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Haitian Exodus: Refugees in Southern Florida
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14218 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
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7 / 1988 |
3,822 Words |
| Author
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Joan Flocks and Robert Lawless
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Most North Americans' knowledge of the Haitian people has been conditioned primarily by three news stories of the 1980s. The most recent focused on the end of the thirty-year Duvalier dynasty with the February 1986 ouster of Jean-Claude Duvalier, son of the infamous François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, and the subsequent Haitian efforts to develop a democratic government. Another concerned the alleged connection between Haitians and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). The third was mostly limited to news about those Haitians in South Florida who came to be known in the media as "boat people."
With the installation in February 1988 of a government nominally headed by a civilian president, most of the reporting of political news from Haiti has disappeared from the North American media. In 1985, Haitians were removed from the Center for Disease Control's list of groups with high susceptibility to AIDS. And although Haitian boat people still journey to the shores of South Florida, the media rarely herald their arrival anymore.
Those Haitians already settled in South Florida have become a permanent feature in the kaleidoscopic immigrant population of the United States. They and their children will continue to contribute to the changing American national complexion and to provide a link between the oldest republics in the Western Hemisphere.
Haitian migration to the United States did not begin with the arrival of the "boat people" in the late 1970s and early 1980s. During the U.S. Marine occupation of Haiti from 1914 to 1934, many members of the Haitian intelligentsia sought socioeconomic and political freedom in New York City and other northern American cities. By the late 1930s, a community of about five hundred Haitians thrived in New York City. Some even participated in the Harlem Renaissance movement.
The United States, however, still did not become a favored host country for Haitian migrants until the late 1950s, after François Duvalier came to power. Members of the small, nonrepresentative upper and middle classes then began to flee from direct economic and political repression under the dictatorship. During the next two decades, with the continuation of Duvalier's reign, characteristics of the migrant flow broadened to include members of the poorer rural and urban classes. Until the 1970s, however, most of this migration was still directed toward the northern cities of New York, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia.
Events in Haiti during the 1970s, such as two major droughts and the closing of several mining and manufacturing industries, increased the economic pressure on the Haitian people. For Haitians, migration to other countries historically has represented a way of alleviating economic and political disparities. Poorer migrants who did not have the money or the connections to obtain documentation and airfare to the United States or France, but who still needed a way out, had traditionally migrated to Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and the Bahamas. But because of the changing political and economic scenery in those three countries, this migration became restricted. For many years, Cuba has not welcomed Haitian refugees. The Dominican Republic and the Bahamas began to expel Haitians in the early 1970s.
Although some migration to French Guyana, Martinique, and Guadeloupe had also occurred,
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