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 Entertainment | April 2005 
Beyond The Sea: The Cuban Exodus 25 Years Later
 Russell Scott Smith - New York Post
| | Remembering the Cuban boat people. Running time: 80 minutes. Not rated (profanity). |
In May, it will have been a quarter-century since the Mariel Boatlift, when Fidel Castro's government allowed nearly 130,000 Cubans to make a difficult journey in leaky boats across 100 miles of open sea to Key West, Fla.
At the time, TV and newspapers carried indelible images of the boats stacked high with people.
And now, with the anniversary coming up, historians at Florida International University have made a documentary, which means to put real-life stories with these memorable pictures.
But it's ultimately a shallow effort.
The movie does a fair job recounting the tensions that led to the boatlift, including the day in April 1980 when some 11,000 Cubans broke into Havana's Peruvian Embassy and requested asylum.
The filmmakers also get some nice details that make the historical personal: One refugee, for example, talks about the jar of coffee that his mother gave him when he left home — and how a Cuban policeman later took it and drank it.
But this history has been documented elsewhere, and the filmmakers just skim over the more relevant theme of what has happened to these refugees since they got to the United States.
Several of the refugees they interview are now successful, including Mirta Ojito, a reporter for the New York Times who has written a memoir of the boatlift that will be published next month.
But another is currently serving a life sentence in Florida, convicted of two murders he says he didn't commit. It makes you wonder about the other 130,000: Did more of them wind up like Ojito or like the prisoner?
It's a question the movie doesn't answer. |
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