Anita Arroyo de Hernandez was a journalist, professor, and historian born in Italy in 1914 to Cuban and Puerto Rican parents. She graduated from the University of Havana and worked as a journalist and was also a prominent writer for Cuadernos del Congreso por la Libertad de la Cultura. She left Cuba for Puerto Rico after criticizing the post-1959 Castro government in her column in the newspaper Diario de La Marina. She was a professor at the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan.
She wrote a number of publications, including: Un deber ineludible (1942), Las artes industriales en Cuba: su historia y evolución desde las culturas precolombinas hasta nuestros días (1943), Razón y pasión de Sor Juana (1952), about the Mexican nun, Superación y aporte de la mujer norteamericana (1959). América en su literatura (1967), El pajaro de lata: Cuba para Sus niños (1973), Raíces al viento (1974), Narrativa hispanoamericana actual: América y sus problemas (1980), the children’s book El grillo gruñón (1984), El hombre palabra (1985), José Antonio Saco: Su Influencia En La Cultura y en Las Ideas Political De Cuba (Colección Cuba y sus jueces) (1989), Las pequeñas muertes (1992), a novel about living in exile, and Cuentos del caribe (1992.)
Martha Flores was a Cuban radio host, journalist, singer, and actress. Born in Cárdenas, Matanzas, in 1928, her family moved to Havana when she was a child. She studied journalism at the Manuel Márquez Sterling School and later graduated as a stenographer and typist from the Professional School of Commerce in Havana. She left Cuba in January 1959 and began to work multiple jobs in Miami, which included producing a radio segment called La Voz de la Mujer on WMIE. According to Flores, hers was the first radio program in Miami to speak out against Castro's revolution.
A leading figure in Miami's Cuban diaspora radio market, she was known to her listeners as the "Queen of the Night." She worked at La Fabulosa WFAB in the late 1960s and then moved to Union Radio WOCN in 1976. In 1982, she developed the program La Noche y Usted at WRHC-Cadena Azul, eventually moving to WQBA in 1992 and WAQI Radio Mambí in 1996. The three hour program covered Cuban issues and local politics.
She was a spokesperson for various causes, including the elderly, cancer awareness, and animal protection programs. She was also involved in the work of Brigada 2506.
Gladys Pérez is a journalist and professor. Born in Cuba in 1947, she worked as a journalist at the Instituto Cubano de Radio y Televisión and was a professor at the Universidad de La Habana and the Centro Internacional de Estudios de Comunicación para América Latina (CIESPASL) in Ecuador. A documentary filmmaker and photographer, she is the author of five books. Pérez has lived in the United States since 1995, where she worked at ZUBI Advertising.
David L. Powell is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and the Columbia Journalism School. He began his professional life as a reporter for the Associated Press in New York, Miami, and Tallahassee. After earning a law degree from Florida State University, he practiced law for thirty years. In his work and through civic organizations he met many Cuban Americans and was moved by the stories of their lives. He began recording interviews about their memories in 2016, which were compiled in the book "Ninety Miles and a Lifetime Away: Memories of Early Cuban Exiles."
