Cuba, America and the Sea

Book excerpt: One night in August 1994, 19 people squeezed into the 20-foot fishing boat Analuisa and motored out of Mariel, Cuba. Their destination, 90 miles away, was Florida and freedom. The Analuisa, now preserved at Mystic Seaport, is part of a larger story as well. For hundreds of years, the sea that divides Cuba and America has also tied them in an often contentious connection. In an engagingly objective way, Dr. Roorda reviews the long history of Cuban-American relations through wars and liberation, slavery and freedom, economic embrace and bitter embargo, artistic endeavor and cultural conflict, vacation revelry and family upheaval- a relationship that remains emotionally charged to this day.