Gusano
Gusano is the Spanish language term for "worm". It is a name first given to those who fled Cuba after the overthrow of the dictator Fulgencio Batista. Later it was used to describe Cuban exiles in general, and their Cuban-American descendants. By the 1970s, Fidel Castro had widely adopted the term in speeches to refer to Cubans that had fled the country, as well as resident Cubans who applied to leave. It has also sometimes been used as a prideful self-identifying term amongst Cuban exiles.
The popularity of the term gusano has changed throughout its history. It was first used to describe Cuban emigrants in the early 1960s, who were considered "counter-revolutionary", or politically spineless. The word was then often used during acts of repudiation against emigrants. The negative perception of diasporic Cubans as gusanos changed with the dialogue of 1978, which allowed many exiles to return to visit relatives, often bringing money. The Mariel boatlift interrupted this cultural reconciliation. In the 1990s, relations with diasporic Cubans in Cuban families improved, and the term gusano fell out of use.
Usage in Cuba
Origins
The term gusano was first used to mean "counter-revolutionary" in a speech by Castro in which he spoke of "shaking the tree until the worms fall out". Historian Michael Bustamante states that the origins of the word are unclear, stating that the term was either directly coined by Fidel Castro as a simple insult, or the term originated as a slang word for Cubans leaving the country, because "gusano" is Spanish slang for "duffel bag".Ian Ellis-Jones wrote a 2023 article for Green Left that said Fidel Castro used the term to describe "the first waves of wealthy white former landowners who fled Cuba to the United States in the 1960s after the overthrow of the US-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista". He said the term later came to include Cuban-born counter-revolutionaries, especially those living overseas in Florida.
The term was coined as Cuba experienced several waves of emigration after the revolution, the first wave being mostly political dissidents and wealthy Cubans who had profited under Batista's dictatorship. By 1962, over 200,000 had emigrated to Miami since the revolution. Many chants would evolve from the phrase, such as "Con saya o pantalón, gusanos al paredón.". At this time, there were reports that insults towards gusanos were being blared from the loudspeakers at Havana Airport.
To a lesser extent, many Cubans who stayed in the country, but were against the revolution, adopted the label as a badge of honor, referring to themselves as gusano or gusana to state their dissatisfaction with the Castro government. In 1962, Cuban government posters showed an image of a fist crushing a gusano. In 1963, anti-revolutionaries distributed "gusano leaflets" with political cartoons involving worms. According to a 1967 article by the AP, commando raids on Cuba by exiles were utilised by Castro to galvanise Cubans against "Yanquis", "gusanos" and exiles. In 1968 there was a report that the Cuban government had encouraged the public to watch and attack people whom it described as "counter-revolutionary worms" or gusanos.
Post-revolutionary media
The military fort, Castillo del Príncipe, was used to house those captured during the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Their wives would frequent the establishment in hopes to see their husbands and sons, and due to the large amount of anti-revolutionary women loitering around, the prison became colloquially known as La Gusaneria.By 1961, several thousand Cubans were employed at The United States Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. They were referred to as gusanos by the public.
In September or October 1961, over the course of a week, 12 deceased bodies were discovered throughout Havana with notes attached to them that said "gusanos with pro-revolutionary , CIA agents, who tried to escape to the United States." In a mass-jailing of political dissidents in 1961, Castro's government used defunct sewers as prisons for accused anti-revolutionaries. In one of the sewers, a Canadian priest who had been imprisoned said he would dress an icon and called her "The Virgin of the Gusanos".
Bay of Pigs Invasion
Those who were captured by the Cuban government during the bay of Pigs invasion were called gusanos and "North American puppets" by their guards. In May 1961, a state-run radio station called Costa Rican politicians gusanos in response to a call from their government urging the OAS to take action against the Cuban government. Over 1,000 men were captured during the Bay of Pigs invasion, and Castro issued a ransom to the United States, saying "Si los imperialistas no quieren que sus gusanos trabajen, que los cambien por tractores.".A 1965 article in The Miami Herald said that members of the Cuban defence committees categorised their neighbours as either "revolutionary" or gusano.
