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Building identity : The Miami Freedom Tower and the construction of a Cuban American identity in the post-Mariel era

The Miami Freedom Tower was built during the 1920s and then used during the
1960s as a processing center for newly arriving Cuban refugees. This report will
demonstrate the ways in which a particular, powerful segment of the Cuban American
community used the tower as a means to establish for themselves a more positive,
Euroamerican identity in the wake of the Mariel boatlift and in the context of national
debates over immigration in the 1980s and 1990s. By first looking at the U.S.
government’s establishment of Cuban American identity during the early Cold War as positive and ideologically aligned with the United States and then examining the ways in
which that identity was challenged in the 1980s and 1990s, this report demonstrates that national and ethnic identities are constantly in flux. Further, it is necessary to break down and fully analyze the ways in which the identities of immigrant groups are framed both externally by the press, popular culture, and the government and internally by their own goals, conceptions, and histories. / text

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UTEXAS/oai:repositories.lib.utexas.edu:2152/ETD-UT-2012-05-5669
Date23 July 2012
CreatorsRafferty, Jennifer Ashley
Source SetsUniversity of Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typethesis
Formatapplication/pdf

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