At War in Miami

Barrels in the newly opened Habana Supermarket sprout stalks of green sugar cane; others are filled with hot peppers, avocados, rice and black beans. Spanish-language newspapers and magazines abound on the newsstands, and the air is pungent with the aroma of steaming black coffee. The sight of Cuban women in hip-hugging skirts and slacks is savored by Latin loungers on every streetcorner. Tickets for the bolita, an illegal lottery, are discreetly sold under the counter. The scene might well be Havana's Prado. But it is actually downtown Miami.

"They Just Want a Job." Miami has more than 80,000 refugees from Castro's Cuba, and others are arriving at the rate of 2,000 a week. Obviously, they pose economic and social problems to the community. But the Cubans themselves are more anxious than anyone else to help solve those problems. Back home, many of them were industrious, upper-middle-class citizens, with pleasant homes, cars and solid bank accounts. In Miami and other U.S. cities where they have settled, they are living on the frayed edge of poverty. They have gratefully accepted Government handouts--but they are unwilling to live permanently as public wards. "The one thing you notice." says Edmund Cummings, head of the Catholic Relief Service's resettlement division, "is their willingness to work. They just want a job, whether it be as a porter or a dishwasher. They know they have to start at the bottom of the totem pole."

In the wall-to-wall resort hotels and restaurants along Miami Beach, most of the busboys are now Cubans. A former army officer runs a boardinghouse. shares a single bedroom with four members of his family. A onetime accountant mixes chemicals on the night shift of a local plant. Ramon Rasco, once a prominent Havana lawyer, makes the Miami rounds in his battered old Chevrolet station wagon each day, collecting clothes for a dry cleaner. His wife Emilia has learned to cook--in Havana she had three servants --and the two eldest of her six children go to special English classes to make things easier for them at public school. In her drab apartment over a garage, Emilia Rasco keeps smiling. "We are free," she explains. "I am happy to be here--in spite of all this."

Proud Refusals. The refugees accept food and money (about $100 a month for an average family) from the busy relief center operated by the U.S. Health. Education and Welfare Department, but most of them proudly refuse private charity, and Miami HEW headquarters receives an average $10,000 a month in relief money that is returned by Cuban refugees who have found steady work. Cuban businessmen avoid making appointments at lunchtime--to spare themselves the embarrassment of being unable to reach for the check. In public, the refugees are almost always neat and well turned out. "If a Cuban woman has a good dress--even her only dress--she'll wear it," explains a male Cuban refugee. "If she has to wear rags, you won't see her in public."

Inevitably, there have been complaints from Miamians. But despite charges to the contrary, the city's crime rate has actually declined in the past year, even though the refugee population has nearly tripled. Some home-grown Miamians, both Negro and white, grumble that an American woman with four children can get only $81 in relief each month, while a Cuban mother of one can draw up to $85. Explains Art Lazell, director of Miami's Cuban Refugee Emergency Center: "For the Cuban woman, the level of need is greater. You can usually assume the person drawing aid for dependent children has some sort of equity--usually some sort of established home. The Cuban refugee coming here has little more than she can carry in a suitcase."

"How Much You Pay?" The Cubans have competed fiercely, especially with the city's Negroes, for menial jobs. Negro domestics have started a slanderous whispering campaign, admitting that Cuban women will work for less, but claiming they cannot be trusted around husbands in the households where they are employed. A Miami druggist explains another cause for resentment: "A Cuban comes in here and says in broken English. 'How much you pay your soda fountain dishwasher?' I tell him. and he offers to work for half as much."

Efforts to resettle the refugees in other sections of the U.S. have been unsuccessful, even though job opportunities are often better outside Miami. There are an estimated 15,000 Cuban refugees in New York. 2,000 in Chicago, 400 in New Orleans. But the vast majority prefer to stick together in Miami, even if it means privation. The climate, they point out, is similar to Cuba's--and, looking toward the happy day when Fidel Castro is gone, Miami will be only a short distance from home. Says Laureano Batista Falla, president of the exiled Christian Democratic Party: "What distinguishes them from other refugees that have to come to the United States is that they are here to fight to go back. They did not come here to settle down and live comfortably. Many of them could still be perfectly comfortable in Cuba, in a materialistic way. They escaped moral disintegration. Especially they feared for their children. They are at war."

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