Florida and the boat lift of 1980. The first 20 days, discuss how the state of florida handled the arrival of over 30,000 cuban refugees in key west in less than a month. The authors discussed the socalled mary aletos the first wave of over 120,000 cuban immigrants in 1980 and the impact theyd had on the political and social culture in florida. This session from the bob graeme center of Public Service from the university of florida is about an hour. Welcome to the bob graham center. Thanks for being here this evening. Youve got a very Interesting Program for you on mare yall and we have three great fine scholars and speakers here this evening with us. I want to thank our partners for the collaboration with us on this event tonight. Im the director of the bob graham center. And our speakers this evening are kathleen. Their book is entitled florida and the poet lift of 1980. And they will discuss the political, legal, and administrative response to the crisis and recount how local and state agencies who with volunteers provided food and other sources. Theyll speak for about 40 minutes all together. And then well open it up for a discussion and conversation with you we have a microphone here for your availability. And we welcome you to talk and ask any questions about the muriel boat lift, the cubanamerican experience. Or the new Diplomatic Initiative involving the United States and cuba. Our moderator this evening is dr. Gera, a distinguished member of the department of history and professor of cuban and caribbean history, the author of three books. We greatly appreciate her being here this evening. And without further ado ill let our panelists take control of the evening. Thank you for being here. A privilege to be here. Thank you for coming. Thank you for the time this morning and over the weekend to get to know the two authors. I think they have a great deal to teach us that is new. I want to start with a few introductory remarks to get us to remember what the boat lift was about. And also to highlight how unique the contribution is to this book. What became known began in april of 1980. On a particular day in april, very difficult name to pronounce somebody we dont remember at all, was really responsible for the event that took place. The very long event. On this day, he drove a bus full of a handful of friends and family through the gates of the peruvian embassy. Within hours to the shock of the castro government, to the shock of the world 10,800 people all random people from the streets of havana decide to go to the grounds of the peruvian embassy. Some of them are family members of mind cartoonists professors, random workers, people off of the street, people who came with their families, people who came by themselves suddenly showed up on the grounds of the embassy and sought political asylum, 10,800 people packed. They sought political asylum not from peru but from the United States. Most of us think of the boat lift of 1980 as a generated event. He was born with that decision of that man. And while surely the majority of the thousands who showed up that day definitely did act spontaneous spontaneously, what this book shows is how and why it was not a spontaneous event from the perspective of the cuban government. What eventually brought them to the u. S. Shores was the product on the part of the outcasters government, so the book argues, to consolidate National Security interest in unique and unprecedented ways by positioning themselves and influencing the cuban exile, political culture that they have never been able to do prior. So reasons for this that i would give the background, due to the fact of 1978 to 1980, represented a wakeup call to the castro regime. As a result of unpresident ed negotiations with jimmy carters administration, the result were three one, the United States and cuba created consulates in each others countries which was unprecedented since they shut down diplomatic relations in december of 1960. Secondly, 3,000 Political Prisoners were freed from cubas jails. And third,ble and probably most importantly, exiles had been declared enemies of the state and noncubans to return to their families. These processes showed the cuban citizenry that had limited isolation from alternative forms of news and perspectives not controlled by the communist state class or surveillance agencies in really surprising ways. To put it bluntly, a lot of people had not questioned the Exile Community and what the exiled experience was, the representation of the external reality to cuba suddenly came facetoface with it in the form of their own family members and in many long conversations. So when they come to the United States in that context in 1980 were also very much a shock though the system in cuba and in the United States. But very different than cuban exiles. One thing, 25 of them at least selfidentify as black or monongal versus 23 of exiles to the United States. They also came from largely working class backgrounds, a lot of them had benefitted from the revolution in other ways. They also did not necessarily see our own revolutionary policies were being bad or taboo. They were shocked to discover those were taboo subjects in miami to talk about the universal access through Free Health Care and education was something that made the revolution seem good and therefore not really acceptable position to take in my mind. So what is important about the book in many respects that in many ways, these divisions, they already were there in miami, could be exploited and were deliberately exploited by the regime. In particular they had three goals in making it possible for them to happen. The humans of the United States that exiles have until they enjoyed. Second all those who remain in cuba. Its what the officially recall from castro. They were criminals, they were people who didnt want it to be living next door to. And sending people from cubas jails are part of that. A small minority of 125,000. A important visible part of that. The