…) Thus, the status question could mean millions or billions of dollars in state and federal expenses.”65 Mariel and Haitians immigrants became a dilemma for the U.S. because it was too expensive and inconvenient for the country to grant them refugee status.

There is also a large bibliography about the situation of the crisis of Cuban refugees from the Mariel exodus.66 Scholars considered that this crisis did not only affect the refugees but

62 Portes, Alejandro, and Alex Stepick. City on the edge: The transformation of Miami. Univ of California Press, 1993. 63 Portes and Stepick, 1993. 64 Domínguez, Jorge I. “US Policy toward Cuba in the 1980s and 1990s.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (1994): 165-176. 65 Masud-Piloto, 1996. 66 Pedraza-Bailey, Silvia. “Cuba's exiles: Portrait of a refugee migration.” International Migration Review (1985): 4-34; Portes, Alejandro, and Juan M. Clark. “Mariel refugees: six years after.” Migration world magazine 15, no. 5 (1986): 14-18; Thomas, John F. “Cuban refugees in the U.S.” The International Migration Review 1, no. 2 (1967): 46-57; Portes, Alejandro, Alex Stepick, and Cynthia Truelove. “Three years later: the adaptation process of 1980 (Mariel) Cuban and Haitian refugees in South Florida. “Population Research and Policy Review 5, no. 1 (1986): 83-94; Greenhill, Kelly M. “Engineered migration and the use of refugees as political weapons: a case study of the 1994 Cuban Balseros Crisis. “International Migration 40, no. 4 (2002): 39-74.

the population of the city of Miami and vice versa. They explained that, while many Mariel immigrants were frustrated at being treated as second-class citizens by their compatriots, already established Cuban-Americans were forced to confront their identity as a domestic ethnic minority.67 Alejandro Portes, Alex Steptick, and many others have offered compelling, historically grounded examinations of Cuban immigration in the U.S., which have included the Mariel boatlift. Their work reveals that the Mariel boatlift is one of the most relevant migratory processes that has impacted not only Cuban history but also the history of Cuban immigration and U.S.-Cuban relations. The work of these scholars also illustrates that "Mariel exceptionalism" is a clear phenomenon which involves historical and political relations between the U.S. and Cuba and reveals a new Cuban social reality in the U.S.

However, before the Mariel exceptionalism there was already Cuban exceptionalism, and this latter is rooted in the in the history of the Cuban diaspora, its modes of incorporation into U.S. society, transformation of cultural identities, and impact on both home and host countries.68 Cuban exceptionalism is built on the special treatment of Cuban immigrants by the U.S. since 1959. Since then, over a million Cubans have immigrated to the U.S. for a complex and dynamic set of reasons, the most evident and celebrated being the search for political liberty. Unprecedented exceptions were made to

U.S. residency and citizenship laws to enable Cuban success and integration, though many

67 Portes and Stepick, 1993; Stepick, Alex, Guillermo Grenier, Max Castro, and Marvin Dunn. This land is our land: Immigrants and power in Miami. Univ of California Press, 2003; Grenier, Guillermo, and Alex Stepick. Miami now: Immigration, ethnicity, and social change. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1992; Rieff, David. Exile: Cuba in the Heart of Miami. Simon and Schuster, 2013. 68 Duany, 2011.

thought it would be a short-lived exile.69 No other U.S. refugee resettlement program has been more generous and accommodating than the Cuban Refugee Program (CRP) set up for the “golden exiles” and later applied to continuing waves of Cubans.70 Although legislative changes happened in the immigration policy towards Cubans, the impact was the same. The principle that this policy favored Cubans in one way or another did not change.71

Nevertheless, I understand the Mariel exceptionalism to be different from the general Cuban exceptionalism. Superficially, the Mariel exodus looks like more of the same special treatment. But, as scholar Ted Henken explains, the notion that Marielitos were receiving traditional immigration benefits represented a more complex reality:

By 1980, the welcome mat for Cubans was beginning to wear thin. The reception climate for Cubans evidently had changed. Reports that the Cuban government was placing convicted criminals and inmates from mental institutions on boats headed for the US fueled calls for halting the exodus.72

In fact, the U.S. refused them refugee status and immigration officials used the ambivalent term “entrant (status pending).”73 While recognizing Marielitos as “unfortunate

69A number of standard procedures at places of origin, such as security checks prior to admissions, proof of health, assurance of employment and economic independence, and lack of criminal background or communist affiliation, were swept aside in the rush to accept Cubans into the USA. Henken, Ted. “Balseros, boteros, and el bombo: Post-1994 Cuban immigration to the U.S. and the persistence of special treatment.” Latino Studies 3, no. 3 (2005): 393-416. 70 Ibid. 71 The original Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 allowed Cubans to become permanent residents if they had been present in the United States for at least 2 years. The Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1976 reduced this time to one year. Caps on immigration do not apply and it is not necessary that the applicant use a family-based or employment-based immigrant visa petition. This is an opportunity that no other immigrant group has. Two other immigration rules are also waived. Unlike other immigrants, Cubans are not required to enter the United States at a port-of-entry. Second, being a public charge doesn't make a Cuban ineligible to become a permanent resident. Close relatives as spouses, children, parents and siblings of the Cuban immigrants in the United States qualify to join the Cuban Adjustment Act. 72 Ibid. 73 Ibid.

victims of a tyrannical Communist regime,” Ronald Reagan's campaign manager, Paul

Laxalt, questioned whether “the current refugees come for political or economic reasons.”74

I suggest that Mariel exceptionalism arose not only due to its difference from previous Cuban immigration waves, but also because Cuban exceptionalism was not easy to apply to the Mariel immigrants. Here lies one of the less obvious but very important differences between the Cuban immigrants from the year 1980 and the ones from the 1960s and 1970s. Many of the immigrants from the Mariel boatlift came not because of political reasons but for economic and even familial reasons.75 A big part of this immigration wave consisted of people born and raised under the government of Fidel Castro. Their education and values were considered a product of the Revolution and therefore distinct from previous Cuban immigrants. Furthermore, it is considered that they represented the triumph of Fidel Castro’s political maneuver to strengthen his government: “in any given refugee- driving bargaining game between the U.S. and Cuba, Castro will be more credible than any

U.S. leader, making extortive engineered migration a relatively potent asymmetric weapon against the U.S.”76 Accordingly, Marielitos did not appear to fully meet the traditional notion of political refugees,77 much less the interests of the anti-Castro community in the

U.S.78

74 Ibid. 75 It is said that one reason for the reasons for the Mariel boatlift was that in 1979, more than one hundred thousand exiles had visited Cuba, renewing contacts with relatives and familiarizing them with economic opportunities abroad (De Los Angeles Torres 2001; Pedraza, 2007 Duany, 2011). 76 Greenhill, 2002. 77 The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language in its Fifth Edition defines the term political refugee as: one who flees, especially to another country, seeking refuge from war, political oppression, religious persecution, or a natural disaster. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.) 78 The anti-Castro community is among the large exiled Cuban-American population residing in the U.S., especially in and around Miami, FL and Union City, NJ. Those who oppose the communist government are represented in part by the Cuban-American lobby, which supports the U.S. embargo against Cuba and

Mariel exceptionalism occurred when this group of Cubans refugees was not well received in the U.S. In turn, this unwelcoming reception and the mismanagement of Mariel immigrants by the U.S. government and by the Cuban community in Miami increased the uniqueness of the Marielitos. As scholar Maria de Los Angeles Torres has argued: “The burden of Cuban exceptionalism is somehow lessened by understanding that there are comparable situations faced by all Latinos groups –including their ambivalent relationship to homeland.”79 The Mariel boatlift was one of these “comparable situations.” Therefore I consider that, the exceptionalism of Mariel consisted precisely in that it also made the situation of Cuban immigrants closely resemble the situation of other Latin American and

Caribbean immigrants.

This aspect of the Mariel boatlift had great weight in the life experiences of the people that were part of it. 80 As I mentioned earlier, I argue that this was a critical factor for a cultural movement like the Mariel Generation to happen as its visual artists bonded.

I believe that since the Mariel boatlift is a historical event, it is important to consider first its context and its chronology in order to better understand its implications for the Cuban visual artists.

The Marielitos unwelcoming reception and the U.S. government's mismanagement of the immigration process, was shared by another group within the history of the U.S.

pressing the communist government for political change. The Cuban-American lobby describes those various groups of Cuban exiles in the U.S. and their descendants who have historically influenced the U.S.' policy toward Cuba. In general usage this refers to anti-Castro groups. (Pedraza, 2007). 79 Duany, 2011. 80 Sandoval, Mercedes Cros. Mariel and Cuban national identity. Editorial SIBI, 1986; The Cuban Excludables, Documentary, directed by Estela Bravo (1997); Peña, Susana. Oye Loca: From the Mariel Boatlift to Gay Cuban Miami. University of Minnesota Press, 2013; Fernández, G. The Mariel Exodus: Twenty Years Later. Ediciones Universal, Miami (2002). Arenas, Reinaldo, “Final de un cuento (1982)” Reinaldo Arenas, aunque anochezca. Textos y documentos. Miami, Ediciones Universal (2001): 127- 139.

immigration policy: the influx of Haitian migrants and the enactment of the Refugee Act of April of 1980. For the first time since 1959, Cuban immigrants were stigmatized as a problem and a burden for the country, just like Haitians and other Caribbean, Latin

American and Asian immigrants.

At first, the Cubans who entered the U.S. as part of the Mariel exodus were considered refugees escaping from the Cuban communist government and the lack of liberties in the island. U.S. President James Carter’s words addressed then were consistent with the foreign policy of the U.S. as part of its fight against communism and in the context of the Cold War. What the U.S. government did not predict, however, was the magnitude of the Mariel boatlift, which made the entry of Cubans into the U.S. much more complicated than anyone could have imagined.81

I suggest that for many decades the U.S. immigration system had been explicitly aware that refugees could easily become immigrants.82 Ngai’s definition of immigrant highlights this, noting “also a legal status that refers to an alien who comes for permanent settlement – a legal permanent resident – and who may be naturalized as a citizen”.

