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A touching memoir recounting the journey of a young Cuban immigrant to the US who went on to become a professor and university dean. In February 1962, three years into Fidel Castro’s rule of their Cuban homeland, the González family—an auto mechanic, his wife, and two young children—landed in Miami with a few personal possessions and two bottles of Cuban rum. As his parents struggled to find work, eleven-year-old Gerardo struggled to fit in at school, where a teacher intimidated him and school authorities placed him on a vocational track. Inspired by a close friend, Gerardo decided to go to college. He not only graduated but, with hard work and determination, placed himself on a path through higher education that brought him to a deanship at the Indiana University School of Education. In this deeply moving memoir, González recounts his remarkable personal and professional journey. The memoir begins with Gerardo’s childhood in Cuba and recounts the family’s emigration to the United States and struggles to find work and assimilate, and González’s upward track through higher education. It demonstrates the transformative power that access to education can have on one person’s life. Gerardo’s journey came full circle when he returned to Cuba fifty years after he left, no longer the scared, disheartened refugee but rather proud, educated, and determined to speak out against those who wished to silence others. It includes treasured photographs and documents from González’s life in Cuba and the US. His is the story of one immigrant attaining the American Dream, told at a time when the fate of millions of refugees throughout the world, and Hispanics in the United States, especially his fellow Cubans, has never been more uncertain. “Author and educator Gerardo M. González brilliantly illustrates the joys and struggles of the refugee experience, and the inarguable role of education as an open door to opportunity. This is a delightful read, and one that will inspire you to achieve greatness regardless of the odds.” —Dr. Eduardo J. Padrón, President, Miami Dade College “There can be no more persuasive testimony to the power of intelligence, commitment, and inspiration than Gerardo M. González’s memoir. The contribution of immigrants to America’s prosperity and national achievements is undeniably impressive. Yet, this transformational story of challenge and achievement, while individually exceptional, is nonetheless emblematic of the experience of countless immigrants who have made America better than it could otherwise have been. No finer antidote to the simplistic sloganeering of the immigration debate exists.” —John V. Lombardi, President Emeritus, University of Florida, and author of How Universities Work
While the Naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba is well-known for its infamous prison camp, few people are aware of its prior use as an immigrant detention center for Haitian and Cuban refugees. Beginning in August 1994, the United States government declared that thousands of Cubans who had launched themselves into the Florida Straits on rickety rafts were "illegal refugees" and sent them to join over fifteen thousand Haitians already being held on Guantánamo after fleeing a violent coup in Haiti. Escape to Miami recounts the gripping stories of the rafters who were detained in Guantánamo during the 1994-1996 Cuban Rafter Crisis. After working in the camps for a year as an employee of the U.S. Justice Department, Elizabeth Campisi conducted life history interviews with twelve of the rafters, chronicling their departures from Cuba, their rafting trips, life on the base, and their initial experiences in Cuban Miami. Through these remarkable narratives, the book details the ways in which the rafters used creative expression, such as performance and artwork, to cope with the traumas they experienced in the camp. Campisi explores these coping mechanisms, showing that, when people work through individually-traumatic experiences as a group, the new meanings they create during that process can come together to change existing cultures or create new ones. Vivid and engaging, Escape to Miami gives voice to the untold stories of Guantánamo. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in policy, Latin American history, and human rights.
In the years since Fidel Castro came to power, the migration of close to one million Cubans to the United States continues to remain one of the most fascinating, unusual, and controversial movements in American history. María Cristina García—a Cuban refugee raised in Miami—has experienced firsthand many of the developments she describes, and has written the most comprehensive and revealing account of the postrevolutionary Cuban migration to date. García deftly navigates the dichotomies and similarities between cultures and among generations. Her exploration of the complicated realm of Cuban American identity sets a new standard in social and cultural history.
Between revolution and counterrevolution -- The legacy of violence -- A time for dialogue? -- The crisis of 1980 -- Acting as a "superhero"? -- The two contrary currents -- Making foreign policy domestic?
