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powerful, local newspaper. The film is now being shot on location
in another part of the country (Associated Press, 1982; Fabricio,
1982a, 1982b; Martinez, 1982f).
Comparison with Previous Cuban Immigrant Groups
New and strange values have been attributed to the recent emigres.
One young man said he and his friends expected to be welcomed as heroes
for the bravery they had displayed in leaving Castro's island, and were
surprised that no one here really seemed to care at all. Others have
said that being in the U.S. is like stepping back in time. They see
U.S. society as being very much like prerevolutionary Cuban society
and feel that they are going backward instead of forward.
According to Martinez (1982d), 2 years have passed since the
immigration and about 30,000 Cubans have not been able to melt into
the great American social melting pot. He writes that a hard core of
refugees "... remain as they were on the day they arrived--poor,
unskilled, uneducated, emotionally fragile, and virtually impossible
to assimilate" (p. la). In the same article, Martinez quotes Portes
as saying that this group suffers as no other previous Cuban group
from stigmatization by both the Cuban and the U.S. governments. A
preliminary report by the Miami Planning Department (Martinez, 1982d)
finds these refugees have created the Cuban slums. All previous Cuban
groups have moved into low rent areas and improved the property values
through their industriousness and enterprise. The planning report
states that the group of Cubans who moved into the Little Havana
section lacks a solid educational background, vocational skills, and