Marielito

The second wave of Cuban immigrants to the United States. The term “Marielito” applies to 125,000 Cubans who fled to the United States from the Cuban port of Mariel as part of the Mariel boatlift in 1980. Most of the people were black, unskilled, mentally ill, homosexuals, criminals, and generally poor. Some people in Cuba say that the day the Marielitos left was the day Cuba “flushed the toilet.”
Initially the refugees were seen as a “Latin American problem” by the Carter administration. Eventually, President Carter grittingly welcomed them with “open arms.” The Mariel immigrants were confronted by nativist backlash among white Americans and racial conflicts emerged within their own refugee community. Their compatriot predecessors had been white, well educated, and came from Cuba’s upper and middle classes.