Under Castro, gay people were imprisoned and sent to labor camps. But more significant to these gay activists, it was reported that thousands of gay men numbered among the Marielitos. The fort was located just hours from Minneapolis, where the two friends lived.
Minnesotans Thom Higgins and Bruce Brockway, who had been following the story of the Mariel Boatlift in the newspaper, drove through the gates of Fort McCoy in June. One such camp was Fort McCoy, a little-used army base in western Wisconsin that was rapidly outfitted with tents, a portable hospital, a chain-link fence, and concertina wire for its new purpose. Miami couldn’t handle all the refugees-125,000 would make the crossing between April and October 1980-so the federal government set up refugee camps around the country. These Marielitos (so called because they departed from Havana’s Mariel Harbor) were fleeing political persecution and economic hardship under Fidel Castro and seeking asylum in the United States. In the spring of 1980, thousands of Cuban refugees streamed into Miami as part of a mass emigration known as the Mariel Boatlift.
Founded in Minneapolis by activists Thom Higgins and Bruce Brockway, the Positively Gay Cuban Refugee Task Force helped ninety gay Cuban men fleeing the regime of Fidel Castro find new homes in Minnesota in the summer of 1980.
