This digital project was created by Eluney González during his participation in the 2026 Bob Graham Center Gulf Scholars and Smathers Libraries Latin American & Caribbean Collection Spring Internship.
The 1959 Cuban Revolution marked a profound time that reshaped Cuba and its global community. After Fidel Castro overthrew the government of Fulgencio Batista in January of 1959, successive waves of Cubans fled the island. With them came a plurality of political opinions—chief among them being the perceived inevitable return of the Cuban exile to their homeland. This exhibition highlights the political heterogeneity of the Cuban exodus as mapped onto their thoughts on ‘return’; how return should be carried out, by whom, and on what timeline. It traces how these arguments were negotiated and changed within the Cuban diaspora across migration waves. This exhibition also follows some long-term debates that extend until the present day.
Competing Political Strategies to Return
While ostensibly unified by their desire to return to a Cuba freed of communist influence, early exiles were divided on how to approach the liberation of their island. They could be separated into broad approaches, distinguished by their positions on whether Cuba’s liberation should be 1) externally led (invasion) or internally led (revolt), 2) assisted by foreign powers (principally, the United States or the Organization of American States), and 3) imminent or long-term. Any given exile’s affiliation between these groups, however, frequently shifted as major political events changed allegiances. The shifting texture of Cuban exile political identity regarding how to return to Cuba defined the early exile period, from 1959 to the mid-1970s.
External invasion
The most famous example of the ‘external invasion’ approach was the 1961 invasion of Playa Girón (otherwise known as Bay of Pigs), spearheaded by the Cuban Revolutionary Council [CRC] under the auspices of Cuban ex-prime minister José Miró Cardona.
In the light of Playa Girón’s failure and the blame that succeeded, Cuban exile groups such as Alpha 66, Comandos L-66, and the Comandos Mambises emerged as part of a militant cohort that led raids on Cuban shores. These groups were provided limited support from the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as part of a broader campaign to destabilize Cuba during the 1960s. By 1963, however, official support had dwindled. While increasingly unpopular amongst prominent exile leaders such as Manuel Artime and Aureliano Sánchez Arango, supporters of the external invasion approach lingered.
Many groups of this tendency operated with the express intent of installing a particular person or provisional government to the head of a new, liberated Cuba. However, not all militant groups had such political aspirations, such as the Movimiento Insurrecional de Recuperación Revolucionaria [MIRR].
Internal Insurrection
Alongside calls for external invasion, some Cuban exiles instead favored supporting internal insurrection movements, arguing that invasion efforts risked unnecessary loss of Cuban lives. As Castro’s regime grew further entrenched, however, even the foremost advocates of the ‘internal insurrection’ approach did not believe that this would be the only solution. Many viewed a combination of approaches necessary, which could include invasion or assassination.
Los mitos politcos del exilio frente al comunismo en cuba
This article by Ricardo Puerta, a Cuban political scientist, examines the political myths constructed by Cuban exile communities in their opposition to communism. Puerta critiques how exile rhetoric frequently mobilizes memory, nationalism, and anti-communism to produce a cohesive identity in displacement that fails to critically engage with internal opposition within Cuba. Puerta also considers three approaches to toppling communism in Cuba to determine which would be most in harmony with the current circumstances there. While he dismisses the possibility of a spontaneous national uprising and of a clandestine insurgency, he identifies the elimination of Fidel Castro as the most likely and destabilizing approach which would enable the collapse by other means.
Desde adentro será realizado la liberación de los cubanos
A brief column by Aureliano Sánchez Arango, leader of the Junta Revolucionaria de Liberación Nacional, regarding the superiority of an internal insurrection in securing the liberation of Cuba.
The Question of Foreign Interference
Proponents of both the external and internal approaches viewed the question of foreign interference as central to the debate on Cuban liberation. Many welcomed United States funding through the CIA, rationalizing their choice as necessary given the USSR’s support for the Cuban government. Others looked to Cuba’s troubled history with United States involvement (citing the Platt Amendment, for instance) and instead opted for an approach from a broader coalition of Latin American states, such as the Organization of American States [OAS or OEA, in Spanish]. Others, notably some Cuban nationalists, wanted no support at all, seeing any involvement as antithetical to the ultimate liberatory aims of the movement.
