Abstract
The Mariel Boatlift of 1980 has not wanted for scholarly, journalistic, and artistic attention over the years. Yet, forty years later, there is much about this traumatic episode in Cuban, Cuban American, Caribbean, U.S. immigration, and South Florida history that remains underexplored or simply unsaid. In this introduction, issue co-editors Michael J. Bustamante and Lillian Manzor describe the aims and contents of this special issue, as well as its origins in the 2020 virtual program El Efecto Mariel: Before, During, and After, at the University of Miami’s Cuban Heritage Collection. They also contextualize its contributions considering previous scholarship. For U.S. immigration policy, race/ethnic relations in South Florida, and Cuban American politics, the multiple, intersecting legacies of Mariel remain highly germane for understanding various aspects of the present. And in Cuba, too, the legacy of Mariel remains painfully alive, as practices of political exclusion associated with 1980—e.g. the “act of repudiation”—have been revived as a prominent feature of Cuban political conflict since 2020.