Moreover, Spickard’s Chronology on Immigration and Naturalization Laws and Decisions about the history of Ellis Island, argues that the U.S. immigration system had been adjusted with laws and measures delineating who may or may not legally enter the country and who may become a resident and a citizen. With the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and even

81 Masud-Piloto, 1995. 82 For example, the vast majority of the refugees during World War I and II never went back to their homeland. After 1924, the only people who were detained at Ellis Island were those who had problems with their paperwork, as well as war refugees and displaced persons. From 1939 to 1945, “enemy aliens” were again held on the island. After 1950, immigrants suspected of being communists were denied entry or detained awaiting deportation. Despite the needs of the many refugees created during World War II, the restrictive immigration laws kept the numbers of European immigrants very small.

long after with the Nationality Act of 1970, the U.S. was clear about its conditions for granting the citizenship to immigrants. These conditions were governed largely by race, so immigrants who fit within constructed notions of whiteness were easily eligible for such legal status.83

As scholars reference historical migrations in different contexts, they outline how the immigration policy of the U.S. has had a specific and continuous narrative that can be recognized throughout its history, politics, social and cultural development. And, as Ngai argues: “Immigration policy is constitutive of Americans’ understanding of national membership and citizenship, drawing lines of inclusion and exclusion that articulate a desired composition –imagined if not necessarily realized– of the nation.”84 In addition, more recent publications on the immigration aftermath back up the current importance of the links between immigration policy in the modern nation-state and visions of national identity.85

The Marielitos were stigmatized as “scum” in both Cuba and U.S., and the visual artists from the Mariel boatlift came together to show their work with the aim of fighting that stigmatization without denying their identity. I argue that the reception of the

Marielitos compelled its visual artists to form a common identity once in the U.S.

83 Ngai, Mae M, 2014: 38. 84 Ibid. 85 Coates, David, and Peter Siavelis. Getting Immigration Right. (2009).

Part III. The Hinge

“Los artistas y escritores del Grupo Mariel se quedan, entonces, en un espacio distinto,

en una playa sin salida entre el mundo de las poéticas modernas del compromiso oficial

de los 70 y el mundo posterior más cínico de los posmodernistas.”

Iván de la Nuez, 1998.86

[“The artists and writers of the Mariel Group remains, then, in a different space, on a beach without an exit, between the world of modern poetry of the 70 official commitment

and the subsequent most cynical world of the postmodernists.”]

Iván de la Nuez, 1998.

The Mariel Generation formed an artistic association based on the relationships among intellectuals who had immigrated to the United States through the port of Mariel. I analyze the repercussions of this immigration process on the life and works of the visual artists who belonged to the Mariel Generation. The thousands of Cubans, and especially the visual artists, decided to participate in the Mariel boatlift and immigrate to the United

States because of the common difficulties they faced in Cuba related to freedom of expression, the scarcity of materials and creative spaces, and the repression of

86 De la Nuez, Iván. “Mariel en el extremo de la cultura.” Dossier “Homenaje a Mariel” Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana 8/9, (1998), pp. 105-109.

homosexuality.87 On the creation of this generation and their thematic points of structure, one of its members, the poet Jesús J. Barquet, explains:

In strictly literary terms, the very name ‘Mariel Generation’ is problematic and uncertain for many people, because it does not respond properly to intra-literary factors but rather to extra-literary factors. On the intra-literary factors, I do not think it is possible to detect any stylistic orientation that is common to all: what is characteristic is the 'differentiation' (...) It is the extra-literary factors, moreover, where there are multiple elements of group cohesion; the most important of which it is the common historical experience of the Fidel Castro government for more than twenty years.88

As Barquet notes, the commonalities between the artists of the Mariel Generation stemmed from their shared experiences in Cuba and in leaving Cuba. I suggest that the formation of this “generation” took place—as a conscious decision of those artists to come together—in the spring of 1983, when the group published the first issue of the magazine of art and literature titled Mariel.89 After that point, the cohesion of the group was more evident both in the journal and in their particular works. On the work of the authors and artists belonging to the Mariel Generation, literary critic Lillian Bertot says:

At no other time in Cuban literature have the images of freedom and oppression been as prevalent as in the texts of the Mariel generation (...) So reiterative are these images, that it appears as if urgency had supplanted originality. The double sign freedom / oppression reverberates in their individual creations as well as in their work as a group.6

87 In future research, it will be possible to conduct a more extensive inquiry on the life of these artists in Cuba and a deeper analysis of their work there. It is a goal that requires consulting a different set of sources, including the possibility of carrying on semi- structured interviews with the artists or close friends. 88 Barquet, Jesús J. “La generación del Mariel”. Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana (1998): 110-125, 111. 89 No other date has recorded as an “official foundation” of the Mariel Generation. However, it is known that most of these artists knew each other since the boatlift and, in some cases, even since Cuba.

Through this thesis, I plan to explore the repercussions of the Mariel boatlift on the lives and work of the visual artists who were part of both this exodus and the Mariel

Generation as an artistic movement. I argue that, despite their different backgrounds, these visual artists share overarching aesthetic frameworks, themes, concerns, and ideas that bind them together within the Mariel Generation. The Mariel Generation as an artistic movement is not only defined by a shared experience of migration, but also the following principles and themes which connect their work: opposition to the government of Fidel

Castro, total freedom of artistic and political expression, the deconstruction of the idea that

Mariel immigrants were antisocial elements, and the exposure of the work of Cuban artists in exile. These principles were outlined in the first edition of the Mariel magazine:

We did not go into exile with welfare schemes, or to dwell on anecdotes or gossip; we have come to realize our work. The daily persecution and moral and physical misery suffered in Cuba taught us very well what the essential things that will save us from despair and silence are, and which ones will be swallowed by the insignificance or used wisely by our enemy. We reject any political or literary theory that can curtail freedom of experimentation; the ease, the critic and the imagination, fundamental requirements for any work of art. A doctrinal art is the opposite of true creation.90

The fact that these artists showed their work in this publication indicates that they identified with the purpose and motives of the magazine and therefore with the Mariel

Generation.

The aim of this study is to inquire into the intersection of a great historical event like the Mariel boatlift, and the production of culture, looking for a better understanding of how visual artists negotiated, through their works, their experiences with migration. It is

90 Mariel. Revista de literatura y arte. 1983-1985, Primavera, 1983, 2.

possible—by analyzing their work, the critical texts about their work, and their own words—to understand how the experience of immigration affected the work of the visual artists of the Mariel boatlift. To build my thesis, I examined the literature concerning the

Mariel boatlift in light of other research on immigration policy in the United States, in order to illustrate that the “Mariel experience” was unusual for Cubans in the United States, but not other non-white immigrants to the U.S. Consequently, in this third part, I lay out how the “Mariel experience” affected the lives and work of its visual artists, as they established themselves in the U.S. Additionally, I briefly describe the social and cultural context in Cuba, which largely motivated the Marielitos to emigrate from their homeland.

I understand this context and the artist’s motivations to leave the island, as the beginning of their migratory experience and therefore of the “Mariel experience”. I then explore the qualities identified in prior scholarly literature on the Mariel Generation; these form the foundation of my analytical framework for examining the art produced by Mariel visual artists. My approach is based on a qualitative methodology; I carry out textual analysis of the works, essays, testimonies, art criticism, cultural magazines, and press of the time— especially those that were most active during the eighties and nineties—related in one way or another to the artists who belong to the Mariel Generation. I evaluate and contextualize this material by looking for connective threads between the context and characteristics of the Mariel boatlift and the artistic identity of the Mariel Generation.

The analysis of key examples of the artists’ works as case studies is a vital part of this third section, because it shows what the artists expressed with the formal tools of their craft, about many aspects of their migratory experience. These elements can be found through the collective exhibitions that gathered their work, and also through solo-shows. I

do so because this research also aims to contribute to work interested in broader implications for the study of immigrant artists and to expand the body of scholarly work on the Mariel Generation that deal with cultural producers other than writers.

This theoretically informed analysis of the artists’ works will address my general research questions: how did the Mariel boatlift, as a migratory phenomenon, influence the work of the visual artists who were part of this episode of Cuban migration history to the

United States? What were the differences and commonalities among these artists after the boatlift? What are some of the main challenges, changes, and concessions that these visual artists face as immigrants? How did they handle their invisibility as immigrants and their need for visibility as artists? At this point I believe that my analysis of the Mariel visual artists specifically can comment on immigrant artists experiences by taking into account the different aspects in the live and work of the immigrant artists: the features that appears in their artworks, the issues they explicitly or implicitly address, the artistic context of the city and the country they immigrate to, the galleries, museums and other institutions that host them and show their work, the approach to their work of the art critics, curators and the press, the interviews the artists offer, their testimonies. All these elements can describe the process of settlement and the impact of the immigration in the work and development of the immigrant artists.

By examining the lives and cultural products of the visual artists within the Mariel

Generation, I explain how their works reflect a new condition: the condition of being an immigrant, which is to say being in a chosen though not native place. For these visual artists, this was the beginning of a new life and a new challenge: the challenge of being an immigrant artist and, more importantly, the challenge of introducing their artwork in a

context that saw them almost exclusively as Marielitos. The context stemming from the

Mariel exodus—explained throughout this work—marked the identity of these visual artists, as they also identify themselves as Marielitos. They assumed this stigmatization assigned to them by people in Cuba and the United States in order to demonstrate that the exclusion to which they were subjected could be ameliorated through their artistic work.