Further usage
In relation to the anti-American and anti-fidelista ties, the term was stigmatized further upon the labelling of terrorists as gusanos who sought to destroy the country. In November 1961, Pedro Arias Hernandez, who was stationed at Guanabacoa's Nico Lopez Refinery, was killed when 3 people attacked the state-run business. The killers were labelled gusanos by the media, and were accused of working for the CIA. Many protests, including demonstrations against the famine, unrelated to the socialist policy of the government, had their protestors classified as gusanos. In 1962, Castro said that "those gusanos must be stopped. The street belongs to us, the gusano parlachin, the quintacolumnista must be punished physically, but without taking him to the wall. Now, if they engage in sabotage, that is another matter..."During the 1962 wildfires that destroyed sugarcane plantations, locals in Cubas were reported saying that "gusanos have infiltrated the canefields." This led to quick military tribunals resulting in death by firing squad for "gusanos" who sought to destroy Cuban farms. In a 1961 speech in Santiago de Cuba, Raúl Castro said, "Our motherland will be attacked again by those gusanos allied with imperialism, who will try to bring back all the bad things that the revolution is dominating. Our country will to eliminate them." Vigilante groups were formed for people to report their neighbors for "anti-revolutionary behavior", labelling them gusanos. According to Miami Herald report Al Burt, the government could detain such people arbirtrarily. Imprisoned political dissidents awaiting trial are recorded to have carved Soy Gusano on their jail cells.
In an interview with the Tampa Tribune, Cuban professional boxer Luis Manuel Rodríguez, who had supported the Batista regime, recalled a time when a Cuban soldier came up to him with a machine gun, called him a gusano, and put a threat on his life.
Anyone who was accused or revealed to be building a stockpile of food outside of government rations were also labeled gusanos. The 20 and 25 Centavo coins were given gusano as a nickname due to a shortage of the coins that was rumored to be caused by anti-revolutionaries hoarding them for personal use. Many in the late 1960s who applied to leave the country were forced to work farms as gusano laborers before their departure was approved by the Cuban government. According to British reporter Michael Frayn of the London Observer, in 1969, there were as many as 200,000 laborers working in the agricultural camps at any given point, and that only a quarter could expect to be granted leave by the end of the year. By 1969, 500,000 had left the country since 1959.
''El Diálogo''
The Antonio Maceo Brigade, a Cuban solidarity travel group founded in 1977, consisted of Cuban exiles who hoped to prove that they were not counterrevolutionary "gusanos". This desire sprouted from the dual rejection they faced from both right-wing Cuban exiles and left-wing North Americans. At the time, the American left-wing Cuban solidarity group the Venceremos Brigade specifically rejected Cuban American members often on the belief that all Cuban Americans are middle class and counterrevolutionary "gusanos".The Diálogo reconciliation conferences of 1978, resulted from the visits of the Antonio Maceo Brigade. Fidel Castro took a historically unusual stance when addressing Cuban exile attendants at the conference. He did not refer to the exiles as "gusanos", "escoria", or "apatriadas", but instead with the more polite title "cuban community abroad". Castro also stated in the conference that he may have "misjudged" the community, and was generally happy to meet with exiles.
One of the agreements from the Diálogo was for the right of Cuban exiles to return to Cuba to visit family. The unfolding family visits became a watershed moment in Cuban culture, because the personal encounters with exiles led many Cuban families to reinterpret their own opinion of the exiles. Many returning family members did not fit into the image of the gusano as portrayed in Cuban media. Few were active counter-revolutionaries, or rich industrialists, and most were working-class Cubans who desired a better life in the United States. Visiting exiles also brought gifts for family members, which many local Cubans could not afford. These remittances improved the image of Cuban exiles, further reducing their reputation as gusanos, and now cementing them as benefactors. A common joke developed in Cuba: "the gusanos had turned into butterflies", implying exiles were returning with new luxuries.
Mariel boatlift
On April 1, 1980, six Cuban citizens made their way into the Peruvian embassy in Havana, Cuba, instigating an international crisis over the diplomatic status of around 10,000 asylum-seeking Cubans who joined them over the following days. The Cuban government then allowed for an exodus of all asylum-seekers through Mariel harbor, to deescalate the rush to embassies.The Cuban government considered the exodus a sort of social cleansing of the nations' so-called undesirables and organized acts of repudiation against prospective emigrants, often insulting them as "gusanos", but now more often as "escoria", which was eclipsing the old insult of "gusano". This change in vernacular reflected the change in emigration. While before Mariel, many middle-class and upper-class Cubans emigrated, during the Mariel boatlift, most of the emigrants were working-class and lumpen Cubans.