Scarface-A History Lesson?

Almost everyone has either seen Scarface, heard about it, or can quote a line from it. Scarface was written by Oliver Stone and directed by Brian De Palma in 1983. The cast is filled with stars such as Al Pacino as Tony Montana (Scarface), Michelle Pheiffer, Steven Bauer, Robert Logia and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. The movie was made in 1983 and was a remake of an old 1932 mob movie of the same name.

The movie follows the life of Tony Montana, an immigrant from Cuba who comes to the U.S.A in search of money and power. When he gets to Miami he is hit with the harsh reality that life is tough in the U.S. and he is forced to take a job as a dishwasher. With the right connections in place he gets into the world of drugs and fast money. Once in the drug lifestyle he thirsts for more power and more money. The story is about his rise from dishwasher to drug kingpin and his struggle to stay on top of a fast life.

The movie is a roller coaster of highs and lows, action and drama not only on the streets but in the interactions of the characters. Scarface in my opinion is a movie that can be analyzed hundreds of ways. We can discuss how the character of Tony Montana can be seen as a tragic hero, or how power corrupts the soul and doesn't always bring happiness, we can even analyze the effects of drugs on each character. All these would be interesting topics but for me the interesting thing about the movie is one point that is overlooked many times.

Scarface is set in Miami during the 1980s. Oliver Stone spoke about the setting in the Scarface DVD box set, he said he wanted to put the film in a setting modern day people could relate to instead of in the mafia times of the 1930s and 40s. So, why did he chose Miami in the 1980s? For that we have to step out of fiction and look at historical events. Miami in the 1980s was the site of the Mariel Boatlift.

The Mariel Boatlift was a mass exodus of Cubans who left from Cuba's Mariel Harbor for the United States in the summer of 1980. The United States opened it's borders to Cubans who were not happy with the Castro regime that was and still is in power in Cuba. The U.S. government thought this would prove disastrous for Castro but the plan backfired as far as many are concerned. Instead of letting Cuba's citizen's go, Castro opened up his prisons and let the Cubans he didn't want in Cuba go to the U.S. There were so many refugees that the U.S. government was forced to put them into "Tent Cities" below the Miami freeway.

It was during this time that the movie Scarface takes place and Tony Montana begins his reign. In one such Tent City, Tony Montana kills a Castro supporter for money. In the movie the men can be seen living in the tents while the cars drove above them on the busy freeway. According to many people I have spoke to who were in Miami at the time, my Father included, what the movie portrays is very much like what it looked like in Miami at that time. The movie highlights how the people who came to the U.S. were pretty much forced to find they're own way to get out of those Tents and into a culture that didn't want them.

The movie Scarface is in no way meant to be a documentary; but, it does highlight a moment in our history that is overlooked. It has been my experience that much of the history of U.S. and Latin American relations is not talked about in school. Before watching the movie Scarface and wanting to know what the Mariel Boatlift was all about, all I knew of was the Cuban Missile Crisis. I think it was a time that many people both Cubans and Americans would like to forget, but it's important to keep history like that alive so it is not repeated.

Scarface is a great movie, lots of action, drama, fights, romance, comedy, basically everything you could ask for in a movie. If you scratch a little bit deeper you also see the struggle of a culture to survive in a foreign land. You can see glimpses of what many immigrants went through to survive and are still going through to survive. If your one of the few people who has never watched it I invite you to give it a look. If you have seen it, I invite you to look at Scarface from a different perspective, one we can learn something from.