third goal in the book highlights most provocatively i think, of the cuban government is that the others attended a primary objective was to deliberately create and help to craft new divisions of newly arriving and the existing exiles. By planting agents of Security Forces along them in miami. Posing for refugees when they were not. The book provided opportunities to do far more in terms of the cuban governments perspective. Far more of the would be dissidents or release tensions on an island as previous embarkations. They had attitude and political culture that defined the community. So, my questions for the authors are three. Theyre not very provocative. First, how did you get involved in it . What do you think the lessons are for the u. S. . Secondly, pointedly, with respect to the last argument made by the book, your book demonstrates that the human government use it not just to empty the jails of criminals or get rid of disabled people or ark logically citizens. The cuban government used it as a way to consolidate National Security interests for the cuban government. How did it happen . And did it succeed . Ladies and gentlemen, can you hear me . At the time of the boat lift my partner was a Seventh Day Adventist cuban missionary nurse. All of our employees were cuban. I spoke very little spanish. But we managed. When the visitation started in the late 70s where they could visit relatives in cuba and they could bring clothing and goods and money, we got very involved obviously, because our employees were involved and it was the first time and they wanted to visit their relatives. So we sponsored a lot of them and we sent a lot of clothing and we sent a lot of money down to go with them to the families. As things progressed. And of course everybody was excited about that. And they thought that was the beginning of opening things up. There were two schools of thought at that time. That was you had your Cuban Community, that predominantly White Community in miami that really did not want to open relationships with cuba. And you have the people who did want to go and visit open relationships with cuba. So it became a difficult situation. Daybyday, we watched what was going on. And cuba embassy was first in 1980 that the Caribbean Embassy kind of blew up, castro got very upset because the people who broke through the gates, there was a shooting. There were a couple of deaths, and castro insisted that the embassy return eded those refugees to cuba. The embassy refused. Castro got upset with the fact that they did not do this. He and Michael Manley and he were good friends. He made the comment were going to turn this shit on to the United States and thats what they did. So america in its own way is naive. What was happening was in the background i had the opportunity to work with pinaro. He was a double agent. He was a cia and dgi agent part of the travel group who worked with the havana tour, one of the travel organizations in miami. And pinaro knew that part of his job was watching all of these people who visited miami and who visited cuba. They would do a doszier on everybody. They would figure out how you spent your money, what pushed your buttons. That was part of what they were doing. What they were doing was part of what has come to be known as the atill la plan or the plan that castro sponsored to basically undermine the United States, to relieve themselves through economic pressure internally. So how we got involved was one weekend after the boat started to come, my partner and i volunteered to go down to key west. We met a gentleman named dr. Armon doe cruz. And where we went was an old uso building being used for the chamber of commerce for the lower keys. The day we got there it was a horrible storm and there were 300 or 400 mean milling around. But there were alstons of volunteers in the area. We kind of had a feeling things were not going well. Dr. Armando cruz told us he was an archaeologist at one point in time working on the rio doing some archaeological work when he happened upon what he appeared to be a storage area or some political things that were going on and was arrested, refused to give his work to castro. And what we later discern from dr. Cruz was that was where they were storing all of the missile fuel and the missiles were, in fact, underground. So we met this gentleman. And arturo cogo. And we found he was also a double agent he was a cia agent working with the Miami Police Department elite intelligence unit. And so this is my first experience. Its on in a puddle in the in the had a lot of volunteers. We sort things out. We saw there werent many refugees at the time. And we heard that things were building up. So he went home. The following tuesday i got a call from the head of the department of rehabilitating services, dr. Jim howell asking if my partner and i could come back down there. This is a part that was going to be a really big thing. And the federal government was not going to get involved. It kind of and the state wasnt sanctioned so that the state was told that their expenses may not be paid and could my partner and i go down there and coordinate all of the medical services until the federal government could come in and take over. And thats kind of how we got down there. As the days went by it was we were there for 20 days which is what the book is about. In that 20 days, we processed 32,000 refugees. Among those 32,000 refugees, one day arturo came to me and said i have to tell you about something that happened last night. And i said what happened last night . And he said i detected a spy that i know. He said im not sure whats going on. But i detected him. His name was rivas. And as it turned out, the gentleman had been trained by the russians to poison the mississippi. So thing started to get crazy. The governor called out the National Guard. We had a whole bunch of volunteer doctors down there who had no licenses. And so Armando Armando montes who was a bay of pigs veteran, as was covo, as was