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The Mariel boatlift (Spanish: éxodo del Mariel) was a mass emigration of Cubans who traveled from Cuba's Mariel Harbor to the United States between April 15 and October 31, 1980. The term " Marielito " is used to refer to these refugees in both Spanish and English .
The Cuban government permitted approximately 125,000 Cubans to board a decrepit fleet of boats in Mariel Harbor. Of the 125,000 refugees that entered the United States on the boatlift, around 16,000 to 20,000 were estimated to be criminals or "undesirables" [ 2 ] according to a 1985 Sun Sentinel magazine article.
But looking back on the boatlift in a 2016 interview with El Nuevo Herald, César Odio, who was an assistant city manager in Miami during Mariel, said the chaos helped prepare the area for future ...
The port of Mariel is the nearest port to the United States. In 1980, some 125,000 Cubans left Mariel and went to the United States in what is known as the Mariel boatlift. While many reached the US, several died while traveling through the ocean. Those involved became known as "Marielitos".
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After years of economic decline since the Mariel boatlift, a few thousand Cuban boat people had made their way to the U.S. in 1993 after a rise from a few hundred in 1989. After riots ensued in Havana after threatening speeches made by Castro in 1994, he announced that any Cuban who wished to leave the island could.
President Jimmy Carter had recently accepted Cuban refugees from the Mariel boatlift to enter the United States. The Fort Chaffee Maneuver Training Center had previously been used as a detention center for Vietnamese refugees and Carter negotiated with Arkansas governor Bill Clinton for the use of the center to process Cuban refugees.
Also in 1984, the United States and Cuba negotiated an agreement to resume normal immigration and to return to Cuba those persons who had arrived during the boatlift who were "excludable" under U.S. law. Many members of the Mariel boatlift were met with suspicion by the Cuban American community already living in the United States.