Revisiting the Scarface Legacy: The Victim/Offender Relationship and Mariel Homicides in Miami

Abstract

By incorporating the direct impact of ethnicity and immigration on crime, this article isthe first to use multivariate methods to compare and contrast Mariel to Afro-Caribbean, African American, and non-Mariel Latino homicides in a predominately immigrant city. In the current study, Mariels were overinvolved in acquaintance homicides, but little evidence surfaced that they were disproportionately involved in stranger homicides or were unusually violent, both dominant themes in popular stereotypes. In fact, an analysis of homicide event narratives verified the mundane nature of Mariel homicides, implying that the legacy of Scarface is not the Mariel killer but the Mariel Myth.