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• Voices from Mariel (unrated)

  Voices from Mariel (unrated)

  An oral history of the Mariel boatlift, Voices From Mariel is a somewhat artless compendium of talking-head interviews, historical news footage and familiar scenes of an exile’s emotional return to his homeland. Director Jim Carleton has assembled his film in the simplest, most obvious way possible, and the repetitive structure and lack of dramatic thrust render the documentary better suited for PBS than a movie theater.

• Cultural exchanges with Cuba are mostly one-way affairs

  Cultural exchanges with Cuba are mostly one-way affairs

  There’s little novelty in Cubans from the island traveling to Miami to play their music, show their films, exhibit their art and read their literary works.

• On Rubio, exile is more than a date of departure

  On Rubio, exile is more than a date of departure

  Marco Antonio Rubio was born in May 1971 — 13 years after Fidel Castro’s rise to power and 18 years after Castro’s attack of the Moncada barracks. To understand the confusion over the U.S. senator’s family narrative — to accurately place the “exile” or “immigrant” label on his parents’ and older siblings’ first departure to the United States in 1956 — one first has to understand Cuba’s violent political history.

• Number of Cuban migrants has surged in the past year

  Number of Cuban migrants has surged in the past year

  U.S. Coast Guard interdictions at sea rose from 422 to 1,000, while landings on U.S. shores climbed from 409 to almost 700. Meanwhile, arrivals at U.S. border posts — almost all from Mexico — barely changed from 6,219 to 6,300.

• Marco Rubio’s biography didn’t need fudging

  Marco Rubio’s biography didn’t need fudging

  George Gonzalez’s father was a Pedro Pan kid. Came over in 1961, after Gonzalez’ grandmother had been imprisoned by the Castro regime for possessing counter-revolutionary documents. Gonzalez’s mother fled Cuba in 1965, after the government confiscated her family’s ranch.