From Refugees to Model Minorities: Cuban-Americans and the Media in Miami, 1960-1970

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Navarrete, Jeanine
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the emergence of competing ideological narratives about the Cuban community in Miami in the period from 1960 to 1970 in two major sources of print media, the Miami News and the Miami Herald, and nationally circulated periodicals ranging from the Saturday Evening Post to U.S. News & World Report. National periodicals reflected the public relations campaign undertaken by the Cuban Refugee Program and USIA, and printed celebratory stories about the economic and social assimilation of Cuban Americans that cast them as a model minority and counterpoint to the perceived breakdown of American values and the excesses of the Cold War establishment that culminated in the late 1960s. Conversely, in the Miami press, the growing Cuban exile community caused frequent panic about the city's cyclically depressed economy, the labor unrest that exacerbated racial tensions, and the challenge posed to Anglo cultural and racial hegemony by non-English speakers.

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