dr. Cruz, dr. Montez colonel montez got really upset and said, were not too sure if the cuban doctors should be practicing down here. So he went to the navy. The navy gave them a harder time. The governor went to the white house to get permission from the cuban doctors to practice in key west in processing the refugees. And we had a riot. And in the riot, it was about 500 people in this chamber of commerce. By now, we know that a lot is going on. The riot so much confusion about who was going where. There were families around and it was raining and we didnt have very much food. And they got into a riot. Pogo got up on the table and talked about an impassioned way how he you know, it was his country like it was their country and he knew it was very confusing, but that he loved his countries. He stood up on the table and sang about the Cuban National anthem. All of the refugees sang with them. Well, that was involved and another riot over food. And at that point, a priest showed up. Once again, things are going on. This is not a simple thing that is happening. Priests showed up and stood on the front of the jeep. He is telling everybody, calm down, everything is going to be fine, and that point, he passed away a few months ago but was the governors Administrative Assistant and basically put in charge of all of this information. So ron went out there and ordered the National Guard to go buy all of the cigarettes and all of the candy that he could find and they brought it back and everybody settled for a little while. But then arturo and jose got into an argument about not you know this, was not a political issue. He had no right to sing the Cuban National anthem. He had no right to do any of that. And they were going to go to a a kind of what we did. What did we learn . What was happening at that time . We learned that many of the people who were coming were spies. A lot of people came to the embassy, he came to the industry without their shoes. Castro took their shoes because he didnt want him to take any cuban with him. So there were initially, thats what was happening. Also what was happening was with us, napoleon, who as it turns out was a captain in the cuban intelligence had been chosen to basically start the boat lift by fidel castro. And one day on wqva, he announced that the port of muriel was open and anybody could take their boats down there and they could retrieve their relatives. That started at the boat. They sent one boat down there along with everybody else. And, of course, what we were doing was totally illegal. And in violation of u. S. Laws. So retrospectively, we learned that he was a cuban agent and my contention, what we learned from this was that castro had a plan plan the plan when he couldnt get him to lift the embargo, he opened the gates. Did you want to add anything to that . Yes, a few things. Microphone. It has to be green. It was green so is it working . A few things to explain. You know he was an agent and the role that he plays is after the events of the embassy. Because as has been explained here, when castro removed the guards from the embassy to pressure the embassy, to return the people that he crashed into the gate was like saying, okay you dont get me back those people, then i will take the guards out and you will see that there will be a number of others getting to the getting to this embassy. What happened was the government that was surprised in a few hours that close to 11,000 people were standing around like this. There was no space. Of course, thats when the embassy asked for International Help to deal with the situation because they stood their ground and they were not going to release anyone trying to seek. Its part of the refuge in the embassy if they argue that they have political differences. So they ask for help and a number of embassies begin to help. They bring food and supplies and they help. A number of people were caught and they were hurt. This lasted days and days. There were thousands of other people surrounding the place trying to get in. Theres no way of getting in. Theres no space. Eventually they ask for help so they can send the people for countries to take the individuals that are running to come to the embassy. Were willing to take some of his people. The whole thing to allow them to go. Eventually they are allowed to go. Of course this is soon playing havoc with the regime of the image of the regime in latin america people, many of them were black, poor and humble. So the people who supposedly the new man, the revolution the new men that the revolution had created were voting with their feet. And thats where theyre coming through the scene. So there were a number of people to castros house. And there is a meeting where the we say we can help with that. We open a port just like a port in the 60s where the cuban government allowed for months, a period four weeks. To pick up relatives. Back in the early 60s. This idea was accepted by castro. Heres a person who, of course was known within the community, was known to be a socalled good had a newspaper. People thought he was on the side of cuban humility. And so what happened there is we cant look at whats happening. By this time the castro regime had announced that they would take all of the people and whoever would want to meet cuba to goat to the port of maria. Would be sent there. And where relatives to go and pick up their relatives there. And so thats how it started. Went to the Radio Station and say the people are suffering. They dont have enough food. And in some cases theyll be beaten. And we cant allow this. We have to to, in fact, go and pick them up. In fact, he left the first three, four boats to maria. And he when, of course, this is part of the operation, when, in fact he was given some of family members. Thats when the stampede began. The guard wrote its illegal. A lot of the things that happened was when family members get there, to get their members the family they would be forced to take other people they know. And i