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María Julia Casanova was born in Havana, Cuba in 1916 and is recognized for her long career as a script writer for radio and television and as a theater designer and director. She worked for children’s theater in Mexico and wrote for the radio serial “La Impostora” broadcast on Cuba’s CMQ station. With Margot de Blanck she founded the Sala Teatro Hubert de Blanck in Havana, in which she occasionally presented her own plays such as Hechizadas and Mujeres.

Exiled in Miami, Florida in 1960, Casanova worked in radio and later with Sociedad Pro-Arte Grateli. With Armando Navarro and Roberto Miñagorri, she founded the Sala Teatro La Danza, which debuted with the play Corona de Amor by Alejandro Casona and adapted by Casanova. Casanova also worked for the magazine publisher Editorial de Armas.

In the 1980s, she served as artistic director for the Teatro Bellas Artes in Miami, where she presented original works such as Lucy and La Reina Enamorada, and designed theater sets for Teatro Avante. In the 1990s, she realized her dream of owning a theater and opened the Teatro Casanova on Miami’s Calle Ocho. Ediciones Universal published her autobiography, Mi vida en el teatro, in 2000. Four years later, María Julia Casanova died in Miami.

Luis Casero Guillén (1902-1998) was a Cuban politician, born in Santiago de Cuba. He was elected mayor of Santiago de Cuba in the 1940s and served as Minister of Public Works during the presidency of Carlos Prío Socarrás. In 1952, Casero Guillén was nomiated for Vice President on the Auténtico ticket along with Carlos Hevia for President, but the elections never took place due to the coup d'etat by Fulgencio Batista in March of 1952.

Casero Guillén became a member of the Rotary Club International in 1930 and he continued his involvement with this organization when he arrived in the United States in 1971 with the “Rotarios Cubanos Exiliados” (Cuban Exile Rotarians) until his death in 1998.

James Cason (born 1945) is a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer, most recently serving as Ambassador to Paraguay, a post he held from 2006 to 2008. Prior to that post, he was the Principal Officer of the US Interests Section in Havana (2002–2005). On January 20, 2011, he became the mayor of Coral Gables, Florida.

Conchita Castanedo (1903-1985) was a Cuban political activist and a founder of the Authentic Cuban Revolutionary Party. Born in Villanueva de Villaescusa, Cantabria, Spain in 1903, Castanedo immigrated to Cuba in early adulthood. In Cuba she attended the Carlos Márquez Sterling School of Journalism at the University of Havana and subsequently established herself as a well-known journalist. She became involved in national politics, and as an alternate member of Cuba’s House of Representatives, Castanedo garnered the nickname “la novia del autenticismo” because of her position within the Authentic Party.

Challenging the rule of Fulgencio Batista in 1934 and again in 1952, Castanedo was temporarily exiled to Florida because of her anti-Batista political leanings, but always returned to Cuba. She left the island permanently in 1960 after Fidel Castro took power, establishing herself in Miami. Castanedo was involved with various Cuban groups in exile, including the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association, the Cuban Women's Club, and the Cuban Revolutionary Party in Exile.

Castanedo died in Miami at the age of 82.

Jorge Castellanos was an author and professor born in 1915 in Guantánamo, Cuba.

After graduating from the University of Havana in 1940 with a doctorate in philosophy and letters, Castellanos worked as a professor of history and literature at the Institute of Secondary Education in Santiago de Cuba and the University of Oriente.

Castellanos had been associated with the Popular Socialist Party, Cuba’s communist party, during his early career, but eventually shifted his political leanings toward that of the Christian Democrats by the 1950s. He also came to oppose the dictatorial rule of Fulgencio Batista during this period.

Exiled to the United States by way of Jamaica in 1961, Castellanos was working as a history professor at Marygrove College in Detroit, Michigan, by 1962. He retired in Miami in 1987, but continued to publish books on Cuban culture, most notably his series Cultura Afrocubana, co-authored with his daughter Isabel Castellanos, from 1988 to 1994.

Yolanda del Castillo Cobelo (1933-2013) was a Cuban singer-songwriter. Before she left Cuba she had already been widely recognized as an important songwriter and her popularity continued when she arrived in the United States in 1967. Her songs have been sung by numerous artists including Celia Cruz, Tony Tatis, and Carlos Oliva. Notably, she was recognized six times by the ACCA (Asociación de Críticos y Comentaristas de Arte de Miami). Del Castillo Cobelo also received the Fellowship Program for Individual Artists from the State of Florida in the category of Cuban folk music.