The Mariel Boatlift, The Cuban Exodus

In the United States [edit]

The Mariel boatlift had its origins circa 1977 during a period when relations between Cuba and the United States were improving. The Carter administration established an Interest Section in Havana and the Cuban government reciprocated by establishing an Interest Section in Washington, D.C.. Cuba subsequently agreed to the release of several dozenpolitical prisoners and allowed Cuban Americans to return to the island to visit relatives—a privilege that had been denied previously to Cuban citizens living abroad.

Initially, the Carter administration had an open-arms policy in regard to Cuban immigrants. Cubans were immediately granted refugee status and all the rights that went with it. Additionally, public opinion towards Cuban refugees was initially favorable.

This situation changed when it was discovered that the refugees included criminals and mental patients. Castro arranged for the inclusion of criminals and the mentally ill among the political and economic refugees in order to rid Cuba of undesirables and to damage the image of Cuban exiles.^{[citation needed]} This included homosexuals, such as the poetReinaldo Arenas, as homosexuality was generally considered a mental illness at the time. United States media accounts such as a May 11, 1980 New York Times article, and the 1983 movie Scarface, suggested that the refugees consisted largely of undesirables.^{[citation needed]}

This heightened tensions between the United States and Cuba.^[1]

In Cuba [edit]

In November 1978, the government of Fidel Castro met in the City of Havana with a group of Cubans living in exile, where the government acceded, among other important decisions, to start authorizing Cuban exiles to visit their relatives on the island as early as January 1979.

Prelude [edit]

In May 1979 a bus carrying several people crashed through the gates of the Peruvian embassy in the upscale Havana suburb of Miramar. This was the first of several instances of forced entry into the Venezuelan and Peruvian Embassies that took place between 1979 and early 1980 by groups of people seeking political asylum.

The use of vehicles as battering rams was common. The general population did not have access to a foreign mission without express consent of the authorities.^[2