A Statement in Support of the CIA
Aureliano Sánchez Arango argued for the necessity of intervention from the Central Intelligence Agency. This is because the Cuban government was well-supported, both logistically and economically, by the Soviet Union. Even then, intervention needed to maintain a distinct separation that enabled Cuban autonomy to choose their own leaders once Castro’s government had been toppled.
¡Cuidado Con la Liberación de Cuba Por Inseminación Artificial!
Armando Cruz Cobos warned against foreign intervention in Cuba’s liberation, seeing that the United States had the same capacity for imperial domination as the USSR. He believed absolute nationalism for Cuban liberation, one in which the meddling of any other nation might mean yet another “con” against the Cuban people, just as the revolution resulted in being.
A Cartoon Against Soviet Imperialism
A political cartoon demonstrating how some Cubans saw the USSR’s influence in Latin America. Depicting as a massive goblin looming over a childlike Latin America and offering Marxism on one hand and debts on the other, the cartoon offers a cynical view on Soviet intervention in Latin America. The cartoon’s caption, “The only thing you will be paying with interest will be those of Marx’s capital,” further points to the degree that some saw Soviet communism as equivalent to a new imperialism.
Fragile Unities
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, a vast quantity of Cuban exile groups proliferated. Each of these groups operated by different means and represented different interest groups in the struggle for Cuba’s liberation. This table lists only a small fraction of Cuban exile organizations that can be found within The University of Florida’s (UF) archival collections.
In response to the early divisions, large unification-oriented organizations emerged with lofty ambitions to unite the Cuban diaspora. Some groups were formed from an agglomeration of over one hundred Cuban exile groups. Figures such as Aureliano Sánchez Arango and his Junta Revolucionaria de Liberación Nacional [JRLN] and Manuel Artime with the Cuban Revolutionary Council [CRC] were instrumental in attempting to glue together many disparate interests.
As such unity organizations expanded, however, so too did the cracks between constituents and leaders. Among these difficulties was the question of who should be included in a unified Cuban movement: while some saw the need to encompass even ex-Batista supporters and the Catholic Church, others felt the need to be more judicious.
“Que era más fácil recoger 10 gatos y llevarlos juntos a un lugar que trabajar con dos cubanos.”
Manuel Artime, “Comparecencia de Manuel Artime Ante la AREC El Miércoles 17 de Marzo de 1964” Alfredo Sánchez Echeverría Papers on Aureliano Sánchez Arango.
As indicated by the above quote from Manuel Artime in front of the Asociación para la Recuperación Económica de Cuba (AREC), unity organizations were frequently unwieldy and prone to fracturing as the constituent organizations struggled against the restraints involved in large communal decision making. Struggles for greater subgroup autonomy and decision making under the broader umbrella structure were frequent causes for division.
The blame which succeeded after the failure of the Playa Girón invasion contributed to a decoupling of at least four exile organizations from the JRLN; most cited the desire for individual organizations to make their own decisions.
Four organizations leave the JRLN
May 11, 1961
Unión Patriotica
A letter from the general coordinator of the Unión Patriotica to Aureliano Sánchez Arango, general secretary of the JRLN, seeking to part from the organization’s coordinated anti-Castrist activities while wishing the organization success in their mutual aims.
May 20, 1961
Resistencia Agramonte
A cordial letter from the general coordinator of the Resistencia Agramonte to Aureliano Sánchez Arango, general secretary of the JRLN, seeking to part from the organization’s coordinated anti-Castrist activities while maintaining a degree of respect for the umbrella organization’s activities.
May 24, 1961
Liga Anticomunista de Cuba
A letter from the president of the Liga Anticomunista de Cuba to Aureliano Sánchez Arango, general secretary of the JRLN, seeking to part from the organization’s coordinated anti-Castrist activities while wishing the umbrella organization success in their parallel aims at achieving Cuba’s liberation.
May 30, 1961
Asociacion de Veteranos Cubanos
A brief letter from the commander of the Asosación de Veteranos Cubanos de la II Guerra Mundial y Corea en Exilio seeking to part from the organization’s coordinated anti-Castrist activities due to their nature as a political group.
