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Haitian Exodus: Refugees in Southern Florida
| Article
# : |
14218 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1988 |
3,822 Words |
| Author
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Joan Flocks and Robert Lawless
Joan Flocks is a graduate student in Latin American studies,
working with multiethnic communities in southern Florida.
Robert Lawless is professor of anthropology at the University
of Florida. |
Most North Americans' knowledge of the Haitian people has been conditioned primarily by three news stories of the 1980s. The most recent focused on the end of the thirty-year Duvalier dynasty with the February 1986 ouster of Jean-Claude Duvalier, son of the infamous François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, and the subsequent Haitian efforts to develop a democratic government. Another concerned the alleged connection between Haitians and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). The third was mostly limited to news about those Haitians in South Florida who came to be known in the media as "boat people."
With the installation in February 1988 of a government nominally headed by a civilian president, most of the reporting of political news from Haiti has disappeared from the North American media. In 1985, Haitians were removed from the Center for Disease Control's list of groups with high susceptibility to AIDS. And although Haitian boat people still journey to the shores of South Florida, the media rarely herald their arrival anymore.
Those Haitians already settled in South Florida have become a permanent feature in the kaleidoscopic immigrant population of the United States. They and their children will continue to contribute to the changing American national complexion and to provide a link between the oldest republics in the Western Hemisphere.
Haitian migration to the United States did not begin with the arrival of the "boat people" in the late 1970s and early 1980s. During the U.S. Marine occupation of Haiti from 1914 to 1934, many members of the Haitian intelligentsia sought socioeconomic and political freedom in New York City and
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