Ocean Press

In the summer of 1994, the Caribbean Sea became the scene of a mass exodus of Cubans as they launched their homemade rafts in the direction of the United States.

What were the origins of this "rafter crisis"? Why did the US government decide that those Cubans would not be automatically admitted as they had been previously, and instead intern them at the Guantánamo Naval Base? How was this wave of Cuban migration different from those that preceded it? How has this migration-and the Cuban émigré community-been used by Washington against Cuba since the 1959 revolution? And why has this policy become such an important US domestic issue?

Jesús Arboleya, an authority on Cuban migration, presents a detailed review of the different waves of Cuban migration to the United States. He considers how a lessening of the intransigence on both sides of the Florida Straits has led to the migration accords between Washington and Havana. He asks whether these accords reflect a possible new direction in the tumultuous relationship between these neighboring nations.

This book includes a review of the 1994-95 Migration Agreements reached between Cuba and the United States.

Jesús Arboleya has a doctorate in history. He has worked as a researcher at the Center for National Security Studies; as an associate of the Center for European Studies; as an associate of the US History Section of the Faculty of Philosophy and History at the University of Havana; and researcher associated with the Center for US Studies (CESEU) of the University of Havana. For more than 25 years he worked in the Cuban diplomatic corps, serving on various UN bodies and in the Cuban Interests' Section in Washington DC. He has focused much of his research on the Cuban émigré community. He is author of The Cuban Counterrevolution and La Revolución del Otro Mundo.