Fabiola Santiago: ‘Not even 10 Obamas can fix this country’

“Not even 10 Obamas can fix this country.”

— A young Cuban woman in Havana


A new generation of Cubans — with some access to dollars, connected via cellphones, and emboldened by Cuba’s liberalized travel policies — is leaving the island for Miami in droves.

Some call them “the reggaeton generation,” twenty- and thirty-somethings buying plane tickets to Ecuador, trekking through seven countries, and presenting themselves at the U.S.-Mexico border with the only visa they need: “Soy cubano.”

By land (those who can afford airfare, bribes, coyotes) and by sea (the poorer and bolder), young Cubans have been arriving in growing numbers since President Barack Obama launched a process to “normalize” relations with Cuba last December. But they had been trickling in via Ecuador and other third countries for months, even years, before the historic shift in U.S.-Cuba policy.

Rapprochement has only hastened what was already steamrolling — the desire to leave the island, now made more urgent by the fear that immigration policy favoring Cubans will change. This fear is not a “media talking point,” as a hard-line lobby group charges. I know this because I have interviewed some of the recent arrivals and followed their lives. They stay connected with Cuba, and help others back home make the crossing.

When the administration, hoping to stem the flood, issued an urgent press release earlier this year saying that there were no plans to change the Cuban Adjustment Act or the wet-foot, dry-foot policy, I laughed.

Too little, too late.

These young Cubans grew up seeing relatives leave the country. They want a share of the Cuban-American pie, too. Only they don’t want exile. They want U.S. residency and the right to return to Cuba whenever they want. They’re not here to talk politics and denounce the Castro government (although some do).

Watch Spanish-language television news reports and behold reporters and talk-show hosts dutifully following the old script and trying to get members of this generation to say that they’ve been repressed, that they hate the Castros, etc. Watch the immigrants wiggle out of the question. They know the rules: You lay low, you return with open doors.


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