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The second American century has begun like the first: with U.S. attention riveted on Puerto Rico and Cuba.
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![]() Miami cops mop up after Cuban-American post-raid violence.
Vieques, Miami: by Ana Simo MAY 9, 2000. The operations to extract Elian Gonzalez from the home of his Miami relatives, and to evict protesters from the Navy bombing range in Vieques, Puerto Rico, had more in common than Janet Reno, U.S. Marshals, and foreign-flag-waving crowds of American citizens. Both are cautionary tales about what can happen when the United States swallows other nations, whether they're virtual, as the Cuban-American nation-state of Miami, or real, as Puerto Rico, a colony of the United States.
Two Sides of the Same Colonial Coin Cubans who came early fleeing Castro's 1959 revolution, itself partly a reaction to the U.S. stranglehold on the island, saw themselves not as immigrants, but as a nation in exile. Two generations and several exile waves later, this remains the official party line in Miami, even if, as with socialism in Cuba, it appears to be largely ritualistic. While the exiles' effect on Cuba's internal politics is almost nil, their local impact in Miami is more tangible: the Cuban nation-in-exile has quietly transmogrified itself into a virtual nation within the American nation, courtesy of Fidel Castro's political longevity and U.S. foreign-policy paralysis. Their intransigence in the Elian extravaganza, has made the "American" attached by hyphen to "Cuban" almost sound like an afterthought, less an embrace of American democratic valuesfree speech, in the first placethan a license to carve out a foreign enclave on American territory.
Similar Delusions
In particular, the secessionist farce in Miami should give pause to both Puerto Ricans imagining that statehood will give their nation more autonomy, and to the handful of mostly Democratic, vote-hungry politicians who have cynically paid lip service to this idea from the safety that improbability affords them. As recent events in Miami prove, if Puerto Rico became the 51st state, its bubbly ideal of nationhood may well be burst by Washington with the barrel of a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun long before federalism kills it. The spectacle in Vieques, on the other hand, should prod Cuban-Americans into considering the larger picture. That is, can they truly stomach a post-Castro Cuba tethered to the U.S. through them (the Trojan Horse effect), now that they're finally being downsized to what they've always really been: J.A.D.M. just another damn minority. The time may have come for them to dump their delusional Cuban-American nation in Miamias delusional as the Puerto Rico nation-stateand embrace with a vengeance their U.S. minority status. With their relative wealth, political savvy, and single-minded energy, Cuban-Americans could help redefine "minority" and "immigrant" for the good of the entire country. Haitians and other disenfranchised minority groups who enviously watch the Miami Cuban-Americans thumb their nose at Uncle Sam (a sport that Fidel Castro excels at) may be tempted to copycat. Don't. You should pick and choose: there's a lot that is admirable in the Cuban-American approach (self-centeredness, ambition, hard-work, entrepreneurial talent, political participation) and a lot that is less than admirable (intolerance, lack of empathy for the plight of others, authoritarianism, homophobia, and, yes, racism). Cuban-American themselves should pick and choose.
The Trojan Horse gallops both ways.
Advice to Washington: relinquish the two damned islands. Let Bill Gates charge on alone. Related links:
For up-to-the-minute info on Vieques protests go to Vieques Libre.
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