Opinion: From Marielito to Baubielito — Miami’s Hispanic Babylon and the Exodus That Forgot Itself

Absolutely. Below is an expanded, 33% longer version of the opinion article, now incorporating the Los Angeles-style protest energy, and connecting it to the 2021 Cuban diaspora protests during the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul — while retaining the biblical, cultural, and political threads already established.

Opinion: From Marielito to Baubielito — Miami’s Hispanic Babylon and the Exodus That Forgot Itself

By Juan Rodriguez

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion…”

— Psalm 137:1

Miami once wept too. It wept in Spanish. In Creole. In Kreyòl. It wept for Havana and Port-au-Prince, for Managua, for Bogotá, for Caracas and for every memory of lost nations tucked away in carry-ons and blistered palms. Miami was once a city of exiles — not tourists. A city of yearning — not brunch. A city whose cultural heartbeat pulsed with resistance, not routine.

But now?

Now we dance in Babylon, distracted by our own reflections in the mirrors of gated towers, chasing a version of ourselves that forgot who crossed the sea.

I. The End of the Marielito Era

The Marielito, forged in the 1980 Mariel Boatlift, was never just a migrant — but a figurehead of survival. Over 125,000 Cubans arrived in Miami in mere months, many sent by Fidel Castro as a challenge, a burden, a bet that America would recoil. They came in broken shoes with unbroken spirits — stigmatized as criminals, outcasts, mentally ill. Yet they built. Fought. Hustled.

The Marielito walked into the American project not as a guest but as an intruder, unwilling to bow, learning to thrive by carving cracks in the system with street-savvy cunning and backyard resilience. In the diner and the warehouse, in the protest and the pulpit, the Marielito spirit made Miami — not glamorous, but holy in its defiance.

Now that spirit is being replaced.

II. Baubielito: A Symbol for a Seduced Diaspora

We are entering the Baubielito era — a stylized, socialite-smooth identity where heritage is managed like a startup, and pain is something to be worn like an accessory. The Baubielito has the look of legacy without its labor. They are not forged in trauma but polished in branding. They do not march — they network.

The shrine of this new order?

Freddy’s Fried Away Alligator Alcatrazz.

It is Miami’s Babylon in miniature: a grotesque tourist trap where exile is served up as a deep-fried platter. It mocks the prison-industrial complex with gator-shaped cutlery. It turns gulag into gags. It converts trauma into ticket sales, hashtags, and cocktails named after defunct intelligence operations.

The Marielito would’ve walked out. The Baubielito leans in.

III. Feast Days and Forgotten Prophets

On June 29, 2021 — the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul — something strange happened. The streets of Miami erupted in protest. So did Hialeah. So did Little Havana. But this wasn’t nostalgia. It was anger. Rage against the Cuban dictatorship, yes — but also against the silence of the world, against the growing comfort of a diaspora that had become, in some ways, too American, too safe.

It echoed across oceans.

Women pounded pots. Teens waved flags with their abuelos. People flooded the Palmetto Expressway, halting traffic, chanting “Patria y Vida”, and demanding visibility. What began in San Antonio de los Baños ended in the boulevards of Coral Gables. The Feast of Peter and Paul, once religious, became revolutionary.

Yet even that sacred flame flickered fast. Protest became photo-op. Righteous fury was edited into reels. And by July, the Baubielito had taken back the mic.

IV. Protest, Los Angeles Style

In LA, protests don’t just unfold — they erupt. You can feel them through your windshield. They bring traffic to a halt and leave paint on monuments. In 2020, amid the George Floyd uprisings, and again during the anti-ICE demonstrations, LA’s Latinx communities made themselves seen. They blocked freeways. They banged drums. They moved like waves of memory — unrelenting.

That energy, when it hit Miami during the 2021 protests, felt like an echo of something long dormant — a remix of diaspora grief and American outrage. That day, Miami didn’t want comfort. It wanted justice. The streets were alive with chants, tears, and pots and pans clanging like thunder.

But protest in Miami is no longer fashionable. Not in the Baubielito age. The new elite prefers policy panels and paid brand partnerships. The Marielito’s urgency has become the Baubielito’s liability.

V. Babylon Revisited: Lowered Standards and Seductive Normalcy

The danger of Babylon is not persecution. It’s pleasure. It makes forgetting feel good.

Baubielito culture lowers the stakes — and with it, the standards. Once, to be respected meant to be principled, to speak truth even when it cost you business or friends. Now, social capital flows from soft power: marrying into the right family, avoiding “negative discourse,” and building a cultural brand of bilingual consumerism.

The question isn’t how did you get here? — it’s who do you brunch with now?

Miami’s exile legacy is at risk of becoming folklore: a sanitized tale for tourists, managed by real estate agents and startup founders. And Freddy’s Alligator Alcatrazz? That’s our golden calf.

VI. Between Lovers and Neighbors: A Torn Diaspora

The split is widening. One side still carries memory like fire in the bone. The other side carries it like a business card.

Families argue over it at the dinner table. Neighbors watch each other with suspicion. Love is torn between aspiration and ancestry. The uncle who risked his life at sea can’t relate to the cousin designing Latinx NFTs. The protestor in the street is mocked by the influencer at the gala.

The diaspora is no longer unified. It is branded.

And brands do not bleed.

VII. Prophets Without Platforms

Biblical Babylon was full of false prophets. They told the people not to worry. They said exile was temporary, success was imminent, and that you could blend in and be fine. But the real prophets — Jeremiah, Ezekiel — told the truth: exile is not just geography. It is identity.

Today, Miami needs its prophets. But it silences them with noise. Those who remember the exile, who still carry the sea salt in their speech, are being drowned out by developers and content creators.

Memory is resistance. The day we forget why our parents left, or how, or what they gave up — is the day Babylon wins.

VIII. A Final Call: To Remember, To Rise

The 2021 protests showed a glimpse of what we could still be — if we remember.

The Baubielito can be redeemed. But not by brunches, not by marrying into comfort. Only by standing with the exiles again. Only by listening to the tired, the unglamorous, the loud old women who pray in dialects you mock. Only by walking out of Freddy’s and into the streets, where the chant of Patria y Vida is not a song but a sacrifice.

There is still time to choose. Babylon or Zion. Assimilation or resistance. Golden calves or pots and pans.

If I forget thee, O Havana, O Camagüey, O Santiago, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.

Let the Baubielitos beware.

Weep again by the rivers.

Remember the sea.

And sing Zion’s song in a strange land — before the silence becomes permanent.

Selah.

Let the streets teach what the billboards forget.

(c) Juan Rodriguez, 2025