A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement flight returned 161 Cuban deportees to the communist-run island last week, the first time many of the men and women aboard had touched Cuban soil in years.
The Cubans in the article never use the phrase “American dream” or even allude to it.
From a self-interested standpoint, fleeing your extremely poor country to the global hegemon right next door (which does actually support Cuban immigrants some of the time for the purpose of luring more out and also doing red scare shit) makes sense. Even several prominent Republicans are from Cuban families and many more make a big show of supporting them (though there are many holes in this because it’s just for show outside of political coalitions).
The article does the “defector” distortion that these articles always do where they just treat people who flee Cuba, the DPRK, etc. as having basically exactly the same opinions as a conservative of the country that they are fleeing to, when mostly what’s happening is that they don’t want to starve and calculate (with reason) that the best way to do that is to go to the neighboring capitalist hellhole that nonetheless does not suffer from sanctions and such. I disagree with these people, but I think they weren’t behaving senselessly, it just gets misrepresented in a way that you and I know would be senseless by neoliberal media.
Well said. Earlier this year, I was in a Lyft and the driver only spoke Spanish. I can speak some, so I struck up a conversation with him. He was from Cuba, and when I asked about his life there, he said “all bad” and gave a thumbs down. He didn’t specify, but surely the economic situation played a role in his decision to leave. Unfortunately he didn’t give any other info; I would have really liked to hear his perspective
The Cubans in the article never use the phrase “American dream” or even allude to it.
From a self-interested standpoint, fleeing your extremely poor country to the global hegemon right next door (which does actually support Cuban immigrants some of the time for the purpose of luring more out and also doing red scare shit) makes sense. Even several prominent Republicans are from Cuban families and many more make a big show of supporting them (though there are many holes in this because it’s just for show outside of political coalitions).
The article does the “defector” distortion that these articles always do where they just treat people who flee Cuba, the DPRK, etc. as having basically exactly the same opinions as a conservative of the country that they are fleeing to, when mostly what’s happening is that they don’t want to starve and calculate (with reason) that the best way to do that is to go to the neighboring capitalist hellhole that nonetheless does not suffer from sanctions and such. I disagree with these people, but I think they weren’t behaving senselessly, it just gets misrepresented in a way that you and I know would be senseless by neoliberal media.
Well said. Earlier this year, I was in a Lyft and the driver only spoke Spanish. I can speak some, so I struck up a conversation with him. He was from Cuba, and when I asked about his life there, he said “all bad” and gave a thumbs down. He didn’t specify, but surely the economic situation played a role in his decision to leave. Unfortunately he didn’t give any other info; I would have really liked to hear his perspective
Okay yeah that’s totally fair, if the american dream thing there was bs I get it
whoever editorialized that into this story should be shot