Browse Exhibits (11 total)

The exodus from Cuba that began with the Revolution of 1959 and intensified with Fidel Castro’s public acknowledgment of his Marxist-Leninist ideology lacked precedent in Cuban exile history. The United States had never before been the first country of asylum for such a large number of political refugees – 1,700 per week by the end of 1960. The American response to the crisis also made history through the U.S. Cuban Refugee Program of 1961 that welcomed more than half a million exiles during the next two decades.

This online exhibition is presented by the
Cuban Heritage Collection of the University of Miami Libraries.

From August 1994 to February 1996, over 30,000 Cubans were detained at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, after attempting to reach the United States on rafts and other make shift vessels.  For the first time in over 35 years, Cubans were not received with open arms by their neighbor to the north.  Living in tents throughout various camps set up at the naval base, the Cuban rafters spent months uncertain of their future. 

After risking their lives on the high seas in search of freedom, the rafters found themselves surrounded by barbed wire, waiting for their fate to be determined.  Would they have to return to the repression and economic hardships of life on the island?  Or, as so many other Cubans had for more than three decades, would they find refuge in the United States? 

While they waited at Guantánamo, the Cuban rafters built communities that included informal schools for the 3,000 children at the camps, art galleries, gyms, several newspapers, and elected leaders.  With the assistance of the U.S. military assigned to both contain and provide for them and the support of the Cuban exile community of South Florida, the Cubans at Guantánamo found hope amongst the dust, heat, and idleness of their detention. 

This is a test to try and figure out what's happening with this Omeka instance.

The University of Miami Libraries Special Collections is home to the Pan American World Airways, Inc. Records.  From Pan Am’s founding in 1927 through its closing in 1991, Pan Am was a pioneer in the development of aviation equipment, air routes, commercial passenger service, navigation techniques, and communication systems.  The collection is comprised of approximately fifteen hundred boxes of administrative, legal, financial, technical and promotional materials, as well as internal publications, photographs, audiovisual material and graphic material.

A processing grant awarded in 2012 from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) allowed these materials to be preserved, re-housed, and reorganized thematically, as well as the creation of a web-based finding aid.  Two additional digitization grants from both NHPRC and Council on Library & Information Resources (CLIR) have made a considerable portion of the physical collection accessible online and freely available to the public.  However, the overwhelming majority of the enormous physical collection remains in analog form and is stored off campus.

This site features useful information for researching both the physical and digital collections, as well as links to additional resources related to Pan Am. For more information about the Pan American World Airways, Inc. Records, please contact Special Collections.