Historic Photos of Cuban Miami

Book excerpt: Since 1959, when Cuba was overrun by Marxist revolutionary Fidel Castro after a long guerrilla war, Cubans have come to America in waves through the auspices of the United States and its open-door policies on immigration and asylum. Destination of choice? Miami, Florida, today home to hundreds of thousands of Cuban refugees granted political asylum in the United States and to the Americans of Cuban descent welcoming them ashore. In Historic Photos of Cuban Miami, Miamian Jennifer Ortiz looks back at the origins, hardships, unique ethnicity, and progress of the Cuban-American community which today so widely shapes this American metropolis. Nearly 200 photographs reproduced in vivid black-and-white, captioned and with introductions, tell the story of this chapter in recent American history so influential for Miami and the Cuban exiles and Cuban-Americans who call Miami home.