Havana-Miami: The U.S.-Cuba Migration Conflict

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 rafters crisis”? Why did the US government decide that those Cubans would not be automatically admitted as they had been previously, and instead interned them at the Guantánamo Naval Base? How was this migrationand the Cuban émigré community in the United Statesbeen 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 and author of The Cuban Counterrevolution,” 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 led to the 1994 migration accords and suggests these accords reflect a possible new direction in the historically tumultuous relationship between the two neighboring countries.