History.com: The Mariel Boatlift: How Cold War Politics Drove Thousands of Cubans to Florida in 1980

After Fidel Castro loosened emigration policies, some 125,000 Cubans landed on U.S. shores over a span of five months. The Mariel Boatlift of 1980 was a mass emigration of Cubans to the United States. The exodus was driven by a stagnant economy that had weakened under the grip of a U.S. trade embargo and by Cuban President Fidel Castro's exasperation with dissent. "Those who have no revolutionary genes, those who have no revolutionary blood...we do not want them, we do not need them," Castro declared in a May 1, 1980 speech. In a stance that reversed the Communist regime's closed emigration policy, Castro told Cubans who wanted to leave Cuba to leave, and directed would-be emigrants to go to the Port of Mariel.