Introduction

 

Is there any difference, I wonder, between the fights Cubans and Cuban Americans have and the ones Chicanos and Puerto Ricans have with their homeland-based populations? Because of the upper- and middle-class comparison of the mass Cuban migration of the 1960s, and because of the ideological tone of the derogatory terms for exiles, the homeland’s image of the immigrant community has a different gloss on it. The problem, however, is fundamentally the same. It’s real identity versus fake identity, original versus copy, upper class versus working, good Spanish versus bad Spanish. ¹