The fact that this generation and its journal were created under such a controversial and non-artistic name proves how much the appropriation of the name that was transformed by others into a derogatory term, functioned as a motif and boost for them to display their project as Cuban intellectuals and visual artists.91 At the same time, the appropriation of the derogatory term influences the reception of their artistic work in the sense that, showing a representation of the Marielitos different from what the media stated, raised the interest upon these artists from the island, now part of the Cuban cultural diaspora.

Previous studies on the Mariel Generation artistic movement, especially from within the realm of literary criticism, describe the main qualities of this generation as a consequence of the Mariel boatlift, but also of the various factors that motivated them to emigrate from Cuba. As one of its members, the painter and writer Juan Abreu states:

What they (the artists from the Mariel Generation) have in common is a way of perceiving certain things. Anguish, for instance. Anguish reigns in their works. Also a feeling of displacement, or having been violently torn out from the roots... There’s a kind of fury that I think is conditioned by the fact that we lived in a society that attempted to eliminate any authentic form of expression, and that superimposed on the individual a mask and a simulation. Since art is the search for authenticity, and you lived inside a capsule in which you were watched 24 hours a day, there’s a kind of energy that’s

91 It is worth noting that after its creation the Mariel magazine became an important platform for Cuban authors that emigrated from the island to the United States or Europe.

cumulative, and that’s the extra baggage of my generation.92

In the mid-sixties Cuba increased its institutionalization and expanded state functions. As mentioned before, during the Grey Period, approximately from 1971 to 1975, the Cuban state became not only a regulatory element of life on the island, but also a coercive one, with great influence in the areas of art and culture. This dynamic, together with a pronounced approach to Socialist realism93—due to Cuba’s alliance with the

U.S.S.R.—made the ideological discussion of Cuban arts and artistic expression more complex.94 Furthermore, the precariousness of the national economy detrimentally affected the lives and the work of many these artists, and homosexuality was being censured and punished. LGBT persons, particularly effeminate males, were frequently imprisoned without charge or trial and sent to forced labor camps.95 Cuban gay writer and leading figure of the Mariel Generation, Reinaldo Arenas, wrote: “The decade of the sixties (...) was precisely when all the new laws against homosexuals came into being, when the persecution started and concentration camps were opened, when the sexual act became taboo while the 'new man' was being proclaimed and masculinity exalted.”96 Many Cuban

92Abreu, Juan. “Art and Politics and Passion.” New Times April 13-19, 1988, 12. 93 Socialist realism is a style of realistic art that was developed in the Soviet Union and is characterized by the glorified depiction of communist values, such as the emancipation of the proletariat, in a realistic manner. It was the officially imposed artistic trend for much of the history of the Soviet Union, particularly during the rule of Joseph Stalin, in the Popular Republic of China, and in general in most socialist countries. Although related, it should not be confused with social realism, a broader type of art that realistically depicts subjects of social concern. 94 The context of the 70s in Cuba, is inevitably represented by some main facts like the Harvest of 10 million of Sugar, the entry of Cuba to CMEA (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance), the creation of the Manuel Ascunce Domenech Pedagogical Brigade, the first Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), the more than 28,000 Cubans left to Angola to participate in Operation Carlota, the creation of the Ministry of Culture. 95 In 1965, the country-wide Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP) program was set up as an alternative form of military service for pacifist religious groups, such as Jehovah Witnesses, hippies, conscientious objectors, and gay men. 96 Arenas, Reinaldo. Before night falls. Profile Books, 2010, p.105.

intellectuals and artists—some of whom left the island through the port of Mariel—did so when they couldn’t find in Cuba the freedom and spaces they needed for their expression or the creation, presentation, and publication of their works.

In the essay “Identity and Popular Culture in the New Cuban Art”, art critic Gerardo

Mosquera reveals that “the late ’70s begins to manifest a movement that will transform the situation of the Cuban visual arts, introducing new artistic orientations.”97 He then explains: “(...) they are young people formed entirely in the revolutionary stage; they blew the existing postulates in that decade, which was characterized by the rigidity of some stereotypes that were intended to give art an alleged political content.”98 Even though the

Cuban visual artists who emigrated during the Mariel boatlift in 1980 did not remain part of the Cuban visual arts scene on the island, the context described by Mosquera was largely the one they lived in Cuba. They were “formed entirely in the revolutionary stage”, while their “new artistic orientations” faced the rigidity described by Mosquera. Many of these artists had established careers in Cuba,99 and while their artworks were very different, some of them represent common elements of their external and internal reality in their lives and works once in the United States.100 For example they raise other issues besides the duality

97 Mosquera, Gerardo. “Identidad y cultura popular en el nuevo arte cubano”, Made in Habana. Wales: Art Gallery, 1989, p.43-48. Catalogue. 98 Ibid. 99At this time, it is unknown what the scope of such careers within the Cuban cultural context of those years was. Also, it is possible that these artists knew each other before migrating to the United States, due to the fact that the cultural production community in Cuba is small and tightly-knit. However, prior to 1980, the links between the artists, and the context of what was then happening in Cuba in the artistic field, is something that arises in this paper as one of the main goals set for future and wider research to be conducted on the island. 100 For example, the works that I will be looking at later: “The sky is falling” by Gilberto Ruiz; “Escape” by Jesus Selgas; “Where tears can’t stop” by Carlos Alfonzo; and “The Legend of Sese Eribo” by Juan Boza. The images of these paintings are in pages 70, 71, 72 and 73 respectively.

freedom/oppression101 such as: race, religion, and sexuality, which must also be included in the conversation.

About the Editor’s Note of the first edition of the Mariel magazine, Barquet argues that, “inspired by a still valid objective of broad social improvement, the editors of Mariel affirmed that a two-pronged critical strategy against the political and social repression of homosexuality constituted a way of airing, among ourselves, aspects of our mentality and culture that needed to evolve.”102 This “two-pronged critical strategy” adds to the fact that the Mariel magazine also had among its objectives the goal to dismantle the idea—then prevalent in Cuba, the U.S., and even around the world—that those that left during the

Mariel boatlift were antisocial and criminal. Therefore, the works of intellectuals and artists within the Mariel boatlift started to combat not only the stereotypes that repressed them earlier in Cuba but also those they suffered in the United States as a result of being

Marielitos, that is, a different—and a more regular—Cuban immigrant. The context of the

Mariel boatlift made them exposed to the prejudices of Cuban-American and U.S. society against immigrants who are not light-skinned, well educated, heterosexual, and financially stable. Although the artists blamed the Cuban government for society’s rejection of the

Marielitos, they also recognized that in the U.S. they would still have to fight against that label in order to achieve the freedom and opportunities they desired. This goal was widely expressed by members of the editorial board of Mariel. In its first publication published in spring 1983, the board wrote:

It has not been enough three years since Mariel for the whole truth comes to light, but it has been enough to allow a group of artists who leave Cuba at that time to devote our efforts

101 Bertot, 12 102 Barquet, 113.

and little resources to the creation of this magazine. If the whole truth of Mariel, as part of the most thorough and mutilating nightmare of Castrismo, take a long time to become evident in every detail, it's time we started to throw on the intelligence and sensitivity of the freemen the most overwhelming parts of that truth: the literature and the art of those who now have the privilege of being in the United States, a country that allows them to express themselves and fight.103

While celebrating being in the U.S., the members of the Mariel Generation had the need to explicitly place their artistic values above the discrimination they experienced as immigrants. These Marielitos had the need to demonstrate to those “freemen”—this possibly referring to the same ones who stigmatized them in the U.S and the world— that they were something more than immigrants: they were artists and intellectuals. The magazine posed to these writers, artists, and intellectuals “a way to express themselves with absolute freedom”.104 On the composition of this journal, Barquet himself points out that along with the writers: “The group also included visual artists such as Carlos José

Alfonzo, Ernesto Briel, Jesus Selgas, Gilberto Ruiz and Juan Boza.”105 Indeed, in each of the eight issues published of Mariel (1983-1985) there is a small section which reads: This edition is illustrated by,106 which consists of a short biography of each of the artists whose works accompany the poems, essays, short stories, and excerpts from novels, criticism, and other materials.107

103 Mariel. Revista de literatura y arte. 1983-1985, Primavera, 1983, 2. 104 Barquet, 110. 105 Ibid. 106 On most issues of the magazine this small section appears at the top, next to the Editorial Board, although in some numbers varies and it’s found after or at the end of the publication. 107 Each of the eight issues of the journal Mariel contains illustrations of at least one visual artist who migrated through the massive exodus of 1980. However, only a total of seven painters are counted because some appear in multiple editions of the publication. The painters who emigrated through the port of Mariel and whose works were also used to illustrate the magazine of the same name were: Juan Boza, Juan Abreu Felippe, Hector Mists, Ernesto Briel, Gilberto Ruiz, Jesus Selgas, and Carlos Alfonzo.

The Artists

“Mariel was the best thing and the most terrible thing that ever happened to me” Gilberto Ruiz108

“Mis cuadros tienen que ver con mi exilio, con mi drama individual tal y como yo lo entiendo.” [“My paintings are about my exile, my personal drama as I understand it.”] Carlos Alfonzo109

The Mariel Generation was bigger than just the magazine. I understand the Mariel boatlift and the experience of immigration as the reason why the visual artists who formed part of it, associated with each other once in the United States. Regardless they were published in the Mariel magazine or not. In both these artists’ private lives and their artistic production, the “Mariel experience” meant mixed feelings: trauma, chaos, and fear, yet independence and openness as well. Their individual artistic productions experiences share common aspects: fragmentation, vulnerability, solitude, the use of symbols, a preference towards large-scale reproductions, and emphasis on color. It is the expression of these commonalities that connects their art with the Mariel boatlift and the process of migration.

