14ymedio, Havana, 9 December 2023 — “It is a pleasure not to be in a hostile environment, unlike Miami,” American professor Susan Eckstein said this Friday at Casa de las Américas in Havana, amid laughter and the complicity of the public. The author of Cuban Privilege (Cambridge University Press, 2022), a controversial study on the immigration facilities granted to Cubans in the United States, the academic recalled that she was an old friend of Havana.
Eckstein, her hosts celebrated, has developed a “systematic work” to promote “the Cuban Revolution and its impact within the United States,” although – they clarified – always “from her position as an academic in Boston.” Her book has attracted “a lot of attention” from exile, they added, prompting laughter from those present at the allusion to Miami, where a tense presentation of the volume was organized last year.
The professor is not a stranger to “la Casa,” where she was for the first time in the 1970s, she said. “You may know the image on the cover of the book,” said the academic, showing a huge raft dragged by a crowd of Cubans during the so-called Maleconazo of 1994. The photo, which reminded emigrants from Miami of the painful journey between one shore and another, fleeing the desperation of the Special Period, was Eckstein’s starting point to criticize US immigration policies.
Why does Washington allow Cubans to enter and settle in US territory? Because, according to Eckstein, they are “white,” “many” and “millionaires”
Why does Washington allow Cubans to enter and settle in US territory? Because, according to Eckstein, they are “white” – unlike Haitians, she noted – they are “many” – 2.3 million, the majority of whom are in Florida, “the most suitable state to stay in,” she mocked – and they are “millionaires” (several large Florida fortunes belong to Cuban-Americans). To facilitate this entry, the authorities have offered “unprecedented benefits,” the latest of which is the parole program promoted by the Joe Biden Administration.
Washington, the professor added, has always wanted to “overthrow the Cuban Revolution,” and one of the strategies has been to “att