Embargoes and Reconciliation
During the 1960s, the United States, interested in isolating Castro’s regime economically, issued a series of embargos that prevented the trade of all goods by 1964. With the dissolution of Cuba’s strongest ally and trading partner of the Soviet Union [USSR] in December of 1991, however, Cuba faced an economic crisis known as a ‘special period in a time of peace,’ or more succinctly just ‘the special period.’ This crisis was only worsened by the codification of the U.S. embargo in 1992 and 1996. The people of the Cuban diaspora had long felt conflicted about the embargo. Some viewed any trade with Cuba as a kind of tacit support for the regime’s legitimacy; others believe that the embargo had helped more than harmed Castro’s government.
After a brief thaw from 2015 to 2017 during the Obama administration, sanctions were reinstated in 2018 by the Trump administration. As of 2026, the issue of the embargo has recently escalated as the United States’ policy on Cuba continues to evolve.
Characterizing Narratives and Debates on Return
What the aforementioned approaches to Cuban liberation appear to conform to clear political categories, several additional perspectives among the Cuban diaspora do not. The following sections will outline, in broad strokes, some of the major poetics and questions that continue to define aspects of the Cuban diaspora today. These include the tendency towards a bucolic exile nostalgia and the innate temporality that defines exodus, as well as the questions of whether Cubans were exiles or Americans, and who, among the diaspora, is allowed to return.
Bucolic Exile Nostalgia
In highlighting the impetus behind the return to Cuba, many exiles wrote nostalgic reimaginations of their homeland. Across many of these renditions, one may find bucolic imagery that evokes a distinctly rural inclination. Though these sources span decades, they point to a persistent pattern of imaginaries among Cuban exiles.
Cuba, Nostalgia y Compromiso
A poem by Antonio A. Acosta titled “Cuba, Nostalgia y Compromiso” which explores the nature of memory for Cuban exiles dedicated to realizing a return to Cuba. Notable is the focalized imagery on seeds, reaping, and harvest, all of which lend a rural tone. When imbibed with the theme of nostalgia, Cuba becomes, in the mind of the exile, an idealized rural zone whose purity must be liberated from the ‘poisonous ivy’ of communism.
Original:
Me duele la patria en suelos extranjeros
y añoro mi patio y mis tiempos de antaño
Me duelen los surcos sin semillas ni frutos
y las palmas reales con sus tristes penachos
Me duele la siembra que dejé inconclusa
y la hoz insolente que segó la cosecha
Pero un mandato apremiante nos mantiene despiertos:
El rescate inexcusable de la patria oprimida;
de la patria que espera por los hijos ausentes.
Y esto es para nosotros como un credo.
Es un compromisa con la buena historia,
a la que no le podemos negar nuestro concurso.
Entonces, preparemos la metralla del decoro
y erradiquemos la hibera envenada
que ha enfermado a la isla de silencio.
Y una vez concluida la encomienda,
plantemos la semilla raigal de la vergüenza
en el alba sublime del regreso.
Para así, al fin, rescatar el amor y la concordia
en una Cuba Martiana para siempre.
Translation:
My homeland aches within me on foreign soil,
and I yearn for my courtyard and the days of yore.
I grieve for the furrows, devoid of seed or fruit,
and for the royal palms with their sorrowful plumes.
I grieve for the sowing I left unfinished,
and for the insolent sickle that reaped the harvest.
Yet a pressing mandate keeps us ever vigilant:
The imperative rescue of our oppressed homeland—
of the homeland that awaits her absent children.
And for us, this serves as a creed.
It is a pledge to the cause of righteous history—
a cause to which we cannot deny our aid.
So let us ready the shrapnel of honor,
and let us eradicate the poisonous ivy
that has sickened the island with silence.
And once this mission is fulfilled,
let us plant the deep-rooted seed of dignity
in the sublime dawn of our return.
So that, at last, we may reclaim love and harmony
in a Cuba forever true to the spirit of Martí.
