Abstract
According to sociologist B.E. Aguirre, at the height of the Mariel refugee crisis, most Americans believed that the newly arrived Cubans were “young, black, unmarried and that they were shiftless and dangerous people: prostitutes, homosexuals, mental defectives, and thugs.” While this stereotype would stigmatize the larger group of Mariel Cubans and serve as the legal foundation for serve as the legal foundation for EXCLUDING OR EVEN IMPRISONING SIGNIFICANT NUMBERS OF THE MIGRANTS, it was not inevitable that the new arrivals would be understood in this way. This article explores how regional resettlement facilities in Florida, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin became crucial sites in the social and cultural negotiation of the status of Mariel Cubans, as well as how refugee women, in particular, became inextricably linked to arguments levied in the principle debates and controversies concerning Mariel resettlement.
Ongoing issues in the camps like prostitution heightened the perceived criminality and undesirability of refugees and contributed to the spectacle of sex-centered disorder, specifically non-normative expressions of sexuality. Moreover, after Cubans were consolidated in Arkansas, the focus pivoted to Fort Chaffee’s large group of pregnant women, repeatedly distinguished as a hard-to-sponsor, “leftover” demographic. Perceptions of criminality, sexual nonconformity, and suspicions of becoming an economic burden contributed to Cuban women’s undesirability, racialization, and the increasingly militarized climate in which they resided. This article contends that “disorder” centrally involving refugee women helped to construct a new racialized understanding of Cuban refugees that challenged previous assumptions about Cuban exiles’ whiteness, “Americanness,” and exceptional status among Cold War immigrants.