From Al Jazeera:
"[The migrants] were an incredible piece of propaganda at the beginning of the Cold War," Anita Casavantes Bradford, a professor of Chicano/Latino studies at the University of California, Irvine, told Al Jazeera. "The government decided to regularize their status because it was a tool of Cold War foreign policy. It was a way of encouraging outward migration from Cuba to discredit the Castro regime," she added.
 
 
For the full story, please visit http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/02/cubans-stranded-central-america-reach-160202134603642.html.