As I explained earlier, to study the common aspects related to the Mariel Generation in the works of each of these artists, I use not only the visual analysis of the images but also pre- existing studies on the literature of the Mariel Generation. Although these studies are related mainly to the literary work of the group, the fact that both groups of artists (the literary artists and the visual artists) come together around the publication of Mariel

108 Painter from the Mariel Generation. Santiago, Miami Herald, The (FL), April 17, 2005. 109 Painter from the Mariel Generation. Fuentes-Pérez, Isabel; Graciela Cruz-Taura and Ricardo Pau-Llosa (Eds.), Outside Cuba. Contemporary Cuban artists./Fuera de Cuba. Artistas cubanos contemporáneos. New Jersey: Rutgers. The State University of New Jersey. 1989. 246.

demonstrates that they shared more than just the experience of the Mariel boatlift.

Therefore, it is useful to consider the experiences of the Mariel writers when delving into the art and experiences of the Mariel visual artists. The process of leaving Cuba to go to the U.S. in that specific way affected topics they chose to incorporate into their works, whether literary or visual. They also share the principles of a “Generation”, including feelings and concerns towards their new life and how they felt after the Mariel boatlift event. This is why it is possible to find in the studies of the literary activity strong connective threads to the visual activity. The criterion used for selecting artists was based on their relevance in the literature and archival sources researched. Accordingly, I will analyze the work of Gilberto Ruiz, Jesus Selgas, Carlos Alonzo, and Juan Boza. These artists are among the most well-known and visible of the Mariel Generation and their art works all embody elements that offer insight into the experience of the Mariel boatlift and migration.

“The sky is falling” by Gilberto Ruiz, “Escape” by Jesus Selgas, “Where tears can’t stop” by Carlos Alfonzo, and “The Legend of Sese Eribo” by Juan Boza, all demonstrate common elements of their external and internal reality in their lives and work.110 Ruiz

(1950), Selgas (1951), Alfonzo (1950), and Boza (1941) studied at the art schools in

Havana (Escuela Nacional de Arte, Instituto Superior de Diseño, and Escuela Nacional de

Bellas Artes San Alejandro)111. Both their time as students and their early careers occurred

110 The images of these paintings found from page 70 to page 73. 111 Back then Selgas was student of Cuban painter Antonia Eiriz, one of the most important artists to come of age during the Cuban Revolution. Boza was a student and protégé of Wifredo Lam, one of most renowned visual artists of the 20th century.

in the seventies and eighties, a period known as “Cuba Revolucionaria.”112 Ruiz, Selgas,

Alfonzo and Boza decided to participate in the exodus of Mariel and immigrate in the

United States due to the common difficulties faced in Cuba on freedom of expression, the scarcity of materials and creative spaces, and the repression of homosexuality. Through the words and the works of these artists, it is possible to understand how moving to the United

States changed their lives and works.

Gilberto Ruiz points out not only the limitations on free speech that he experienced in Cuba during the ’70s but also the material shortages, as he explains “The frustration in

Cuba is on national and individual level; artistic experimentation is limited by the political circumstances and the shortage of materials.”113 In the catalogue Outside Cuba/Fuera de

Cuba of the collective exhibition of the same name, Ruiz addresses the benefits of access to materials that he enjoyed once he got to the U.S. In his work “The sky is falling,”114 this element of material life, of the objects that abound in the United States and not in Cuba, stands out, “here in America my paradise is the lumber and the hardware. Finding a hinge

(such a simple thing that today is not found in Cuba) makes creating infinite possibilities.”115 At the same time, in this work he gives a sense of the confusion and over- stimulation that affects many recent immigrants living in a highly economically developed country. The emphasis on material life, on things, is embodied in his painting. Several items are painted as if they were in the sky and, at the same time, falling from the sky. Each

112 Phrase used in popular parlance to refer to the first two decades after 1959 when the Revolution triumphed lead by the former Cuban president Fidel Castro. It was a period characterized mainly by the many political, economic, and social reforms that were conducted by the new government. 113 Fuentes-Pérez et al, 278. 114 See image on page 69. 115 Fuentes-Pérez et al, 278.

of these “things” is a symbol of a larger set of issues that the artist has experienced in part of his life in the United States. For example, a book symbolizes the access to information, to knowledge, which in Cuba was (and still is) very difficult to attain. Different clocks suggest the differences between Cuban and North American tempos and the idea that, in his new space, time is very important, “time is money”. The telephones and light bulb allude to the technology that surrounds his life, something far different from what he lived in Cuba, a third world country in which technology is less advanced and less available than in the United States.

“The sky is falling” is from 1986, so when we see pills in this painting, we cannot avoid thinking of drugs or anxiety pills within the context of a city like New York—the most populous city in the United States and one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world—where Ruiz was living at the time he made this painting. But these pills also connote medical treatment, connected to the fact that many of the artists from Mariel

Generation suffered from HIV/AIDS. However, one of the most striking features of this work is the expression in the face of the character at the center of the painting.116 The figure has a clear expression of anxiety and of being overwhelmed, presumably because all of the “things” that seem to fall on him, crushing him, wounding him, as is suggested by the blood that flows from one of his hands and his chest. The redness of the blood and of his mouth contrasts strongly with the blue that characterizes most of the work. The blue color in this image represents the sky, but the blue is a very common color in the landscape of

116 Although I cannot be certain whether the character is male or female, I interpret it to be a man, as many painters tend to be located in their own works as a kind of self-portrait.

Cuba.117 Therefore, we can consider that this is one of the aspects that the artist expresses belonging to his life in Cuba but that remained present in his work despite the changes that his art experienced once living in the United States: “Much has changed in my work since

I left Cuba, although I'm still a figurative painter. But the color and shape of these human figures reveals me as a Cuban.”118

The large scale of this character, of his hands, his eyes, and of the painting itself

(88 x 153 inches) reveals his anxiety of trying to be bigger than the world surrounding him, where his large hands could grab everything. But through the nudity of the main character, the author illustrates the real vulnerability of his body and his being. The headphones that cover his head make him a subject of technological development but also restrain him from the world. Ruiz aims to state that he feels safe neither in the United States nor Cuba, and that he would prefer to be alienated from the real and material world by not listening to what is happening outside while “the sky is falling.” Ruiz’s piece is fragmented, showing the fragmentation of the artist’s own life—common with the immigration process—and emanates torment and solitude. These are feelings of an experience such as the Mariel boatlift, that links his work with others artists’ of the Mariel Generation. Likewise, Selgas,

Alfonzo, and Boza’s pieces express characteristics that appear in the works of the artists of the Mariel Generation. Their works also send strong visual messages that reveal much about their experiences as immigrants.

117 Cuba has a subtropical weather throughout the year, with average temperatures of 25 ° C and 300 days of sunshine a year. For this reason, the island sky is usually bright blue. This can be seen in the works that many Cuban artists of all genres have written, painted and composed, inspired by the blue sky of Cuba. 118 Fuentes-Pérez et al, 208.

About this experience Jesus Selgas revealed in an interview that more than nine years had to pass for him to be able to have a solo-show in the United States.119 His painting

“Escape”, despite being a quite recent work (2009), nevertheless demonstrates most of the aforementioned issues that Abreu discusses.120 In the painting, the character seems to be still in a capsule, trapped in his attempt to leave, to escape, as if he had not gotten anywhere yet, as if he were still escaping. The anguish of the act of leaving, of migrating, is represented by the serious, close, and hard facial expression that characterize this work.

Jesus ‘Cepp’ Selgas came to the United States during the Mariel boatlift in a shrimper that was designed to hold eighty persons but carried more than three hundred on board. The night he traveled, a tempest arose, boats overturned, and some drowned, while others were rescued by helicopter. Pitch dark in the middle of the night, he could see neither the sea nor the sky. He only felt waves passing over him, which made him think that he was already at the bottom of the ocean, strangely at peace.121

What Selgas experienced during the voyage from Mariel harbor seems to be perfectly reproduced in “Escape”, despite the intervening years; the memory and trauma of the event obviously remain active in his work. The colors used are only those that belong to the bottom of the ocean, to the night in the sea, where all is black, dark blue, dark gray, dark green. The only light color is the human skin that cannot be fully seen—only little parts are shown—, so it is clear that the human body is a very small part in the landscape of the sea. The layers in the painting denote entrapment, defined by his body, the tattoo,

119 Jose Antonio Evora, “Una pintura de Selgas en el cartel del Festival de Ballet,” El Nuevo Herald, August 25, 2005. 120 See image on page 70. 121 Pedraza, 168.

the wave, and the multiple frames. The whole picture looks almost sewn together, like a quilt, this fragmentation is characteristic of the work.122About this piece, the author states:

“Originally I wanted to title this work ‘Wave”, drawing attention to the design of thick helical ribbon. But because it is also a self-portrait, I decided to call it ‘Escape’.”123 The fact that the artist recognizes himself as the protagonist of his work reveals the strong impact of the journey out of Cuba to the United States in the specific way that Selgas experienced. The painting of Selgas is the painting of an immigrant. As in Ruiz’s painting, here a unique person appears, as this individual is migrating. His work captures the challenge and danger of this act, although in a very elegant visual way.

Selgas' work retains the hardened and contradictory nature of the Mariel boatlift.

The character is going in an opposite direction from the rope that attaches him to the island.

