“All this is yours,” now retired librarian Rosa Abella told Esperanza de Varona 23 years ago when de Varona was appointed curator of the Cuban Archives at the Otto G. Richter Library. Abella was referring to the dozens of boxes of letters, newspapers, and memorabilia at the library collected since 1959 from the Cuban exile community. Today de Varona oversees the University’s Cuban Heritage Collection, a world-renowned center visited by historians, academics, and Cuban-Americans yearning for a glimpse of the island’s storied past. No longer scattered among various corners throughout the Richter Library, this collection of maps, photographs, letters, books, and newspapers—many dating back to the 1800s—is carefully stored and categorized in the new 10,000-square-foot Roberto C. Goizueta Pavilion on the library’s second floor.

Much more than the space that houses the archives, the $5 million pavilion creates a sense of place for those who have never been to Cuba and those forever captivated by distant memories. Double glass doors transport visitors into an exhibition gallery with marble floors, Cuban-style mahogany rocking chairs, and a remarkable trompe l’oeil mural by Miami artist Humberto Calzada. Beyond the gallery is a spacious reading room, conference room, and staff offices. Dedicated in January 2003, the pavilion bears the name of the former chairman of the board and chief executive officer of The Coca-Cola Company, a Cuban exile who died in October 1997. A gift from The Goizueta Foundation helped create a permanent home for the collection at the University of Miami. Additional support came from the late Elena Díaz Versón Amos and the Fanjul family.

“We have preserved the culture and legacy of Cuba,” says de Varona, a Cuban-born professor, librarian, and archivist. “It’s here for good.”

Since its founding in 1926, the University has been acquiring books and important documents about the island with which it forged strong ties. Over the years, it sponsored faculty and student exchanges with the University of Havana, acquired a special permit to buy Cuban archives after the U.S. embargo began, and welcomed exiles who needed to reestablish their professional degrees in a new country.

“When people ask why UM has a Cuban collection, I tell them it’s because the University was founded with the intent of establishing a relationship with Latin America and especially Cuba,” de Varona says. “Through the years, UM continued helping the Cuban people.”

But it was a group of Cuban-educated librarians working at the Richter Library who set out to preserve exile life and ensure that the rich and sometimes sorrowful history of the Caribbean island was never forgotten. As de Varona, Abella, the late Ana Rosa Núñez, Lesbia Orta Varona (A.B. ’72), and the other Cuban librarians at the Richter Library collected all they could of the exile community and all that remained from the country they left behind, they often came across mundane items that took on new meaning. There’s the last telephone book published before Fidel Castro came to power, personal papers from former heads of state, including the private papers of two Cuban presidents, and a drink menu from El Floridita, the watering hole made famous by Ernest Hemingway. Then there’s a manuscript written by Lydia Cabrera, one of the leading writers of Cuban folklore and an expert on Afro-Cuban culture. The book is illustrated by Alexandra Exter, the famous Russian painter exiled in Paris.

“Other universities have Cuban collections, but like ours, there is no other,” de Varona says.

The collection has more than 100,000 issues of periodicals produced by exiles worldwide, 40,000 books, 15,000 photographs, 7,000 issues of journals, magazines, and newspapers published in Cuba, and 1,500 postcards. It also features thousands of items that date back to the island’s battle for independence from Spain and the United States in the 1800s and early 1900s. One of the most fascinating collections is The Truth About Cuba Committee Collection: 390,000 pages of testimony, pamphlets, photographs, clippings, and correspondence generated from 1961 to 1975 by this now-defunct organization. The Miami-based group, which aimed to uncover the truth about the communist Castro government, was one of the first and most important formed in exile.

But it’s the 200 personal and corporate paper collections that best depict the life that was and the political predicament that is. Many Cubans have granted their precious mementos to the University’s Cuban Heritage Collection for the sake of keeping their heritage alive. Here are just a few of the items that make the collection one of the most distinct and largest repositories of all things Cuban outside Cuba.

A Hero’s Last Words


he elderly man walked into the Richter Library clutching an envelope closely to his chest, sat down, and slowly pulled out a letter, slightly faded and laminated. There on the table was a handwritten wartime communiqué signed by Cuban poet and hero José Martí and General Máximo Gómez Báez, the commander-in-chief of the army during the island’s war of independence from 1895 to 1898.

Martí died on May 19, 1895, almost a week after writing the letter, making it an even more priceless piece of Cuban history.

“I want to donate this treasure,” Cuban exile Rolando O’Fallon told the librarians at Richer Library in 1985, his voice shaking and his eyes full of tears.

Handing over the letter unleashed a flood of memories for O’Fallon, whose father had given the Martí treasure to him on his wedding day decades earlier. The letter had spent years stored in O’Fallon’s home in Austin, Texas. He often wondered what to do with it. Should he pass it on to his daughter just as his father had done to him, or should he put it somewhere where other Cubans could see it, study it, and admire it? After reading about the Cuban Collection, O’Fallon decided to travel to the Coral Gables campus and give the letter penned by the man many say was the apostle of Cuban independence.

“At that moment el señor O’Fallon gave us the letter, I realized the importance of the work we were doing and why we needed to continue to do this job for the Cuban community, students, researchers, and future generations,” says de Varona.

Days of Glory


n April 1961 a bomb destroyed the glamorous department store El Encanto in downtown Havana on Galiano between San Rafael and San Jose. A fire consumed the building, turning to embers the luxury shopping store known for its haute couture and beautiful saleswomen.