Cuba’s Imminent Liberation
For the exile, Cuba’s liberation was always imminent. Or, rather, it needed to be. Across diaspora narratives, one will always find the assertion that Cuba will be liberated within one, two, or five years. Whether a symptom of the particular character of the Cuban diaspora or of the press’ need for attention-grabbing headlines, the fact remains that between 1959 and even the present day, one can find many instances in which Cuba appeared to be at the edge of liberation, even if that liberty never materialized.
Cuban Exile or Cuban American?
The constant perception of Cuba’s imminent liberation demonstrates how temporariness defined the Cuban exile experience. To be a Cuban exile was, necessarily, to believe oneself to be a temporary visitor. As Cuba’s liberation was not as imminent as initially perceived, Cuban exiles in the United States increasingly began to debate whether the Cuban diaspora had become assimilated into American culture. The nature of Cuban assimilation was contentious because of what a loss of an exile-centric identity would mean for the cause of returning Cuba—namely, whether return would be possible at all. Cuban assimilation into American culture challenged the long-held idea that Cubans would one day return.
Who gets to return?
As the conciliatory approach bore fruit between the 1990s and early 2000s, the question became not how one would return to Cuba, but if. While charter flights operated intermittently since 1979, the establishment of regular charter flights in 1991 by American Airlines facilitated travel, usually restricted to humanitarian purposes or unifying families. Even then, charter flights only flew from three locations: New York, Miami, and Los Angeles. To a large degree, geography determined one’s access to return to Cuba.
In 2003, the Yucatan Express proposed a ferry that would travel from Florida’s Tampa Bay, a region with a significant Cuban community, to Cuba’s Habana (Click here to learn more about the connections between these two cities). Although framed as a means of delivering humanitarian aid, its stated primary goal was family reunification.
While the Yucatan Express ferry did not materialize due to diplomatic obstacles, the central gripe that Manteiga held against the ferry’s detractors reveals the degree to which geography formed political opinions. Miami and New York Cuban populations had a much greater degree of access than did Cubans in Tampa, which the Yucatan Express ferry would have ameliorated.
the newspaper, wrote on the divisive nature of the ferry and the differential access to Cuba between Miami and Tampa Cubans.
In the following article, Patrick Manteiga explores the disparate treatment within the Cuban exile community with similar histories. Manteiga compares his grandfather, Victoriano Manteiga, to Oriales Rubio, mother of Senator Marco Rubio. Both families moved to Florida for economic reasons before 1959. However, Victoriano’s post-revolution return to Cuba was viewed by Tampa exiles as supporting Castro, whereas Oriales’ return to the U.S. after visiting the island was characterized as fleeing the regime.
“[Marco] Rub[io]’s cohorts in Miami’s exile community blocked the naming of the Ybor Post Office after my father because our newspaper didn’t trash Castro quickly enough. We wonder if Rub’s cohorts will now turn on him because, obviously, if the Rubios were considering a return to Cuba in 1961, they couldn’t have been too critical of Castro.”
Patrick Manteiga, “As We Heard It.” La Gaceta, 28 October 2011.
Conclusion
The University of Florida’s archival collections contain a plethora of material about the Cuban diaspora that exceed the individual experiences of the people they portray. Rather, these archives reveal the dreams and passions of a nation displaced, whose worlds were often centered around the possibility of return. Return, for exiles, acted as a force that shaped political strategy; that unified as well as it divided; that demanded imminency in its realization. Across newspaper columns, academic articles, magazines, poetry, political cartoons, and letters, one can find a community in rage, in mourning, in fear, in jubilation. This exploration reveals that ‘return’ was not about the physical act of moving from a space currently occupied to a space held previously. Rather, it became a way of thinking about the future, a line that could be cast just far enough forward to remain hopeful. In this way, ‘return’ is not only a function of destination, but as a force that defines the nature of the exile themself. The way that ‘return’ shapes identity goes beyond a strictly historical framework and points to the ongoing way that the Cuban diaspora continues to structure an inherited identity.
