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CUBAN-JEWISH JOURNEYS: SEARCHING FOR IDENTITY, HOME, AND HISTORY IN MIAMI. By Caroline Bettinger-Lopez, with a foreword by Ruth Behar. (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2000. Pp. 277. $40.00 cloth, $15.00 paper.)
THE CUBAN EXILE MOVEMENT. DISSIDENTS OR MERCENARIES? By Hernando Calvo and Katlijn Declercq. (Melbourne and New York: Ocean Press, 2000. Pp. 183. $16.95 paper.)
CUBAN MIAMI IN HAVANA USA: CUBAN EXILES AND CUBAN AMERICANS IN SOUTH FLORIDA, 1959-1994. By Maria Cristina Garcia. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Pp. 290. $48.00 cloth, $18.95 paper.)
CUBAN MIAMI. By Robert M. Levine and Moises Asis. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2000. Pp. 148. $32.00 cloth.)
SECRET MISSIONS TO CUBA: FIDEL CASTRO, BERNARDO BENES, AND CUBAN MIAMI. By Robert M. Levine. (New York: Palgrave, 2001. Pp. 323. $29.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.)
IN THE LAND OF MIRRORS: CUBAN EXILE POLITICS IN THE UNITED STATES. By Maria de los Angeles Torres. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999. Pp. 233. $45.00 cloth, $18.95 paper.)
BAY OF PIGS: AN ORAL HISTORY OF BRIGADE 2506. By Victor Andres Triay (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001. Pp. 200. $24.95 cloth.)
The adaptation of post-1959 Cuban migrants in the United States has been a uniquely public affair. From this migration stream's earliest days with the failure of the Bay of Pigs operation to the more recent controversy over the immigration status of Elian Gonzalez, the nation has watched, and analyzed, the adaptation of Cuban emigres more closely than it has that of other recent migration streams. Central to this emerging Cuban American identity is the concentration of the majority Cuban origin and ancestry peoples in the United States in and around one cityMiami-built anew by the presence of Cuban migrants.
Although the specifics of Cuban migrant adaptation are often assumed rather than analyzed, it is fair to say that they have achieved political and economic success more rapidly than other contemporary migrant populations. One piece of evidence to support this assertion of a rapid adaptation of Cuban emigres is the sizable scholarship on the Cuban American experience that has appeared relatively quickly after the beginnings of large-scale Cuban migration in the 1960s. The books under review here represent a second generation of this scholarship, following in the footsteps of comparative social...