The Cuban Postcard Collection consists of postcards of Cuba and the Cuban exile experience produced from the turn of the 20th century to the present. It includes real photo, printed photo, and artist drawn postcards and provides views of many parts of the island as well as various aspects of Cuban communities in the United States and abroad. This collection is divided into six series in eight boxes, described below.
The Ana Rosa Velazco papers contains personal papers of former Cuban Museum of Arts and Culture member and AMIGOS of the Cuban Heritage Collection board member. Materials date from the late 20th century and inlcude scrapbooks, photographs, correspondence, meeting minutes, invitations, event programs, clippings, posters.
The María Luisa Guerrero Collection contains reports, clippings, and articles about Cuba and Cuban exiles during the 1930s to the 1980s, material on the Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club, and the feminist movement in Cuban society. The collection also contains extensive accounts about Elena Mederos, human rights issues, and the plight of Cuban political prisoners.
The Polymita Picta collection consists of materials related to the Polymita picta, or Cuban land snail, also known as the painted snail, a species endemic to Cuba. It includes photographs, articles, posters, an encyclopedia entry, and specimins of shells.
The Atlanta Cuban Club collection documents activities of Atlanta Cuban Club, an exile community organization. The mandate of Atlanta Cuban Club is to preserve Cuban traditions and culture. The materials consist of invitations, programs, correspondence and other publications from Atlanta Cuban Club.
The Centro Cultural Cubano de Boston Records contain the organizational records of the Centro Cultural Cubano de Boston, whose mission is to promote the traditions, music, dance and culture of Cuba and other Latin American countries throughout Boston.
The collection contains clippings, correspondence, regulations, meeting minutes, member rosters and information on a concert by Marta Pérez in Boston, Massachusetts. The collection also contains a scrapbook with correspondence, photographs and other documents relating to the history of the organization.
The Emilio Nuñez Portuondo Papers contain the personal papers and collections of former Cuban Prime Minister Emilio Nuñez Portuondo. They include hundreds of newspaper clippings, sorted by date, mostly dealing with talks, conferences, and speeches given by Nuñez from the late 1950s to mid-1970s. The collection also includes correspondence with Richard Nixon, his supporters, and others; articles and papers written by and about Nuñez; and a personally signed portrait from Nixon.
The Luis J. Botifoll Oral History Project collection includes videos, outlines, and selected transcripts of oral history interviews conducted principally with members of the first generations of Cubans exiled since the Cuban Revolution. Interviews with political prisoners, visual artists, community activists, and others help to capture Cuba's undocumented history, culture, and people, as well as the exile experience.
The Botifoll Oral History Project was launched in April 2008 with the support of the AMIGOS of the Cuban Heritage Collection. The Project aims to record and provide access to these testimonies in support of the Cuban Heritage Collection's efforts to document the Cuban experience on the island and in the diaspora.
The interviews are made available online as they are completed and can be accessed from the Univeristy of Miami Digital Collections.
The Eduardo Áviles Ramírez Collection consists of newspaper and magazine articles which pertain to his personal experiences with various cultures and with the lifestyles of many prominent individuals, such as Francis de Miomandre and Ruben Darío.
Articles date from the early 1920s to the late 1980s. The bulk of the collection consists of periodicals and clippings written for Latin American publications in Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
The collection also contains numerous articles written about Ruben Darío, a notable Nicaraguan literary figure, for newspapers such as Información, Diario de la Marina, and El Universal. Many articles relating to Spain also appear in Latin American publications such as Puerto Rico Ilustrado and Diario de Yucatán. The collection also includes a substantial number of articles illustrated by Ricardo Marin, a famous Cuban illustrator. Marin illustrated articles for publications such as Información and Diario de la Marina from 1938 to 1940.
Typescript of "And Then There Were Five" by Hal M. Caudle Sr. The text describes the 1927 shooting aboard Coast Guard Boat 249. Caudle's correspondence makes references to Horace J. Alderman.
The American Play Company collection includes approximately two thousand and five hundred (2,500) play scripts from the American Play Company of New York City. The files include published and unpublished plays from the nineteenth century through the 1950s. The collection is a donation of Sheldon Abend, President of the American Play Company. Playwrights represented in this gift include sir James M. Barrie, David Belasco, Clare Boothe, George M. Cohan, John Colton, Clyde Fitch, John Galsworthy, Ruth Gordon, Oscar Hammerstein, Moss Hart, Ben Hecht, George S. Kaufman and many others.
The play scripts include original typescripts, carbon copies of typescripts, and printed texts of plays. Many scripts contain handwritten annotations such as dialogue insertions, corrections, and deletions. The play scripts includes productions of all genre and type, for a period of approximately one hundred and fifty years. Scripts contain production annotations for stage, lighting, sound, and casting purposes. The collection offers scholars and students the opportunity to examine play scripts with the personal annotations of production personnel, facts that provide unique information on the original production of plays. Notations for costumes, sets, and stage props offer insights to production styles and techniques, information not generally available in many published versions of plays.
The John Allen collection contains three rolls of tape documenting events celebrating the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Birth. The first roll covers a Joint Session of Congress on February 12, 1959. The second and third roll cover events at the Lincoln Museum.
Dr. José Agustín Balseiro (1900-1991) was an award-winning author, poet, and scholar of Latin American Studies and Hispanic literature. He was also a professor of Hispanic Literature at the University of Miami from 1946 to 1967.
Throughout his career, Dr. Balseiro exhibited a strong interest in Latin American and Hispanic-American studies, Latin American and Spanish literature, and Puerto Rican history and literature. His papers, donated to the University of Miami, reflect all of these interests and range in date from his earliest activities as a writer in Spain to his final days working as a consultant to the University of Miami Libraries starting in 1974. Much of the content consists of correspondence, clippings, typescripts, and periodicals in which Balseiro’s writings were featured. Also included is sheet music belonging to his father, Rafael Balseiro, who was a Puerto Rican composer.
Of special note are three bronze medallions: (1) from the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquena, commemorating el primer Centenario del Natalicio de Luiz Muñoz Rivera (the centennial of the birth of Luiz Muñoz Rivera); (2) from the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquena, commemorating el Centenario de la Abolición de la Esclavidud in Puerto Rico (the centennial of the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico); and (3) from the University of Panama commemorating the first 25 years of the University’s existence.
Natale Bongiovanni was a Field Captain with the U.S. Army. The Natale Bongiovanni Papers contains six notebooks in which Bongiovanni defines and provides context and etymology for every word of President Harry Truman's State of the Union Address to Congress on January 4, 1950.
The R. A. Cushman Papers contain the following items: (1) a U.S. flag, and letters from Arthur R. De Reyes, from the American Expeditionary Forces, to his mother written in 1917 and 1918; (2) three photographic prints from the U.S. Signal Corps; (3) 46 folders of reports, essays, transcripts, bibliographies, and pamphlets largely concerned with American foreign policy, touching on topics such as foreign trade, foreign concessions, foreign aid, U.S. exports, foreign banking, and immigration.