But, still he is leaving with the island all over him. The island is tattooed on his arm, the same arm that drives his swimming to move away from that same island. At the same time, many little islands of Cuba form a blanket that wraps around—either protecting or obstructing him. This blanket, shown as a helical ribbon, is reminiscent of the structure of

DNA. DNA is an inseparable part of every human being, regardless of where one has come from or is going, and thus resembles the baggage that Abreu referenced—DNA, like the homeland, cannot be abandoned. The interpretation depends on personal opinion, as the perception of whether the helical ribbon protects or breaks the character. It could also mean that the process of migration is altering the very essence of being, represented by this

122 This is something very characteristic from the general work of the artist, even from before the Mariel boatlift. In 1976 Selgas held his first personal exhibition, under the name “Acuarelas y Tapices” (“Gouaches and Tapestries”) at the Teatro Nacional de Guiñol, Havana, Cuba. Selgas was in 1977 awarded first prize for tapestry by the Havana Museo de Artes Decorativas. 123 Selgasart.blogspot.com

helical figure. Although Selgas portrays magical or unreal elements to express his feelings and ideas, the message in the painting is completely concrete: “I revisit what I do; I always like the story behind the images.”124

The works of these artists are biographical. In them, the artists’ life, “the Mariel experience,” and the course of migration are perceived as one event. The works of Carlos

Alfonzo is like this in a very direct way, despite their abstract style.125 His drawings convey pain, disorder, chaos, and confusion. These feelings essentially correspond to what it meant for him to participate in the Mariel exodus and to come to live in the United States. Upon his arrival, he once said, he was so distraught over the experience of waiting to leave Cuba, the trauma of the boat trip, and being detained for two months in a refugee camp, that he was unable to paint: “When I arrived in the United States it took me more than a year to start painting again. The arrival and the trip from the port of Mariel were a shock.”126 He is one of the émigré artists better recognized for his career in Cuba and his presence in galleries and publications.127 Once in the United States, despite his short career there (he died in 1991), Alfonzo was prolific and well known. He also participated in several exhibitions and achieved the recognition of art critics. “By all accounts, Alfonzo was a giant among Cuban artists, and definitely one of the most compelling painters of his generation”, said Cesar Trasobares, the former director of Miami-Dade's Art in Public

Places program.128 Alfonzo exposes a mysticism, also very present in the visual art of this

124 Jose Antonio Evora, “Una pintura de Selgas en el cartel del Festival de Ballet,” El Nuevo Herald, August 25, 2005. 125 See image on page 71. 126 Fuentes-Pérez et al, 246. 127 Hohen, Miami Herald, The (FL) -Feb, 20, 1991. 128 Ibid.

generation, on topics such as religion, oppression, life and death, recurrent also in the work of writers and painters: “The symbolism is important: the tongue for me represents oppression; the cross –and I use many crosses in my works- has mystical connotations, represent the spiritual balance, sacrifice; tears are symbols of exile.”129 In his work “Where tears can't stop”, the aspects described in the words of the painter are present in very strong and shocking images. Alfonzo borrowed from Cuban Santería and tarot cards to build a dense network of symbols floating in huge tears and other human fluids like blood, semen, and sweat. “Where tears can't stop” reflects the violence that Alfonzo experienced in Cuba because of his homosexuality. But the work also holds subtle clues that evoke the fear and anger generated by the AIDS epidemic that arose in the mid-1980s. Death and disease filled the artist’s life, and he filled his work with symbols of suffering, loss, and defiance. In

Alfonzo's painting, the image of a tongue spiked by a dagger is a Santería charm against gossip and the “evil eye”, two responses that HIV-positive men often faced in the epidemic's early years. Rumors and innuendo shaped the perception that AIDS was only a gay man's disease, and the evil eye recalls a widespread belief that the tears of the infected carried the virus. Alfonzo died of AIDS five years after he completed this work.

This fatal disease is also very present in the Mariel Generation, as some of its leading figures—novelist Reinaldo Arenas, painter Ernesto Briel, and Carlos Alfonzo himself—suffered in the ’80s and died in the early ’90s. These were very early cases of the epidemic that deeply affected the Mariel Generation. Since doctors in the United States first reported a strange cluster of what was later called AIDS in July of 1981, in the early

129 Fuentes-Pérez et al, 246.

years of the epidemic in Latin America people initially viewed the illness as a U.S. and gay disease.130 Accordingly, AIDS served as a symbol of the weakness of the U.S. society, representing the social breakdown, lack of family unity, frequent drug use, and poor moral values of the U.S. But it was an especially powerful rhetorical device in Cuba, where in the 1988 President Fidel Castro denounced the U.S. for inflicting AIDS upon the region:

“Who brought AIDS to Latin America? Who was the great AIDS vector in the Third

World? (…) The United States, that’s a fact.”131 This situation added to the traumatic experience of the Mariel boatlift and to the immigration experience in general. Reinaldo

Arenas express in his autobiography’s introduction that his condition interrupted the normal pace of his proposed projects.132 He incorporates AIDS into his political activism against homophobic revolutionary judicial practices in Cuba and to his counterrevolutionary political campaigns, “the difference between the Communist system and the capitalist system is that when they give you a kick in the ass, in the Communist system you have to applaud, in the capitalist system, you can scream.”133 Because Arenas and the rest of the Marielitos who suffered from AIDS were diagnosed with the disease after immigrating to the U.S., it can be assumed that they contracted the disease once there.

This fact, aside from the biased warning against the cultural dangers of life in the U.S. coming from not only from Cuba and other countries, but also from within U.S. society, made the relationship of the visual artists of the Mariel boatlift with their new environment

130 The medical community did not become aware of the existence of a widespread epidemic among heterosexuals in Africa until 1986. Smallman, Shawn C. The AIDS Pandemic in Latin America. UNC Press Books, 2012. 131 Ibid, 35. 132 Arenas, Reinaldo. Before night falls. Profile Books, 2010. 133 Ibid, 288.

even more complex. The act of leaving Cuba to immigrate to the United States entailed this unknown and mortal disease as consequence, which could also strengthen the stigmatization of Marielitos as sick people.

It is thought that Juan Boza was also a victim of the AIDS epidemic, although it has not been confirmed.134 Most of the catalogues and legal papers about his exhibitions, artwork sales, and medical reports on his disease and death, show that one of the people who he was close to was Pedro Monge Rafuls, executive director and curator of the main gallery that represented Boza, the Ollantay Center of the Arts. Based in New York,

Ollantay is an arts center with the purpose of spreading Latino arts presence in New York.

It was at Ollantay that Boza carried out some of his most important exhibitions, such as

Juan Boza’s World in 1990, an exhibition in celebration of Black History Month. Some others exhibitions of the artist’s work took place at New York’s Museum of African

Americans in 1984 and at the Caribbean Cultural Center in 1985 and 1986. Like Selgas, once in the U.S., Boza immediately settled in New York. As a historically cosmopolitan city, New York was more open and accepting of immigrant artists.

It is noteworthy that in the catalogs and brochures of the New York exhibitions in which Selgas and Boza were included, they were not framed as Marielitos. This was unlike what occurred with the exhibitions and press releases in Miami, where the main curatorial logic was to show the work of the visual artists of the Mariel boatlift, and they were highlighted as just that: Marielitos. In my opinion, this difference can be attributed to the

134 The papers found in the Cuban Heritage Collection archive in the University of Miami, revealed that Boza’s admission to the hospital and his later death occurred because he was sick. He died at the age of 50, in 1991. It is also known that he was homosexual and at that time the AIDS epidemic was primarily spread among homosexual men. Besides, the Ollantay gallery recognized itself as a historical venue for the presentation of films and lectures on AIDS when the disease was in its infancy in the early eighties.

fact that Miami has always been a highly politicized city around the political and ideological confrontation between the governments of the United States, the Cuban-

American community, and the government of Cuba. Hence, the condition as Marielitos of these visual artists was more attractive and important to the Miami art scene and art market.

For the visual artists of the Mariel Generation this situation often had a double edge: it allowed them to have more visibility and growth in their careers, while it also in some ways framed them as Marielitos and immigrants rather than as Cuban artists.

Boza described New York as a “tremendous shock” where upon arrival he “had to re-build Juan Boza from scratch.”135 Part of this process of “re-building from scratch” consisted in going back to his religious ancestry. Boza began developing an Afro-Cuban theme that he realized was part of his culture and identity after leaving Cuba, as well as his participation in the Santería (also known as Lukumí) religion. According to Boza, “There is no distinction between my faith and my aesthetics.”136 Boza identified increasingly with his Afro-Cuban roots after he left Cuba for the United States, because this was how he found himself, and it was only through painting images of home and his culture that he was able to make his way in the United States.

As was the case with the evolution of Alfonzo’s work, Boza’s paintings and installations are filled with Afro-Cuban religious elements that explicitly reveal a religious and mystical foundation. In his piece “The Legend of Sese-Eribo”, one of his most famous works,137 a large-scale mixed-media installation represents an Afro-Cuban religious

135 Fuentes-Pérez et al., 1988. 136 Fuentes-Pérez et al., 1988. 137 Sese-Eribo is a divine drum from de Cuban secret society Abakuá, used to initiate new members. It has handles and wooden legs that can be carved and covered with leather, and decorated with a crown and feathers on the top. The sese is the only drum of all the Abakuá drums, both musical and symbolic.

altar.138 In this work he uses Cuban foliage, colorful and long drapes, flowers, and other symbolic elements of Afro-Cuban history and ceremonies like the rooster and the figure of

Elegguá down and at the foot of the installation.139 Afro-Cuban religion is part of a culture essentially of resistance. West African sources of religious traditions were brought to the

New World through centuries of the slave trade. Slavery is of course an extreme case in which African slaves and their descendants were forced to hide their beliefs. But they resisted this acculturation and found common elements between their religion and the

Roman Catholicism theology that allowed them to reunite the two systems of belief. The use of Afro-Cuban aesthetics both in the work of Boza, as in that of Alfonzo and Selgas, among others, can be understood as precisely complying to this principle of resistance.140

For these artists, Santería functions not only as a cultural connective tissue, but also as a language of criticism and rebellion against Anglo-European cultural norms. The immigrant artist, like any immigrant, can resist acculturation once in a new country. At the same time, this resistance to acculturation is often what becomes attractive in the art market, especially in highly cosmopolitan cities like New York.

