Rapper Pitbull on living up to his Cuban parents American dream
Cuban-American rapper Pitbull talked about the immigration crisis and what it means to him as a first-generation American on “The View” Thursday morning.
Armando Christian Pérez, who’s better known by his stage name Pitbull, was born in the United States after his family immigrated from Cuba, where there history is rooted in a fight for freedom and survival.
Pitbull’s grandmother fought for Fidel Castro, the former president of Cuba who was known for establishing the first communist state in the Western hemisphere, during the Cuban revolutionary war, Pitbull said. By the 1960s, “it became clear” to Pitbull’s Grandma that “he wasn’t the best for the country,” Pitbull told The Guardian. She sent her daughters, including Pitbull’s mother, to the U.S. in a mass exodus of unaccompanied minors known as Operation Peter Pan.
In 1980, Pitbull’s father helped organize a mass emigration Cubans to Florida, known as the Mariel boatlift.