Page 15 - Social Science.docx

The turn of the century brought along continued contentious U.S.-Cuban policies, exacerbated by President Clinton’s response to the conflict between the Cuban exiles and Cuba and manifested in young Elián González. This sole-survivor of a group fleeing Cuba–one that included his mother–was ripped from his Miami-relative’s arms following an early morning raid conducted by Clinton’s Justice Department. The boy was handed over to his Cuban father. The repercussions were felt by the Democrats in the hotly contested 2000 presidential election. A Miami-based pollster at the time stated, "It was humiliating to Cuban-Americans, and the 2000 election was payback."21 This ‘el voto castigo’, or the punishment vote, was seen as a possible deciding factor in the election results as the Cuban-American vote was 250,000 more in Bush’s favor in an election that came down to a 537-vote margin. Cuban-American protestors also cut short the vote count in heavily Democratic Miami-Dade County.22 The Elián González debacle brought the Cuban-American voters back to the 1960s and President Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs failure which extensively caused a loss in the progress that the Democratic party had seen in the Cuban- American voting contingent during the decades preceding it.23
In 2012–the half-century anniversary of Kennedy’s complete Cuban embargo prohibiting all U.S. trade–losses of approximately $1.126 trillion were announced by the Cuban government. Although estimates vary, the U.S. cites the embargo costs the American economy $1.2 billion per year. Despite the Obama administration’s attempts to normalize U.S.-Cuban relations and even Fidel Castro’s death, Kennedy’s legacy of contentious politics remains alive and well via President
21 Schneider, William, “Elián González Defeated Al Gore,” The Atlantic, May 1, 2001. 22 Finnegan, William, “The Cuban Strategy,” The New Yorker.
23 Schneider, “Elián González Defeated Al Gore.”
Cold war
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