The large scale of the “The Legend of Sese-Eribo” and of the elements that comprise this installation give a colossal meaning to the artwork but also to what it

Albertico Matanzas, “Sese Eribo con corona y plumeros PIEZA JUDIA SIN TRANSMICION” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw2893KPpNs&feature=channel (accessed February, 15, 2016); Miller, Ivor. “A secret society goes public: the relationship between Abakuá and Cuban popular culture. African Studies Review 43, no. 1 (2000): 161-88. 138 See image on page 72. 139 Elegguá is the most important Orisha in Santeria. He opens the way and allows aché (the primal life energy) to flow in the universe, that why he is at the head of most of rituals and ceremonies. In particular, Elegguá stands at the crossroads of the human and the divine, as he is child-like messenger between the two worlds. His parallels are established with Saint Michael, Saint Anthony of Padua, or the Holy Child of Atocha. 140 It is highly important to qualify this and understand that the slaves and their descendants, suppressed in the way they were, represent a much more dramatic experience than the regular immigrant experience.

represented, that is the Afro-Cuban religious imaginary that lies in the formation of the

Cuban culture. No human beings are seen in this piece, the altar is set apart, in solitude.

The feeling of loneliness is common in the works I have seen here, probably because it is common to the immigrant experience. Boza felt a sense of displacement in his new environment, like so many other immigrant artists, so his art is a reflection of his own personal understanding. This displacement from his homeland was continuously channeling a deeper sense of connection to his roots through art, despite the physical distance.

“The Legend of Sese-Eribo” speaks of secrets, silence, and sacrifice. In the book

“The Afro-Cuban Abakuá: Rhythmic Origins to Modern Applications”, author Donald B.

Truly explains,

Unlike the other symbolic drums (kankomó), the sese is not played at all, not even tapped; instead, the sese is “fed” (given blood), and embodies Sikán (Carabalí Efó princess that exposed the secret and was sacrificed in an attempt to re-summon the voice of Tanze, which was a supernatural fish that possessed the secret of the Abakuá.) The feathers represent her hair, while the drum itself represents her lifeless, dismembered head in that they are both “silent.” In addition, Isué places sacrificial offerings on this drum (a rooster’s head) as another act of silence.141

Boza’s life in Cuba and later in the United States was likely characterized by silence and secrecy, for being both black and gay, a Santero, as well as a Marielito. It is clear that he made a sacrifice by emigrating from his homeland. As is the case with many immigrants, including the participants in the Mariel boatlift, the decision to migrate and the voyage

141 Truly, Donald Brooks. “The Afro-Cuban Abakuá: Rhythmic Origins to Modern Applications.”(2009).

itself were often very painful experiences: “My exodus via Mariel was an unbelievable journey; the ocean, the waves in the middle of the night, made the end seem near.”142

The Stage

“Miami is a melting pot filled with objects that don't want to melt.”

Tom Wolfe, 2012.143

For Ruiz, Selgas, Alfonzo and Boza, –as for all the Marielitos– the immigration process of the Mariel boatlift was very rough and dark. But for them it also represented a challenge that helped the growth and strength of their work. Aside from publishing excerpts of their work in Mariel144, these visual artists were also visible in the cultural scene of the

Cuban diaspora in the United States.145 For the Marielitos, the city of Miami was undisputedly the most important site of arrival and settlement. Miami was also the center of the Cuban-American arts community. Since 1959, Miami was the location for the majority of the Cuban artists immigrating to the United States and the place where solo- shows and group exhibits of Cuban art habitually took place. Artist and art critic Carlos M.

142 Fuentes-Perez et al., 1988. 143 Bob Minzesheimer, “Miami gets Tom Wolfe's 'Blood' going His fashion sense comes in 32 shades of white”, USA Today, October 21, 2012 144 Each of the eight issues of the journal Mariel contains illustrations of at least one visual artist who migrated through the massive exodus of 1980. However, only a total of seven painters are counted because some appear in multiple editions of the publication. Illustrating the magazine were: Juan Boza, Juan Abreu Felippe, Hector Mists, Ernesto Briel, Gilberto Ruiz, Jesus Selgas, and Carlos Alfonzo. 145 It is worth noting that on August 20, 1983, Tercer aniversario/Puente Mariel--Key West, 1980-1983 (Miami: F.A.C.E. Fact about Cuban exile Publisher, 1983) was published. This was a portfolio of drawings made in Key West by Cuban artists Alberto de Lama in 1980, with an essay by scholar Juan M. Clark. The pencil drawings in black and white reflect some of the moments of the landing in the United States of the Mariel boatlift’s immigrants. However, Andres de Lama was a spectator of this exodus, not a part of it. Therefore, although we can say that this book is a first link between this exodus and the visual arts, it is not part of the Mariel Generation’s artworks.

Luis recognizes that many of these painters present in the cultural sphere of Miami were distinct from other exiled Cuban painters, who came to the U.S. at a time other than during

Mariel. As Luis explains, “With another political, ethical and aesthetic look, the so called

‘Marielitos’ began to probe the artistic world of Miami, forcing new galleries along the way to open their doors, where they found their place and the possibility of some recognition.”146 Cuban journalist Gustavo Godoy summarized the situation pre-1980:

“Originally, collectors bought paintings by Cuban Vanguardia artists,147 as a nostalgic gesture (…) such purchases represented national pride and a desire to affirm their identity by displaying Cuban art on the walls of their homes.”148 While it should not be argued that

Cuban artists alone were responsible for Miami’s art scene, it can be said that by 1980 they had transformed the city into an international center of Latin American art:

Artists from the Mariel boatlift not only changed “the artistic world of Miami” but the overall picture of Cuban art in exile. With the arrival of the artists of Mariel, the emergence of the ‘Generation of Miami’149 and of other Cuban artists formed in New York, Chicago and elsewhere, together with the presence of some “old” teachers who left Cuba at different times, an expressive force was generated which praised the importance of the Cuban art in U.S. at the national level. 150

146 Luis, Carlos M. El oficio de la Mirada. Ensayos de arte y literatura cubana. Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1998, 10. 147 Pioneers of the movement included Eduardo Abela, Antonio Gattorno, Victor Manuel, Fidelio Ponce de León, and Carlos Enríquez Gómez. Born around the turn of the century, these artists grew up amidst the turmoil of constructing a new nation, and reached maturity when Cubans were engaged in discovering and inventing a national identity. They fully shared in the sense of confidence, renovation, and nationalism that characterized Cuban progressive intellectuals in the second quarter of the twentieth century. 148 Bosch, Lynette MF. Cuban-American art in Miami: exile, identity and the neo-baroque. Burlington, VT: Lund Humphries, 2004. 149 These are Cuban artists born on the island but educated in the United States, part of the first generation of Cuban exile artists influenced in their formative years by Miami as much as by Cuba. In this group features: Pablo Cano, Mario Bencomo, Maria Brito, Humberto Calzada, Emilio Falero, Fernando Garcia, Juan Gonzalez, Carlos Macia, and César Trasobares. 150 Carlos M. Luis, “Las artes plásticas cubanas en el exterior”, Revista Temas, No.10, 1997, 31.

There were a variety of galleries that specialized in showing the work of Cuban and other Latin-American artists, not only in Miami but in New York and other cities. Some of those that held collective shows of the visual artists of the Mariel Generation in the eighties and nineties were: the University of Miami New Gallery, the Miami-Dade Public Library, the Cuban Museum of Art and Culture in Miami, and the Intar Art Gallery in New York.

In this last one, the exhibition “Ten out of Cuba” stands out. This collective show featured the work of nine artists who arrived in 1980 via Mariel, among them Juan Abreu and

Eduardo Michaelsen. In his forewords to the catalogue, Cuban poet Heberto Padilla (who also emigrated in 1980) notes how the works of the artists have changed: “In the new paintings of these artists known to me in Cuba, stages are skipped and connections are made with unimaginable dimensions. The paintings of each one are now different.”151

Another important financial supporter and promoter of the recent Cuban émigré artists that were Marielitos was the Cintas Foundation.152 The immigration of artists from the island to the United States, such as those who came during the Mariel exodus–including Victor

Gomez, Pedro Damian, Juan Abreu Felippe, Luis Interian, Eduardo Michaelsen, Carlos

Alfonzo, Juan Boza, Andres Valerio, Gilberto Ruiz, and Jose Orbein Perez–serves as an important periodic source of revitalization that contributes to the evolution of Cuban art in the United States. The exhibition “Cintas Fellows Revisited: A Decade After, a collection of work by Cuban artists living outside Cuba” opened on October 1, 1988, and featured

151 Boswell, Thomas D., and James R. Curtis. The Cuban-American Experience. Culture, Images and Perspectives. Rowman & Allanheld Publishers, 81 Adams Drive, Totowa, NJ 07512, 1984. 152 The foundation’s original name, the Cuban Art Foundation, was changed in 1962 to honor its founder Oscar B. Cintas, a prominent Cuban industrialist and former ambassador to the United States. Cintas's foresight has resulted in more than 300 fellowships and grants to creative writers, architects, composers, visual artists, and filmmakers, many of whom have later achieved national and international renown. The Cintas Foundation is the oldest entity in the United States dedicated to the support of artists of the Cuban diaspora.

what guest curator, Giulio V. Blanc, called “the youngest generation of Cuban artists in exile”.153

As how Blanc refers to this group of artists illustrates, the history of Cuban art inside and outside the island is organized and understood by divisions into distinct generations. Continuously, critics, curators, academics, and artists identify the different currents and moments of the Cuban visual arts in terms of generations. Following with this tendency, in the catalogue of the exhibition “Outside Cuba: Contemporary Cuban Visual

