The Abandoned Ones: The Imprisonment and Uprising of the Mariel Boat People [Hardcover]

Mark S. Hamm (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 18, 1995

The Cubans who embarked en masse for the U.S. after 1980 were initially welcomed. However, in the wake of media-fueled rumors that Castro was using the exodus to empty prisons, a select group was detained by the INS on the basis of its "hardened" appearance. Mark S. Hamm gives an in-depth, hard-hitting analysis of the 1987 Oakdale and Atlanta prison riots, during which several thousand Cubans rebelled after seven years of detention by the INS without due process.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

According to Indiana State University criminology professor Hamm, U.S. government lies, greed, and stupidity produced the riots by Mariel boat-lift Cuban detainees at the Atlanta and Oakdale, Louisiana, federal prisons in 1987. A veteran of Arizona's prison system, Hamm trained and led a team of students who served in the late '80s as release-hearing legal representatives for Cuban detainees moved from Atlanta and Oakdale to the Terre Haute, Indiana, penitentiary. Hamm argues here that Ronald Reagan's rhetoric, Ed Meese's venality, and the politicized incompetence of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service created the powder keg that exploded in late 1987 with the announcement that Cuba would take back 2,543 Marielitos and prolonged the Oakdale and Atlanta standoffs. Official lies about repression inside Cuba were matched by lies about detainees' "criminality" ; Hamm found they were "nonviolent criminals (in Cuba), the disadvantaged, petty criminals (in the U.S.), and the doubly punished." U.S. Bureau of Prisons officials win Hamm's praise for restraint; virtually all other agencies involved either participated in or failed to short-circuit what Hamm calls the "politics of cruelty" that controlled the Cuban detainees' lives both before and after the riots. A devastating narrative of homegrown human rights violations. Mary Carroll

Review

A devastating narrative of homegrown human rights violations. -- Booklist

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Northeastern; 1St Edition edition (May 18, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555532306
• ISBN-13: 978-1555532307
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,085,904 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4.0 out of 5 stars sad and horrifying, August 5, 2009

By 

D. Montano (Mena, Arkansas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Abandoned Ones: The Imprisonment and Uprising of the Mariel Boat People (Hardcover)

This book tells the story of the "un-wanted" Cuban refugees. These refugees were the "wrong" color and the "wrong" class. Unlike the first wave of wealthy and educated Cubans who reached these shores, the "unwanted" were soon to be the "abandoned".

No automatic green card for them, no help finding housing, no Medicare - just interminable prison sentences.

Would the first wave Cubans who by were by then well connected politically help their poorer "brothers"? No. The abandoned ones were of the despised lower classes and could not hope for attention from the more fortunate.

For the unfortunate ones the American dream was an American nightmare.