But the welcome from the federal and local government did not always coincide with life on the ground. María Cristina García explains that locals resented Cubans both for the financial assistance they received from the government (often more than citizens) and for their “boisterous” behavior.54 Adding to this resentment was the creation and sustainment of a Cuban ethnic enclave,55 which reduced the pressure to assimilate. As the size and economic power of the community grew, so did resistance and opposition to what many non-Cubans in Miami referred to as the Cuban “takeover” of the city.
The frustrations of “native” Miamians reached a boiling point in 1980 with the circumstances surrounding the Mariel crisis. The Miami Herald railed against President Carter’s weak, undefined policy regarding Mariel and the exile community’s desire to facilitate the exodus and the subsequent resettlement of refugees in Miami. Editors at the paper used Castro’s characterization of the marielitos as social misfits to justify their aggressive stance toward the new arrivals and the exile community more broadly. Alejandro Portes and Alex Stepick define the perceived threat to the establishment this way: “first as an economic cataclysm, given the depressed state of local industry and the negative impact of the inflow on Miami’s status as a tourist destination; and second, as a direct threat to the establishment power structure, given the addition of many thousands to an already uncomfortably large Cuban population.”56 In the time leading up to and after the boatlift, the Miami Herald actively played up these threats and effectively agitated the non-Cuban population in Miami.
With the white establishment bent on asserting power in a time of rapid change, the modern English-Only movement was born in Miami with an anti-bilingual referendum. It passed, and in November 1980, the ordinance changed the policies of biculturalism and bilingualism in Dade County instituted in the early 1970s.57 Much as it did in the repeal of the 1977 amendment prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexuality, Miami had taken one step forward and two steps back. But these direct attempts by the Miami Herald and local government to limit the power of the Cuban community did not achieve the desired effect: “Instead of subduing the Cubans, the hegemonic discourse of the Herald and its allies transformed the exile community into a self-conscious ethnic group that organized effectively for local political competition.”58 By the mid-1980s, Cuban-born politicians held important government posts on the local and state levels. In 1981, the influential Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) was founded with Jorge Mas Canosa at the helm.
With all these events roiling Miami, Alvarez Guedes performed regularly, cementing his reputation as un tipo típico. Much of his comedic production during this time addressed the hot-button language issue and the general culture clash well underway in Miami. As the inflammatory rhetoric and tension between Anglos and the exile community escalated, so did the tone and aggression of Alvarez Guedes’s material. Choteo’s anti-hierarchical strain became a means to confront Anglo political power while simultaneously attempting to consolidate an exile cubanía founded on national characteristics, anti-Castro sentiment, cultural expressions, and, as discussed previously, whiteness and heteronormativity. Directing some aggression outward toward los americanos created a welcome respite from the infighting, while the tried and true strategy of identifying an outside threat served to buttress a communal narrative of the exile community as being free from internal conflict.
Clases de Idioma Cubano
Language has always been Alvarez Guedes’s favorite topic. One of his most popular running gags, titled “Clases de idioma cubano” (Cuban Language Classes), began in 1974, when Miami was still officially a bilingual city. The albums that include these Cuban language classes always feature them as the last track. The reason is clear: they absolutely bring the house down. He prefaces his first “class” on Alvarez Guedes 2 with the following justification as to why they are necessary in the first place:
You all know that Miami has been officially declared a bilingual city. The Americans have declared it officially but I think this bilingualism exists only on our part, the part of the Cubans because those Cubans who are here can get by (se defienden) in English. But on the part of the Americans, the same thing doesn’t apply because among the poor Americans, it is extremely difficult to find one that speaks two words of Spanish. Because of this, I’d like to dedicate this part of the album to the Americans, to give them a class on Cuban language.… These classes will help us understand each other better.59
The key phrase in this excerpt is “se defienden” translated idiomatically as “get by.” In this context, the invocation of the verb defender is a common way to refer to one’s tenuous grip on a foreign language. I retain the Spanish phrase in my translation in order to explore the resonance of the word in relation to Alvarez Guedes’s treatment of cultural and political exchanges between los americanos and the exile community in all his Miami-related material. In this “class” and the jokes regarding language that I take up below, an economy of defense (“defender”) is always working as subtext. The use of choteo to narrate the politics of language in Miami amounts to a form of defense for a Cuban community that feels a certain degree of vulnerability as a result of exilic displacement and the challenges posed by a sociopolitical landscape scripted in English. As the political tension in Miami mounts, the signification of defender in Alvarez Guedes’s performances will shift to meet the escalation of anti-Cuban rhetoric.
Alvarez Guedes’s introduction to his Cuban language class sets up one of the defining features of choteo’s political potential as expressed by Mañach. In his essay on choteo, he describes the playful point of view on the intractable realities of life as choteo’s tendencia niveladora (leveling tendency)—the ability to create a narrative of experience that “levels,” or balances, the uneven power dynamics of the social milieu through the language of choteo. Choteo subverts the dominant model of immigrant assimilation in the United States by suggesting that Cubans are in a position to pity those “poor Americans” who cannot speak Spanish. Instead of interpreting the decision to make the city of Miami officially bilingual as a benefit to Cubans, Alvarez Guedes understands it as an almost matter-of-fact, logical unfolding of events. Cubans “se defienden” in English but now the Americans must fulfill the literal meaning of what it means to live in a bilingual city where everyone speaks two languages. In the narrative of the Cuban language class, the burden of cultural assimilation and understanding, usually carried by the incoming population, is transferred to the established community through choteo’s leveling tendency.
Once he has finished his introduction, Alvarez Guedes begins his class by asking his audience to forgive him for speaking in English so the Americans can understand him. Of course, his audience is composed of Cubans who feel most comfortable speaking in Spanish. But imagining an audience of americanos allows for a comic reversal of the classic teacher-student dynamic at work in the encounter between “native” and immigrant. Under this logic, the newly arrived must learn the language and customs of the United States with a certain amount of deference to those who were born citizens. By putting himself in a position to teach los americanos of Miami, Alvarez Guedes reverses the logic of this dynamic and places power into the hands of the Cubans. His English is accented but syntactically flawless as he explains two “Cuban” words that he will teach, mierda y comemierda (shit and shit eater, idiomatically, asshole). He then goes on to explain how phrases in English like “go to hell” can be translated into Cuban as “vaya a la mierda.” “Teaching” Cuban phrases that have a distinctly popular, vulgar resonance to los americanos and equating them with English phrases makes the language of political power legible to those Cubans who may feel intimidated by the privileged position of English in Miami at the time. Alvarez Guedes’s use of the familiar language of choteo creates the opportunity for a pleasurable encounter with the unfamiliar dominant