Artists/ Fuera de Cuba: Artistas Cubanos Contemporáneos”, mentioned at the beginning of this work, the visual artists within the Mariel boatlift are placed indistinctly among the

Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Generations of the artists of the diaspora. Nevertheless, even here they singled out as a particular group among the rest of these artistic generations:

(…) most of the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Generation artists of the diaspora have been schooled outside Cuba and are presently developing careers in the same circumstances. The exceptions are the artists who came to the United States in 1980 via the Mariel-Key West boatlift: Juan Boza, Carlos Alfonzo, and Gilberto Ruiz. We cannot group these artists generationally in the same aesthetics terms as the previous generations because by virtue of their education and development–and also of the dispersion of Cuban artists and art traditions after 1959–they are part and parcel of today’s American and European art worlds.154

Since the eighties, specialized scholars faced difficulty in placing these artists within a specific artistic generation or aesthetic current. This had strengthened their

Marielitos condition, being as it was the strongest link between them. Regarding this abrupt

153 Cintas Foundation, INC. Cintas Fellow Revisited: A Decade After, a collection of work by Cuban artists living outside Cub. (Metro Dade Cultural Center, Miami, FL.October 1st, 1988). Cintas Foundation, INC. New York. 154 Outside Cuba: contemporary Cuban visual artists. Office of Hispanic Arts, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, 1989.

linkage, renowned art critic Carlos M. Luis said, “In 1980, the Mariel boatlift occurred, which brought to Miami a number of artists of varying quality and scope (...). The effort to find a common denominator among the artists who left Cuba during that exodus, created the concept of the Mariel Generation.”155 This inequality among the visual artists within the Mariel boatlift has brought some uncertainty and irregularity into the studies on the matter, and it is perhaps one of the reasons why there is a lack of attention toward this group in art history literature both in Cuba and outside of the island. As happened with the rest of the Marielitos immigrants, the visual artists of the Mariel Generation are in a sort of limbo between the different generations of the Cuban visual artists, and their only real place seems to be as Marielitos.

Other exhibits were shown with the intention of recognizing the work of these artists as a group specifically, regardless of the differences in their careers. Some of the most important were: Fine Arts Exhibition for the Festival de Las Artes (August 20-21,

1983),156 18 after three (1983),157 and Absolute Mariel: A historic overview 1980-1995

(May 12, 1995).158 In terms of curatorship, these exhibitions showed no other intention or conceptual foundation other than to publicize the work of these artists as Marielitos, and to some extent celebrate their decision to emigrate from the island in search of freedom.

While this could have placed limitations on the careers of these artists, because they were not easily understood as immigrant artists, but as Marielitos only, the different collective shows of the group served to recognize their work in the artistic scene in the United States.

155 Carlos M. Luis, “Las artes plásticas cubanas en el exterior”, Revista Temas, No.10, 1997, 33. 156 At the Tamiami Park, Dade County, FL. 157 Consolidate Bank and the City of Hialeah, Miami, FL. 158 Exposition sponsored by Absolut Vodka, in the South Florida Art Center, Miami Beach, FL.

The last known exhibition that has honored the group is Mariel Always Had Color

(1980-2005)”.159 Twenty-five years after the Mariel boatlift, this exhibition brought together the work of twenty-five visual artists participating in that migratory wave. One of the exhibition organizers, also a painter from the Mariel Generation, Miguel Ordoqui wrote:

The so-called Marielitos came to this land yearning for freedom. Here their inspiration grew as they worked in an environment that was free of the fears and limitations imposed upon them by Castro’s repressive regime. Gradually, the injection of new creative blood invigorated the Cuban exile community and this became more evident in multiples facets of the social, cultural and artistic life of Miami. The fine arts and literature were enriched by a new human and spiritual dimension.160

Nonetheless, is it clear that despite the visibility and success that some of the artists arriving with the Mariel boatlift achieved, they had initial difficulties. As the same Ordoqui expressed in a personal interview for the book Voces del Mariel: Historia oral del éxodo cubano de 1980:

Many of us had to expose our work in the shopping malls. We put the paintings on the floor and that's how we started. It was very hard for Marielitos artists at first. From the “Resart” exhibition, in Hialeah, people became interested in the painters of Mariel.161 Another thing that influenced a lot was the magazine Mariel. People began to think differently from the assumption that the Marielitos killed and were on drugs. We were not like those in the movie Scarface.162 We had a cultural level of overcoming, of creation. In 1983,

159 It was also mentioned at the beginning of this thesis. It took place at the San Carlos Institute, Key West, FL. 160 San Carlos Institute. 2005. Mariel always had color, 1980-2005: 25 cuban artists, 25 years later/ Mariel siempre tuvo color, 1980-2005, 25 artistas cubanos, 25 años después. Key West: San Carlos Institute. 161 I could not find any information about this exhibition in any of the sources consulted. 162 Scarface is a 1983 American crime film directed by Brian De Palma and written by Oliver Stone, a remake of the 1932 film of the same name. This version of the film tells the story of Cuban refugee Tony Montana (Al Pacino) who arrives in 1980s Miami through the Mariel boatlift with nothing and rises to become a powerful drug kingpin.

people begin to change their opinion about the Marielitos. We made several collective exhibitions and they were always fully attended and we sold. People came to me saying: ‘you are a good marielito’.163

The fact that Ordoqui recalls how people approached him telling that he was “a good Marielito” illustrate the stigmatization that the Marielitos suffered while at the same time aim to position the visual artists that were also Marielitos outside of that stigmatization because of their artistic work. However, what Marielito meant–that is, distinct from the established Cuban-Americans–weighed heavily on the visual artists within this exodus. Miami physiologist Jose I. Lasaga, who spent a year studying and aiding the Mariel refugees at the Fort Chafee detention camp in Arkansas, explained that

“in many ways the Marielitos are suffering the same kind of prejudice each new immigrant group faces that distinguishes them from those who had preceded them. But the most painful part is the prejudice against them that comes from fellows Cubans.”164 On the other hand, once the Mariel artists had negotiated the early phases of incorporation into their new spaces, they found that the first waves of artists had created an art market where they were acknowledged and taken seriously.

About this stage of adjustment into the art environment of the United States, and specifically into that of the city of Miami, painter and sculptor Laura Luna, one of the very few women of the Mariel Generation expressed to me: “In the ’80s there was quite an artistic movement in Miami. I found it to be an arid city artistically, but soon Mariel things started happening. Between the Cubans that were already here (before Mariel) with a hunger for culture, and we, the ones who just arrived full of it, the shows in galleries began,

163 Garcia, José Manuel. 2012. Voces del Mariel: historia oral del éxodo cubano de 1980. (Spanish Edition) 164 Fort Chafee Detention Camp’ files at the Cuban Heritage Collection archive.

the meetings and the calls for cultural events. And that was how everything began, by participating in this and that, little by little.”165 Furthermore it called my attention to the fact that even though this particular artist is recognized by all the sources as a Marielita, she was not part of this exodus. Faced with this question she explained,

I reached Miami as a 20-year-old. My father was a longtime political prisoner and the opportunity to leave was presented with the Freedom Flights. We arrived just three months before Mariel. The artistic and other kinds of movements that brought about the phenomenon of Mariel, made many artists bind together under different organizations and groups that wanted to help the new culture that had just been introduced into this city. So I fell into the name “Marielita” without being one. It was a time that signified a beginning for everyone. I've always felt out of place; my group stayed in Cuba, almost all had entered into the ISA. I was not admitted for being the daughter of a political prisoner and for being rebellious. I came here and though I’m not exactly from the Mariel, I was invited and admitted into the group due to the phenomenon of the times that we were living.166

I understand that the situation that Luna described has to do with the fact that by being identified as a Marielita she could join the group of the Mariel Generation and other

Cuban artists who, like her, had studied and developed careers in the visual arts in Cuba and recently immigrated to the United States as adults.

Luna, Ordoqui, Boza, Alfonzo, Selgas, and Ruiz, with the rest of the visual artists within the Mariel boatlift, found that “the other shore” to which they arrived in 1980 was not only that of the U.S., but also the experience of being Marielitos, of being immigrants.

From Cuba “the other shore” was the U.S., and later, from the U.S. it was Cuba. Like a continuous line drawn on their canvases, “the other shore” was always present for them.

165 Part of an informal electronic correspondence between me and the artist, dated November 12, 2015. 166 Ibid.

Conclusion

“En Mariel se comenzó a quebrar, verdaderamente, el muro que cada cubano ha

construído, soportado y transgredido en los últimos cuarenta años.”

Iván de la Nuez. 167

[“In Mariel, the wall that every Cuban has built, supported and transgressed in the last

forty years, truly began to break.”]

Iván de la Nuez.

“No le digan más escoria, que esos son los Marielitos.”

Frank Delgado, “La Otra Orilla” (1992).

[“Do not call them scum any more, those are the Marielitos.”]

Frank Delgado, “The Other Shore” (1992).

Thirty-five years after the Mariel boatlift, the term Marielito continues to have negative connotations. As the newspaper El Pais expressed in its September 13, 2015 edition, “The bad reputation of the Marielitos has diminished, and most Marielitos have integrated into United States society without any problems, but some misgivings toward

167 De la Nuez, Iván. “Mariel en el extremo de la cultura”. Dossier “Homenaje a Mariel”. Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana 8/9, (1998), pp. 105-109.

them can still be perceived. The rafters who arrived in the mid-nineties of the last century, in another boatlift, have a better image, not only in American society but also among the

Cuban community.”168 Nevertheless, in my recent trips to Miami, I found that both

Marielito and Balsero (rafter) are terms commonly and frequently used by the Cuban-

American community to insult or refer contemptuously to other Cubans who, in their opinion, have little education or are unsophisticated. Is precisely because of the importance that the Mariel boatlift has had throughout the history of Cuban immigration in the United States, especially in Miami, that the Cuban Research Institute of Florida

International University invited several experts from various disciplines to reflect on the significance of this historic event for both the United States and Cuba, to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the exodus.169 Panelists discussed key aspects of the Mariel boatlift, such as political education, nationalism, sexuality, immigration politics, literature, and the differences between the “Mariel boatlift” participants and previous Cuban émigrés.