Positionality and Acknowledgements
Positionality Statement
Eluney González is a second-year master’s student in Latin American Studies at the University of Florida, having previously earned Bachelor’s in English and History. The focus on the concept of ‘return’ for this project was inspired by Eluney’s personal experience as a child of Argentine immigrants, whose own opinions regarding political change and the possibility of returning to their homeland have greatly shaped how he views this phenomenon. While not Cuban himself, Eluney found many parallels between the conceptualization of the ‘return migration’ phenomenon between his personal experience and the people of the Cuban diaspora in the archive. It is his hope to extend this project more broadly into literatures of migration, to see how this strain of thought might appear in other, fictional representations. Raised in a bilingual family with uniquely Argentine Spanish, Eluney’s relationship with the Spanish language comes from both family connections and classroom learning.
This research into the politics and poetics of ‘return’ aims to investigate a particular motivating factor behind many of the historical actors who have formed, in political, social, and cultural terms, ‘Cuban diaspora.’ It also aims to connect the actions taken in the 1960s through 1990s to the present day, showing how modern policy on U.S. intervention in Cuba derives not from thin air, but from a longer history of debate and negotiation over who has the authority to act and how. Through an investigation of the University of Florida’s plethora of materials within the Latin American and Caribbean Collection, Eluney hopes to have broadcasted a certain modality of thought that continues to shape Florida’s, and the United States’, history.
Collection Acknowledgments
Thank you to the following collections for supporting my archival research.
- UF Latin American & Caribbean Collection
- UF Smathers Library Special Collections
- UF Digital Collections (UFDC)
- Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC)
- Florida Digital Newspaper Library (FDNL)
Bibliography
Image Citations
- Image 1: Executive Committee. “Statement of the Executive Committee of the Revolutionary Junta of National Liberation.” 1961. Alfredo Sánchez Echeverría Papers on Aureliano Sánchez Arango, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
- Image 2: Henry Raymont. “Cuban Exiles Ask for New Invasion.” The New York Times, 1966. Alfredo Sánchez Echeverría Papers on Aureliano Sánchez Arango, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
- Image 3: “Comandos Mambises Atacan.” Asociación Internacional de Prensa, 1964. Rafael Martínez Pupo Papers Relating to Comandos Mambises. Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida.
- Image 4: Movimiento Insurreccional de Recuperación Revolucionaria. “Importante: A todas las organizaciones revolucionarias, a todos los cubanos en general, a nuestros amigos americanos.” 1961. Alfredo Sánchez Echeverría Papers on Aureliano Sánchez Arango, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
- Image 5: Ricardo Puerta. Los mitos políticos del exilio frente al comunismo en Cuba. Exilio Revista de Humanidades, Winter 1965. Alfredo Sánchez Echeverría Papers on Aureliano Sánchez Arango, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
- Image 6: “Desde Adentro Será Realizada la Liberación de los Cubanos.” El Universal, January 22 1961. Alfredo Sánchez Echeverría Papers on Aureliano Sánchez Arango, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
- Image 7: Aureliano Sánchez Arango. “Statement by the Revolutionary Junta of National Liberation.” n.d. Alfredo Sánchez Echeverría Papers on Aureliano Sánchez Arango, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
- Image 8: Armando Cruz Cobos. “¡Cuidado con la liberación de Cuba por inseminación artificial!” Liberación, n.d. Alfredo Sánchez Echeverría Papers on Aureliano Sánchez Arango, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
- Image 9: Silvio Fontanillas. “Lo único que sí vas a pagar con creces, van a ser los intereses del capital de Marx.” Liberación, 1970. Alfredo Sánchez Echeverría Papers on Aureliano Sánchez Arango, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
- Image 10: “Lo que ocurre en el exilio.” Emedele, 1961. Alfredo Sánchez Echeverría Papers on Aureliano Sánchez Arango, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
- Image 11: Manuel Artime. “Comparecencia de Manuel Artime ante la AREC, 17 de marzo de 1964.” 1964. Alfredo Sánchez Echeverría Papers on Aureliano Sánchez Arango, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
- Image 12: Félix Hernández Tellaeche. Letter to Jesús Artigas Carbonell. 1961. Alfredo Sánchez Echeverría Papers on Aureliano Sánchez Arango, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
- Image 13: Ernesto Rosell Leyte Vidal. Letter to Aureliano Sánchez Arango. 1961. Alfredo Sánchez Echeverría Papers on Aureliano Sánchez Arango, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
- Image 14: Salvador Díaz-Versón. Letter to Aureliano Sánchez Arango. 1961. Alfredo Sánchez Echeverría Papers on Aureliano Sánchez Arango, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
- Image 15: Monte Ulloa. Letter to Junta Revolucionaria de Liberación Nacional. 1961. Alfredo Sánchez Echeverría Papers on Aureliano Sánchez Arango, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
- Image 16: Fernando Melo Fontanills. Letter to Aureliano Sánchez Arango. 1961. Alfredo Sánchez Echeverría Papers on Aureliano Sánchez Arango, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
- Image 17: Executive Committee. “Agreement on Eusebio Mujal and Jesús Artigas.” 1961. Alfredo Sánchez Echeverría Papers on Aureliano Sánchez Arango, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
- Image 18: Liz Balmaseda. “Somos más exiliados que nunca.” El Nuevo Herald (Miami, Florida), May 10, 1995, 18. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.
