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The 2022 FIU Cuba Poll (IV)
Cuban Americans and U.S. Elections.
Published in OnCubanews.com November 3, 2022 in It is not easy
“Back to the Future”
-Title of a Famous Cuban American Film. Really.
Cuban Voters in An Era of Discontent: What to expect in November.
The literature on Cuban American political participation highlights their political engagement. Cubans become Cuban Americans usually as soon as they have met residency requirements and become Cuban-American voters immediately thereafter. And when they register, they, vote. Massively.
This was not the case before the late 1970s. There was ambivalence in the population about becoming involved in the political dynamics of this country since most still held out hope for slicing up the “next lechonsito de Navidades” in their homeland. Time and the national strategy of the Republican Party to register Latinos and other minorities in predominantly blue states, as well as the focused efforts of the Cuban American National Foundation to integrate Cubans into the U.S. political system, bore fruit in the 1980s. President Reagan’s attack on the Evil Empire and his recruitment of Cuban Americans as allies in the hemispheric fit against revolutionary change sealed the deal with…