The Cuban Exodus of 1994: Guantanamo, Panama, Cayman Islands and Krome

The 1994 Cuban boat crisis involved more than 50,000 Cubans who threw themselves into an uncertain future; refugees laid on rafts and improvised sea vessels in an attempt to escape from their homeland. One thought pressed their minds as they ventured away from the life they knew so well: that they could die trying to reach the United States. However, they courageously took the risk after deciding that they could no longer live in Castro’s Cuba -- one burdened by discrimination, oppression, abuse, poverty, and subjection. The United States, in a gesture of humanity, rescued some 32,000 refugees from the Straits of Florida and the Caribbean Sea -- sadly, more than 15,000 may have died before being rescued. They were then sent to the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base where many endured more than a year of difficult physical and emotional conditions before their legal entry into the United States. During that year and a half, many improbable, noble, ugly, and unpredictable things happened in the refugee camps of the Cuban boat people. Dr. Antonio Gordon, a Cuban-American physician and researcher of Cuban health issues, has been able to captured the story of this crisis. He has traveled several times to Guantanamo Bay, voluntarily providing medical services to the rafters with the Miami Medical Team and collecting camp newspapers and personal accounts. In 2015, Dr. Gordon published the Spanish version of this volume; the work provides a unique version of this important time in our history, anchored by the rafter’s testimonies and periodicals published in the refugee camps from Guantánamo and the Cayman Islands. Twenty years later, testimonies of thousands of Cuban rafters, American Armed Forces, and civilian personnel who came together in this crossroads of history are enraptured by this work. It is bound to touch the deepest fibers of all involved, Americans and Cubans alike, and will be a must for historians, students, and politicians interested in relations between Cuba and the United States. Read more