- Image 19: Pablo Alfonso. “Aznar se reúne con grupos del exilio cubano.” El Nuevo Herald (Miami, Florida), November 30, 1995, 18. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.
- Image 20: “Trump’s ‘Maximum Pressure’ Campaign on Cuba, Explained.” Council on Foreign Relations, 2026. https://www.cfr.org/articles/trumps-maximum-pressure-campaign-on-cuba-explained.
- Image 21: Juan Bosch. Letter to Miguel Ángel Quevedo. 1961. Miguel Ángel Quevedo Papers, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
- Image 22: Antonio Acosta. “Cuba, Nostalgia y Compromiso.” La Información (Houston, Texas), January 17, 2007, 6. Alfredo Sánchez Echeverría Papers on Aureliano Sánchez Arango, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
- Image 23: “¿Cree usted que 1961 sea el año de la liberación para Cuba?” El Mundo ¡EXTRA! (January 1961): 22–25. Alfredo Sánchez Echeverría Papers on Aureliano Sánchez Arango, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
- Image 24: “Exiles Say End Nears for Castro.” The Independent (Pasadena, California), September 6, 1966. Alfredo Sánchez Echeverría Papers on Aureliano Sánchez Arango, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
- Image 25: Goya Foods. “20 de Mayo, 1902/1993.” La Gaceta (Tampa, Florida), May 21, 1993, 8. Florida Digital Newspaper Library, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
- Image 26: Frances Robles and David Adams. “Cuba’s Government Has Lasted 67 Years. Will It Fall Under Trump?” The New York Times (New York, New York), February 8, 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/world/americas/cuba-communist-government-trump.html.
- Image 27: Wilfredo Fernandez. “Sigue el problema de la coexistencia.” El Nuevo Herald (Miami, Florida), December 11, 1995, 7. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.
- Image 28: Cynthia Corzo. “Exilio da alta calificación a Mas en sondeo del 23.” El Nuevo Herald (Miami, Florida), November 23, 1995, 3. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.
- Image 29: Patrick Manteiga. “As We Heard It.” La Gaceta (Tampa, Florida), January 31, 2003, 14. Florida Digital Newspaper Library.
- Image 30: Patrick Manteiga. “As We Heard It.” La Gaceta (Tampa, Florida), October 28, 2011, 12. Florida Digital Newspaper Library.
About the Internship
This research project was made possible thanks to grant funding from the University of Florida Gulf Scholars Experiential Learning Program. The internship, Archival Research & Digital Exhibit in Cuban Studies, was coordinated by Melissa Jerome (Latin American & Caribbean Collection) and Dr. Onursal Erol (Bob Graham Center). It offered a semester long experiential learning opportunity. It directly addressed the Gulf Scholars Program’s emphasis on “Cultural Heritage, History, and Storytelling” by focusing on Cuba’s historical, cultural, and social ties to the Gulf of Mexico and its communities. By engaging with archival materials from the LACC’s renowned Cuba collection, the student explored these connections and contributed to broader understandings of the Gulf region’s transnational histories. The internship’s primary goal was to produce a digital project that highlights a selected theme, demonstrates the intern’s skills (such as archival research, foreign language proficiency, analytical and communication abilities, and digital curation), contributed to an ongoing project at the Smathers Library, and concluded with an analysis that ties the project’s findings to contemporary issues.