Exploring the Lived Experience of Post-1990 Cuban Entrants

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Cuban immigrants' experiences in the United States following the 1959 revolution and during the preceding decades cannot be easily captured. Due to vast ideological differences, the entanglement and politicization between the United States and Cuba have played an important role in the different migration waves. Cubans who arrived in the United States in 1959 have been documented in the social work literature as experiencing traumatic effects due to ambiguous loss. Despite this, the experiences of the current generation of Cubans who receive social services equally or more frequently than earlier generations still need to be discovered. The cohort of Cubans who came of age under a communist regime share experiences that are in many ways dichotomous with that of their older predecessors. This study explores the experiences of recent Cuban entrants to the United States and contrasts them with those of their earlier compatriots.

METHODS: Using a phenomenological perspective, I explore the lived experience of 25 adult participants born and raised in Cuba through the 1990s “special period,” the beginning of extreme hardships resulting from the USSR’s withdrawal of financial assistance. Participants were interviewed at their homes or their preferred locations in New York, New Jersey, or Miami. Snowball sampling was used to select the sample. Open-ended interviews lasted 60 minutes or longer and focused on their experiences of leaving Cuba and their adaptation to the U.S. MAXQDA software was used to code details and interesting quotes and facilitate the organization of invariant themes capturing the essence of the experience.

FINDINGS: Findings highlight the motives for leaving Cuba, adapting to the USA, and their continuing ambivalent feelings towards both homelands. They blame “el sistema [the system]” of government for directing every facet of economic, political, and social life. They described how they had to employ a “doble moral [double standard]” to survive. In one case, a social worker described being caught between the government’s insufficient resources and her clients' needs; the government-approved resources were unavailable due to the lack of resources. This ethical dilemma is but one example of the issues participants raised. Living under constant scarcity, with similar dilemmas and complaints about government bureaucracy, shaped their adaptation to the United States. All participants described the need to leave Cuba and all were drawn to the United States by the favorable context of reception; if up to them, many would have chosen a different country to move to. All participants maintain a continuing connection to Cuba.

DISCUSSION: Compared with the earlier cohort, recent Cuban arrivals report a closer connection to their homeland, base their decision to leave on economic and political factors, and share a different history than earlier Cuban cohorts. Like their predecessors, they migrated to the USA because the US welcomed them. Appreciation for the service needs of Cuban American adults has significant social work implications regarding forms of collective complex trauma and loss, which could affect similar displaced groups and also subsequent generations of Cuban-Americans.