Between April and September 1980, more than 125,000 Cuban refugees fled their homeland, seeking freedom from Fidel Castro's dictatorship. They departed in boats from the port of Mariel and braved the dangerous 90-mile journey across the Straits of Florida. Told in the words of the immigrants themselves, the stories in Voices from Mariel offer an up-close view of this international crisis, the largest oversea mass migration in Latin American history. Former refugees describe what it was like to gather among thousands of dissidents on the grounds of the Peruvian embassy in Cuba, where the movement first began. They were abused by the masses who protested them as they made their way to the Mariel harbor, before they were finally permitted to leave the country by Castro in an attempt to disperse the civil unrest. They waited interminably for boats in oppressive heat, squalor, and desperation at the crowded tent camp known as "El Mosquito." They embarked on vessels overloaded with too many passengers and battled harrowing storms on their journeys across the open ocean. Author Jose Manuel Garcia, who emigrated on the Mariel boatlift as a teenager, describes the events that led to the exodus and explains why so many Cubans wanted to leave the island. The shockingly high numbers of refugees who came through immigration centers in Key West, Miami, and other parts of the United States was a message--loud and clear--to the world of the people's discontent with Castro’s government and the unfulfilled promises of the Cuban Revolution. Based on the award-winning documentary of the same name, Voices from Mariel features the experiences of marielitos from all walks of life. These are stories of disappointed dreams, love for family and country, and hope for a better future. This book illuminates a powerful moment in history that will continue to be felt in Cuba and the United States for generations to come.
Bringing together an unprecedented number of extensive personal stories, this book shares the triumphs and heartbreaking moments experienced by some of the first Cubans to come to the United States after Fidel Castro took power in 1959.
Since the arrival of the Spanish conquerors at the beginning of the colonial period, Cuba has been hugely influenced by international migration. Between 1791 and 1810, for instance, many French people migrated to Cuba in the wake of the purchase of Louisiana by the United States and turmoil in Saint-Domingue. Between 1847 and 1874, Cuba was the main recipient of Chinese indentured laborers in Latin America. During the nineteenth century as a whole, more Spanish people migrated to Cuba than anywhere else in the Americas, and hundreds of thousands of slaves were taken to the island. The first decades of the twentieth century saw large numbers of immigrants and temporary workers from various societies arrive in Cuba. And since the revolution of 1959, a continuous outflow of Cubans toward many countries has taken place—with lasting consequences. In this book, the most comprehensive study of international migration in Cuba ever undertaken, Margarita Cervantes-Rodríguez aims to elucidate the forces that have shaped international migration and the involvement of the migrants in transnational social fields since the beginning of the colonial period. Drawing on Fernand Braudel’s concept of longue durée, transnational studies, perspectives on power, and other theoretical frameworks, the author places her analysis in a much wider historical and theoretical perspective than has previously been applied to the study of international migration in Cuba, making this a work of substantial interest to social scientists as well as historians.
The Cuban revolution served as a rallying cry to people across Latin America and the Caribbean. The revolutionary regime has provided vital support to the rest of the region, offering everything from medical and development assistance to training and advice on guerrilla warfare. Cuba and Revolutionary Latin America is the first oral history of Cuba’s liberation struggle. Drawing on a vast array of original testimonies, Dirk Kruijt looks at the role of both veterans and the post-Revolution fidelista generation in shaping Cuba and the Americas. Featuring the testimonies of over sixty Cuban officials and former combatants, Cuba and Revolutionary Latin America offers unique insight into a nation which, in spite of its small size and notional pariah status, remains one of the most influential countries in the Americas.
Florida and the Mariel Boatlift of 1980 recounts first-hand the drama and political intrigue that erupted when more than thirty thousand Cuban refugees fled to Florida and the stories of the first responders who aided them.
Daniel has escaped Nazi Germany with nothing but a desperate dream that he might one day find his parents again. But that golden land called New York has turned away his ship full of refugees, and Daniel finds himself in Cuba. As the tropical island begins to work its magic on him, the young refugee befriends a local girl with some painful secrets of her own. Yet even in Cuba, the Nazi darkness is never far away . . .