In the thirty-six years following the Cuban Revolution of 1959 numerous newspaper and magazine articles have been written describing an economic victory of mythic proportions among Cuban exiles in the United States. Together these journalistic accounts have created a widely accepted ”Cuban American success story.„ However, a critical examination of this success story indicates that the more accurate and more modest descriptions of Cuban economic outcomes found in the professional journals have not been able to replace the spectacular rags-to-riches stories offered by the popular media. Nor has the fact that Cuban American household income is substantially less than that of non-Latino households been widely received. Also ignored in the ”success„ myth are the high rates of poverty among recent Cuban immigrants, Afro-Cubans, and Cuban-American children. Thisarticle describes the Cuban American success story and its emergence, inaccuracies, relationship to other minority ”stories„ and consequences. © 1997 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

Diversity Perceptions Cuban American Model minority Popular media Social construction Success myth Public images poverty

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