Opinions of different waves of immigrants from Cuba.

One of the most important ways the Cuban community in Dade County differs is by the years when the largest groups of people came to Dade County. The beginning and end of the 1960's decade saw large numbers arriving, with somewhat fewer in the middle years. Immigration during the 1970's was much less, followed by the Mariel group in 1980. The numbers diminished again until after the early 1990's.

To place these groups in to categories where there are enough responses to analyze, it was necessary to use years when immigration was low as the category boundary. Thus everyone who left Cuba in the years 1975-1984 are in one category, even though most arrived in 1980.

Age distributions for each group

BEFORE 1960

Age distribution for people who gave the year when they came from Cuba as being before 1960.

1960-1964

1965-1974

1975-1984

AFTER 1984

BORN IN THE UNITED STATES

Opinion questions

The survey asks a large number of questions on what Cubans in Dade County think policy toward Cuba shoud be. Here we look at how the different groups by year of immigration answer the question. It must be emphasized that, where there are differences, they are usually matters of degree rather than completely opposing views. On most questions almost all the groups agree on wanting vigorous action to bring about change in Cuba. Where they differ it is on how many of each group support the action. On a number of questions there are large segments of some groups which disagree with the action or policy, and in a few cases those who disagree form a majority in the group.

For clarity in the graphs the responses to each question are grouped to count the number favoring the policy vs. the number opposed. Counts and percentages for all categories can be found at this site.

The first question analyzed below is on when people think political change will occur in Cuba. Responses are divided into those who feel change won't take place for at least five years and those who think it might. Next are the questions on different U.S. policies and approaches to Cuba. There are 13 such questions, many covering related issues; we needed to find a smaller set of distinct underlying issues. We looked at correlations and crosstabs between pairs of questions, and then did an exploratory factor analysis Click here to see some of this work. This led us to select three questions as most reprentative of three major distinct issues.

• 3. Allowing U.S. companies to sell food to Cuba...Do you strongly favor, mostly favor, mostly oppose, or strongly oppose this? This question best represents responses having to do with measures to deny the Cuban government legitimacy as the sole source of solutions to problems in Cuba: if the government can buy food it gets a way to deal with food problems on its own terms.
• 5. Supporting military action by the exile community to overthrow the Cuban Government...Do you strongly favor, mostly favor, mostly oppose, or strongly oppose this? This question covers the dimension of seeing the need to use external force to change things in Cuba.
• 12. ... penalizing private companies from other countries which conduct business in Cuba, do you strongly favor, mostly favor, mostly oppose, or strongly oppose this? This question is related to the need to maintain U.S. control over the process of economic pressure on Cuba.

WHEN WILL POLITICAL CHANGE TAKE PLACE IN CUBA?

This table shows the number of respondents who think it will be more than five years until major political change will take place in Cuba vs. those who think it will happen sooner.

This is the full question: Over the past few years, people have been talking about the possibility of political changes in Cuba. When do you think that major political changes are likely to occur in Cuba? Would you say within one year, in two to five years, in six to ten years, over ten years, or never?