Voices From Mariel PDF Download

Three decades later, the Mariel Boatlift exodus continues to be thoroughly probed by sociologists, researchers, academics, and even the protagonists of those dramatic events that shook Cuba and the international community in 1980. What is it about those events which keeps those interested in the topic coming back over and over again, as they continue to survey unexpected angles? Perhaps part of the answer can be found in the fact that the Mariel Boatlift was a profound event that shocked the Castro regime from the point of view of its international foreign policy standing, devastating to Cuban society which virtually imploded as never before. This was a hard and unexpected blow to the Castro doctrine as Castro himself felt confident in having imposed total control and infused terror in people; and it was a wonderful, unique, and powerful cultural event. These incidents as a whole still continue to leave scars. One of the protagonists of those events was José Garcia. He was thirteen years old when he lived firsthand the shocking story of the Mariel boatlift. Decades later as a successful and respected professor at Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida, he involved himself in a research project for a documentary based on his own experience and on the experiences of others directly involved in and affected by the Mariel Boatlift. Professor Garcia returned to Cuba to revisit places linked to the phenomenon of the Boatlift, interviewing people connected with the events; in addition, he interviewed people now living in the United States who were also involved. The result of this research is the eighty-minute documentary Voices From Mariel (2010), directed by American filmmaker James Carleton, based on a script by Garcia. This book gathers the testimonies of some of the victims of Castro's tyranny, which has damaged the essence of what it means to be Cuban, forcing into exile two million of Cuba's citizens. Most of the testimonies that make up the documentary are found in this volume, but at the same time Voices From Mariel is much more comprehensive. Garcia offers his own memoirs and organizes the events to weave a broad scenario, where the voices of others who lived through that same experience can be heard. As a whole, the book presents an exciting human story wherein both those who left and those who remained on the island were changed forever. These pages reflect the feeling of abandonment, pain, uprooting, and hopelessness that Cubans have been suffering for more than half a century. The testimonies of those who left Cuba via Mariel show the legacy of Castroism: family separation, death, pain, and misery. Voices From Mariel provides not only a portrait of an era and a historic moment, but of the hopelessness of a fragmented people. This book is not intended to be a study of the events of 1980, but the human memory of a mutually shared pain. Luis de la Paz