Cubans divided on more issues than travel

In the days since President Barack Obama relaxed travel restrictions to Cuba, the media have consistently reported how the issue has split Miami's Cuban community.

Please allow me to offer a clarification: Disagreement over travel has not split Miami's Cuban community. No, it's merely highlighted a social fracture that has existed for years, but which was camouflaged to outsiders by the bonds of family loyalty and the shared empathy of fellow immigrants.

The split started forming when the Mariel boatlift of 1980 and subsequent immigration waves brought Cubans who, compared to those who arrived in the '60s and '70s, looked different, lacked a hatred for Fidel Castro, were poorer, uttered a strange slang and used an unappreciated vocabulary.

The post-1980 Cubans were more likely to come for economic reasons, rather than political dissent. They didn't have traditional Spanish names like Maria or Juan or Carlos. Instead, they had Russian names, often starting with the letter Y. They too easily used words like compaņero -- comrade -- which triggered angst among the earlier arrivals. Those were seemingly small differences that started forming fissures large enough to house an ideology and potent enough to break a voting bloc.

Once, a few years ago, my friend Frank, a Cuba hard-liner, was outside working in his front lawn when a lost driver pulled up in front of his house and innocently asked for directions.

''Compaņero,'' the driver called out in Spanish, ``can you help me find this address?''

''Compaņero?'' Frank responded, unable to believe what he had just heard -- in Hialeah, no less. ''Who the hell are you calling `compaņero'?'' Frank said as he reached for a rock as if to throw it at the unsuspecting fellow, who just managed to rush back in his car and speed off.

Recognizing the differences between the waves of Cuban immigrants, sociologists like Silvia Pedraza even came up with labels to describe the various groups. First there were the true exiles, those who came between 1959 and 1962, whom Pedraza calls ''those who wait'' believing that one day they'll return to a free Cuba.

They were followed by ''those who escape,'' mostly professionals pushed out by the communists in the early '60s; ''those who search'' (1965-1973), small merchants and farmers who fled after their businesses were taken over; ''those who hope'' (1980s), often poorer and more racially diverse, who came in search of a better future; and ''those who despair'' (1990s and more recently), who arrived as the Cuban government encouraged the discontented to leave the island.

Eugenio Rothe, a University of Miami psychiatry professor who has researched the mind-set of Cuban immigrants, notes that the sharp differences among Cuban immigrants formed years ago and is not simply a disagreement about the embargo and travel to Cuba.

''There's this idea that the exile community is a monolithic group,'' he says. ``That's not true.''

The good news: The differences are a byproduct of the community's success and assimilation.

Rothe notes that, as Cubans move into the second and third generations, the community is losing its uniqueness and beginning to resemble the rest of the U.S. population, while at the same time holding on to its Hispanic roots.

It is more pluralistic, ethnic and rebellious. In other words, the community has become quintessentially American.