). It had been complicated for Cubans to be assimilated by the American community right away, as the fact that they came in large numbers prevented them from socializing with U.S. citizens to a large degree. Determined to keep their cultural identity, the first people to immigrate into the U.S. did not want to learn English. Instead, they taught their children and grandchildren Spanish, so that they would take their family traditions further.

Americans have had the inclination to treat Cubans differently from other immigrants coming from Latin America because of the circumstances that lead to each ethnic group leaving their respective country. While most Latin Americans had been coming to the U.S. because they wanted to escape the poverty in their homeland, matters had been different when concerning the Cubans. They left their country because they could not survive there knowing that they were supporting a corrupt political ideology.

The U.S. did not express an aggressive attitude as a response to the waves of Cubans flowing into the country, regardless of the methods that they employed to do so, legally and illegally. As an alternative, the Americans came up with various programs intended to provide assistance to those having left Cuba. Operation Pedro Pan, lasting from 1960 and until 1962, and the Cuban Adjustment Act from 1966 are examples of the level to which the U.S. had gotten involved in supporting Cuban immigrants.

The bourgeoisie could no longer live at peace knowing that Castro's regime virtually meant that they would have to abandon their previous practices in order to embrace a future based on communist theories. Operation Pedro Pan involved a large scale movement,...

xiv). The plan had been created by the U.S. government, religious institutions in Miami, and several Cubans that had already been in the U.S. At the time. Its main purpose had been for children coming from the upper class of the Cuban society to be saved from the totalitarian regime imposed by Castro.
People in Cuba had been desperately trying to emigrate to the U.S. And in 1965, at the time when the Cuban government had announced that "any Cuban with relatives in the United States was free to go there after October 10" (Victor Andres Triay, pp. 100), matters went berserk, with some people even perishing because they attempted to leave the island with unseaworthy boats.

Several waves of immigrants followed throughout the twentieth and the start of the twenty first century. My mother came with the 1980 Mariel boatlifts, which were part of a mass-immigration action performed by people that could not live in the conditions imposed by Fidel Castro. The Cuban leader took advantage of the fact that his people were leaving him in favor of democracy and the U.S. And sent along a large number of criminals from Cuba's prisons.

Adults actually had more trouble adapting to the U.S. environment than children. For children, the U.S. seemed like a place of wonder, where they had access to everything that they dreamed of. "It was only a few weeks until I moved in with the family with whom I lived for two years. They are a very, very nice family" (Aimee How'd). A large number of American families did not hesitate to offer shelter to the children immigrants coming to their country.