Exiles

RULE: __Strengthens the FEAR leg__ · 1961 Bay of Pigs failure – led to widespread fear of opposing Castro - Castro sends all prisoners and mentally ill people to the US, making the US in a way moreso afraid of him and what he is capable of.

__Strengthens the IGNORANCE leg__ · Bay of Pigs allows Castro to create a “fear the US takeover” climate in Cuba · The second wave began in 1961 amid the nationalization of educational institutions, hospitals, private land, and industrial facilities. This meant only the less-educated remained

__Strengthens the BENEFICIARIES leg__
 * Opportunities open up for the lower classes, the critics of his left-economic polices are gone. (mostly)

More than 2 million Cuban exiles live in and around the city of Miami, Florida.

Part of the Rule: There has been an exodus of Cubans to the United States since the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Most Cuban exiles in the United States are both legally and self-described political refugees.The first wave occurred after the Cuban revolution of 1959 led by Fidel Castro. A lot of the refugees came with the idea that the new government would not last long, and their stay in the US was temporary. Homes, cars, and other properties in Cuba were left with family, friends, and relatives, who would take care of them until the Castro regime would fall.The second wave began in 1961 amid the nationalization of educational institutions, hospitals, private land, and industrial facilities. Additionally, the Castro government began a political crackdown on the opposition either incarcerating opponents or perceived opponents or executing the same. In the Mariel Boatlift of 1980, Castro basically stated that "anyone who wants to leave Cuba can do so".This resulted in an even worse exodus through the port of Mariel, where an improvised flotilla of Cuban exiles from Miami in small pleasure boats and commercial shrimping vessels brought Cuban citizens who wished to leave the island. Within weeks, more than 125,000 Cubans reached the United States despite Coast Guard attempts to stem the movement. As the exodus became international news and an embarrassment for the Cuban government, Castro rounded up residents confined to insane asylums, hard-core criminals--not political--from prisons, and other "socially undesirables", forcing the incoming rescuers from Miami to take the worse elements from the island to the US if they wanted to leave Cuba with their friends and relatives. The scale of the exodus created political difficulties for both governments, and an agreement was reached to end the boatlift after several months. Out of more than 120,000 refugees, only around 6,000 were considered criminal element.