Mariel’s past is an act of repudiation
The Mariel Port, located east Havana is being passed off to foreigners as a new investment opportunity. For Cubans, that port is a reminder of an orgy of hate-whether real or simulated – against the good neighbors next door.
The theatrical group Akuara is currently presenting in Miami, the play “Eggs” written by Matanzas native Ulises Rodríguez Febles, inspired by the acts of repudiation generated around 1980 as a consequence of the Mariel boatlift and which continue to the present day in Cuba.
Throwing eggs to the very people whom Fidel Castro had encouraged to leave the country if they did not like his revolution, was one of the relentless deeds among the unfettered compulsive mass attacks, often spurred on by fear on the part of the attackers, a Castro rehash of Mao Tse Tung’s methods during the Cultural Revolution in China.
Shortly before, in slightly more than 72 hours, 10,800 Cubans were crammed inside the gardens of the Embassy of Perú in Havana, after an incident in which a guard had died at the headquarters and which motivated the government to remove the sentries. Castro himself was slow to accept it, and once he did, he also called off the watch at the port of Mariel, where the exiles could arrive with their boats to pick up their relatives.
What Castro hid from them and from the world was that in order to sail back from Mariel, they would also have to carry on board some of the country’s most hardened criminals and the mentally ill, hastily removed from prisons and asylums. These were social scourges willing to admit to their social ills in order to obtain a pass at the police station with clearance to board one of the boats.
Those were allowed to go with ease. But for the others who were truly fed up with the socialist paradise, Castro made sure that they never forgot the price they would have to pay for their decision.
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