Dr. Jaime Suchlicki is the director of the Institute of Cuban and Cuban American Studies, which he helped found in 1999.  He is a Cuban Jew who graduated from the University of Miami in 1964 with a B.A. in history and a master’s the next year, in the same field.  He went on to Texas Christian University, and in 1968 completed his Ph.D, also in history.  He began teaching for UM as an assistant professor in February 1968 and has been a consultant on Cuba and Cuba-US relations for the United States government for the past 30 years.

Q: What is the Institute of Cuban and Cuban-Amerian Studies, which you refer to as ICCAS?
A: This institute is primarily a research and outreach program. We do publication research, contract work for the US government and for corporations. We have an academic journal that we publish, and we offer a summer intensive program on Cuba. ICCAS organizes seminars, lectures and offers courses.  We are essentially the link between Cuba, UM, Cuban exiles and South Florida.  Right now, a lot of our time is devoted to the Cuban Transition Project.

Q: Which is?
A: Essentially, we are making recommendations for the reconstruction of Cuba if a post-Castro transition begins.  That is a project we started in 2002.  It’s funded by a grant from the U.S Agency for International Development.

Q: Where does the outreach component come in?
A: The Casa Bacardi is the interactive side of the institute. The institute is the umbrella [organization].  Casa Bacardi is the outreach portion. We do activities with the Cuban community: seminars, lectures, musical programs and film exhibits.  It is an interactive center focused on Cuban history and culture.  It was built with a donation to ICCAS by the Bacardi Family, as in the alcohol.  The center houses the Cuban Information Center, a music and products pavillion, a cinema and a lecture hall.  The goal of Casa Bacardi as an interactive site is to provide a place where Cubans and non-Cubans alike can learn about Cuba’s past and present.

Q: Did you ever see yourself doing what you do today?
A: No. I saw myself living in Cuba and staying in Cuba. I had visited Miami many times and had an aunt in New York, but I never planned on living here. My father had a business.  He was a middle class shopkeeper.  I worked with him sometimes, but I wasn’t very interested in the business.  I was interested in politics. I studied for one and one half years at the University of Havana and probably would have become an international lawyer, but I left before I finished college.

Q: What is the history of the Cuban Jews in Miami?
A: The first batch of Cubans that left the island was those that were connected with the old dictatorship. As businesses began to be confiscated, non-Jewish Cubans began to leave, then the Jewish community left, mostly in the 1960’s.  The Jews who immigrated from Eastern Europe and Russia understood that what was happening in Cuba was not just a minor revolution, so many of them decided to move. Out of about 12,000 Cuban Jews, approximately 9,000 left. Out of those who left, most came to Miami, some went to New York and some went to Puerto Rico. They chose Miami because it was close, it already had a Cuban community and most of them weren’t thinking of migrating permanently.  But in the Cuban community as a whole, there’s a small group that has done very well. The “Jewbans” have done fairly well.  Most of them are upper-middle class.

Q:  Is there a special “Jewban”-Israel connection?
A: We all grew up when the state of Israel was created, and we became adults with the state of Israel, so having lost our first home, which was Cuba, Israel became very important to us. The Castro government had taken a strong position against Israel, had supported Hezbollah and Hamas, but Jews living in Cuba were never given a hard time. Many Jews in Cuba left the island by way of Israel, but then soon immigrated to the United States. Even before they left Cuba, Cuban Jews already had a strong attachment, and there was a lot of support for Israel. When anti-Semitism grows too much, it is a place you can go.  It is a psychological refuge.

Q: What comes first for you?  Being a Jew or being Cuban?
A: Well I am very connected to my cultural [Jewish] heritage and I am always very concerned with the state of Israel, but because of the nature of my work, being Cuban comes first.