“Really there was nothing like it,” says de Varona, who remembers the store’s stylish employees and clientele from her youth in Cuba. “We came here, and the stores just could not compete.”

Now stashed in the Cuban collection’s huge storage room at the library is all that de Varona has been able to find from the store. A former El Encanto worker living in the United States donated a banner that was used to represent the store employee association. The framed banner sits among all the other collected treasures archived in the Goizueta Pavilion. It’s a simple reminder of Cuba’s glory days in the 1950s when the island was the playground for Hollywood starlets, jet-setters, and millionaires.

Poems and Footprints


he Cuban Heritage Digital Collection features an online exhibit of 13 personal and corporate paper collections. Among them are letters from poet, essayist, and novelist José Lezama Lima in Cuba to his sister Eloísa in Miami from 1961 to 1976.

Lima’s correspondence describes life in Cuba after Castro assumed power. The more than 300 letters often detail the reality of life under communism. At times he would send poems, and on occasion he would enclose an outline of his feet so his sister outside of Cuba could buy him new shoes.

“Here’s a master of Cuban literature who is so studied and revered doing what my uncle did,” says María R. Estorino, the archivist and director of the Cuban Heritage Digital Collection. “It just brings the whole experience home.”

On the Air


uban exile and television producer Eduardo Palmer gave his entire video library of his show Planeta 3 (Third Planet) to de Varona.

“To conserve the tapes would have been costly. To lose them would have been a tragedy,” Palmer says.

Nearly 2,000 master tapes of the political show that aired in Latin America and Spain from 1984 to 1995 are now safely kept at the Goizueta Pavilion. The hour-long political affairs program features reports on Cuba’s involvement in Africa, Castro’s ties to international terrorists, and interviews with Latin American presidents and political pundits.

“This is a great reference tool for teachers and students,” Palmer says. “I’m Cuban, and I want to ensure that the story of what is happening on the island is told correctly.”

In the News


ore than just the site of a U.S. military base, Guantánamo has been home to thousands of Cuban and Haitian refugees. In the mid-1990s, it hosted 30,000 Cubans captured at sea on their voyage to the United States. Jorge del Río León and a group of his fellow balseros (rafters) from the “Golf” camp at the base published El Futuro (The Future), a handwritten newspaper distributed from March 26 to September 20, 1995. The weekly features illustrations and articles about Cuba, its refugees, and daily life at Guantánamo.

“Each camp was like a little town. This was our little world,” del Río León says. “We filled a need—to give information to people. Many don’t understand that for eight or nine months we had no connection to our past and no idea about our future. That’s why we called it El Futuro.”

Like El Futuro, the rafter-produced newspaper Exodo (Exodus) sought to bring the refugees at Guantánamo details about the politics that fueled their limbo. The publication contains original drawings, news articles, even comic strips and horoscopes. The two newspapers are not unlike the dozens of periodiquitos (little newspapers) Cubans have published living in exile around the world. The Cuban Heritage Collection boasts one of the largest assortments of these papers produced after 1960.

“The Cuban exiles had a need to communicate. So they wrote their own newspapers, newsletters, and magazines, and they handed them out at pharmacies and grocery stores,” de Varona says.

Visual Timeline


ne of the more popular additions to the collection are the more than 600 photographs donated by Manuel R. Bustamante, a 90-year-old Cuban man from Miami who usually delivers a new set of black and whites of Cuba at his frequent visits to the Richter Library. “I started collecting the photos many years ago, and I realized I needed to conserve them,” Bustamante says.

The Bustamante photographs are images of Cuba from the early 1900s to the 1930s, from the 1950s and 1960s, and a few color snapshots from the 1990s. The photographs detail life in Cuba with a focus on its people, landscape, industry, and religious traditions.

“We registered about 30,000 Web hits from his collection last August,” archivist Estorino says. “That’s the most we’ve gotten from our collection online.”

First Lady of Freedom


olita Grau de Agüero was dubbed the honorary first lady of Cuba by her uncle, Ramón Grau San Martín, who was Cuba’s president from 1933 to 1934 and from 1944 to 1948. She would later become known for her contribution to Pedro Pan, the Catholic Church-sponsored movement that helped Cuban parents send their children to foster families in the United States in the early 1960s.
 
By the time the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis ended all Pedro Pan flights, more than 14,000 children had been brought to the United States, including Gladys Gómez Rossié, community relations coordinator for the Cuban Heritage Collection and assistant to Esperanza de Varona. Polita Grau later served 14 years as a political prisoner in Cuba for her grassroots support of Operation Pedro Pan and for conspiring with the CIA to topple Castro. The Polita Grau de Agüero Collection contains letters, clippings, and photographs of the former first lady of Cuba.

The Cuban Heritage Digital Collection is one way of making these extraordinary memories accessible to anyone interested in learning about the Cuban and Cuban exile experience. Another initiative for sharing Cuban history, traditions, and culture is Amigos, an organization created in 1995 by librarians and friends at the Richter Library. Amigos presents lectures, exhibitions, dinners with speakers, seminars, concerts, and other programs designed to enrich the entire South Florida community. Membership dues help fund an annual donation to the Cuban Heritage Collection for the purchase of books and other materials. For more information on the Cuban Heritage Collection and a link to the digital archives, visit www.library.miami.edu/library/cuban.html.