Graphic testimonies of the 1994 migration crisis: narratives of Cubans detained at Guantanamo Naval Base

Abstract

In 1994 I was a student of Letters in the Faculty of Arts and Letters at the University of Havana. Like most Cubans living on the island, I was going through all the shortages associated with the "Special Peacetime Period". It was not only the lack of food, electricity and transportation; it was also a deep crisis of values, a feeling of anesthesia from the catastrophe that daily life had become since 1990. I lived in Alamar, that other space of daily catastrophe that I tried to alleviate with frequent walks to Cojímar, to the sea. It was from the coast of Cojímar that I witnessed how many people threw themselves into the sea on rafts. I remember in particular a family that even took their dog with them, on a raft that seemed impossible because it was so fragile. People would wave goodbye to them from the shore, as if they were going for a ride, as if they were not about to risk their lives crossing the Florida Straits. I often wonder what fate befell that family. That is the image I retain of the 1994 migration crisis.