During this event, while speaking about the Mariel Generation, writer and literary critic Jesus J. Barquet claimed that they were a “hinge generation,” situated between an older generation of the Cuban cultural diaspora and the new generation of Cuban-

Americans, the so-called 1.5 or one-and-a-half generation. While the Mariel Generation served as an inter-generational connector, they showed to these other groups of Cuban writers and artists, and to the world “another vision of the reality of the island, characters

168 Luis Barbero, “35 años del gran éxodo del Mariel”, El País, 13 de Septiembre, 2015, Sección Internacional. 169 Participants included historians Lillian Guerra, Abel Sierra Madero, and Julio Capó, Jr.; the literary critics Jesus J. Barquet and Eliana Rivero; social scientists Guillermo Grenier, Hugh Gladwin, Eduardo Gamarra, and Kate Dupes Hawk. It was a free event and open to the public.

and elements that existed in a marginal Cuba.”170 Although no specific reference was made to the visual artists of the Mariel Generation, I still consider them to be a “hinge” for the generations of visual artists that followed them on Cuba, some of whom I mentioned in the

Introduction of this thesis.

Scholarship about contemporary Cuban art assigns to the Generation of the eighties and Generation of the nineties the creation and birth of “new Cuban art.”171 The

Generation of the eighties redefined Cuban culture: for the first time since 1959, art had an existence and a meaning independent of official discourse. More specifically, “the new

Cuban Art” is generally understood to have begun—at least publicly—with the 1981 exhibition Volumen Uno.172 Many of these artists emigrated in the early nineties and even the late eighties. But, once again, the shift from one decade to another was to signal a change in the arts. As was the case with the Mariel boatlift, the migration was so sudden that the artistic scene could have been left barren. But the void was quickly filled by a new group of artists, the Generation of the nineties, that produced a new “new Cuban art” for post-utopian times. 173

Although exhibiting key differences in regard to their artists and formal features of the work, the Generation of the eighties and the Generation of the nineties shared the

170 Jesus J. Barquet. “La Generacion del Mariel” (Conference presented at the seminar “The Mariel Exodus, 35 Years Later: Impacts in the U.S. and Cuba”, Florida International University, Miami, FL, October, 30, 2015.) 171 Important scholars and art critics as Gerardo Mosquera, Luis Camnitzer, and Rachel Weiss coined the phrase “the new Cuban Art” to describe a vast majority of the visual artistic production taking place from 1980 to the present. 172 Which included artists such as José Bedía, Flavio Garciandía, Juan Francisco Elso, and Ricardo Rodriguez Brey. Rufo Caballero, “Los desobedientes se alistan”, in Nosotros, Los Mas Infieles: Narraciones Criticas Sobre El Arte Cubano (1993 - 2005). Comp. Andres Issac Santana (Fundacin Juan March, 2008), 23-27. 173 Weiss, Rachel. To and from utopia in the new Cuban art. University of Minnesota Press, 2011.

same historical circumstances within the history of Cuban migration. And in many ways their visual/artistic reflections of migration and diaspora are as important. In the work of many of these artists, the impact of migratory crises on Cuban society is clear. Although a wide variety of academic studies exist around the migration itself—due to the fact that since 1959 closer to 2 million Cubans have immigrated into the United States—little has been said about the experiences of Cuban contemporary visual artists within these migratory episodes. Even less has been said about the Cuban visual artists that immigrated to the United States within the Mariel exodus in particular. As essayist and art critic Iván de la Nuez stated, “The Mariel is a space in a nondescript dimension of Cuban culture that is yet to be deciphered in many ways.”174 This oversight has several explanations: the Mariel Generation lived a traumatic experience in an extremist Havana, and their departure is the most traumatic in the history of the Revolution, preceded by the sadly notorious repudiation rallies.175 But their insertion into an exiled community and its traditional oligarchy in the world of Miami was also difficult. They were, for various reasons, people alienated because of their ideological positions, sexual orientation, race, religion, or agonizing experience. Nevertheless, De la Nuez explains that the Mariel

Generation was surrounded by a more complex context, which had which somehow has

174 De la Nuez, Iván. “Mariel en el extremo de la cultura”. Dossier “Homenaje a Mariel”. Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana 8/9, (1998), pp. 105-109. 175 Acts of repudiation were first seen in 1980 during the Mariel crisis when Cubans who wanted to leave the country were assaulted verbally and physically by others Cubans citizens, in their neighborhoods and workplaces. Journalist and author Mirta Ojito, also a Marielita, described what she had seen and experienced in an opinion piece for the New York Times (“You Are Going to El Norte”, Published: April 23, 2000): “Mariel marked the first time socialist Cuba turned against itself. The government staged riots called “actos de repudio” -- street rallies, in which neighbors turned against neighbors, harassing and tormenting those who wanted to leave the country. The victims were often pelted with rocks, tomatoes and eggs. Windows were shattered. Doors were knocked down. Some people were killed, dragged through the streets as trophies to intolerance and hate. Sometimes people trapped inside their homes chose to kill themselves rather than face their tormentors.”

affected it study:

To think, however, that Mariel—as a group, as a generation, even as editorial project—has been less accepted in the field of the official Cuban diaspora culture is not only due to racial, class, sexual, or economic prejudices of the traditional Cuban exile until 1980. There are phenomena that make up this kind of non-place of the group members. Phenomena ranging from the left to the right and that have aesthetic, cultural, and political resonances.176

Without ignoring their heartbreaking experiences, it is important to establish balance in the study of these artists. In the future on this investigation, I will further delve into artists' testimonies as well as those of the people close to them. In the present thesis, the analysis of academic literature should prevail due to the fact that some sources are scarce, highly politicized, and biased. This analysis of the works and testimonies of these

Cuban artists illustrates the fact that the exodus of the Mariel did not stop being dramatic and ironic even once the migration process ended. In exile, these visual artists were part of a much larger group of Cubans who were understood as a nuisance for the Cuban-

American community and for U.S. society. Even when the intellectuals and artists of the

Mariel Generation did not directly suffer the stigma of being a Marielito, they did suffer the difficulties and shock that the Mariel immigration wave put into play.

Mariel visual artists confirm the eclecticism and subversive nature that characterized the Mariel Generation, whose imprint was found wherever they settled.

Despite the contrasts in their backgrounds and approaches, these artists, through their work, demonstrate the conflicts not only of the Mariel exodus but also of most Cuban migrations. Such conflict exists between the search for and understanding of the sense of

176 De la Nuez, Iván. “Mariel en el extremo de la cultura”. Dossier “Homenaje a Mariel”. Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana 8/9, (1998), pp. 105-109.

belonging to Cuban culture and the reality of not being in Cuba, but in a totally different context, and the new disaffection that this change implies. The work of these artists is characterized by visual and symbolic structures of the juxtaposition of symbols; the projection of thoughts; the relationship among wildness, affection, and remembrance; the deconstruction of the reality surrounding the artists; and metaphors. For these artists, the

Mariel exodus was not about leaving Cuba, but about not living in Cuba and still feeling like the Mariel boatlift never ended. The experience of the visual artists from the Mariel boatlift continued to fixate on the physical journey as well as the process of the voyage.

This trend, present in many of the works I analyzed, is shared and ties into their experience as immigrants.

This thesis raises potential directions for future research on the migration of all visual artists, not only Cubans. Despite the country-specific focus of this work, I believe that research of these issues could also contribute to the studies of the migration of non-

Cuban visual artists. I imagine this analysis tying to studies of migrations that are not necessarily of Cuban communities by continuing to address and interpret the artists' processes of creation and insertion into the art scene once they've become immigrants; by analyzing the conservation and transformation of their national identity in those processes, and the political and ideological mediations that have affected them; by exploring the historical perspectives on the migration of these artists and their relationships with the processes of recognition and dissemination of the visual art of their countries as they relate to their migration around the world; and by assessing the current and future significance of the time and determination in these artists' acts of emigration within the context of the external migration from their homelands.

Images

Gilberto Ruiz, “The sky is falling”. Oil on canvas. 88 x 153 inches, 1986.

Jesus 'Cepp' Selgas, “Escape”. Acrylic on canvas. 20 X 40 inches. 2009.

Carlos Alfonzo, “Where tears can´t stop”. Acrylic on canvas 95 ¾ x 128 ¼ inches. 1986.

Juan Boza, “The Legend of Sese-Eribo”. Installation: featuring Afro-Cuban imagery and mixed media.1987.

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Biography

From La Habana, Cuba, Jimena graduated with a B.A. in History from the University of Havana in 2009. From 2010 to 2014, she worked at the studio of contemporary Cuban artist Carlos Garaicoa. She became interested in the impact of migration and diaspora on the work of contemporary visual artists, mainly in Cuba.

In 2014 Jimena won a full tuition scholarship and two-year academic stipend for the M.A. program for Latin American Studies at Tulane University. Once there, she also provided research assistance to graduate faculty in Latin American & Caribbean Studies. She belongs to the Latin American Graduate Organization at Tulane University.

In May of 2015 Jimena was awarded with the Tinker Foundation & the Stone Center for Latin American Studies Graduate Field Research Grant, for summer travel to Miami, Florida to conduct archival research at the Cuban Heritage Collection in the University of Miami.