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.
Brother of Frank País, who is regarded by many as the one revolutionary leader who could rival Fidel Castro in the struggle against Batista. Frank was killed in the Santiago de Cuba´s uprising that was planned to unfold at the time that Castro was reaching Cuban soil aboard the “Granma.”
Co-founder of the Church of Lukumí Babalú Aye in Hialeah, Florida and Santeria priest and advocate. In 1992, his church won the U.S. Supreme Court case against the City of Hialeah over a city ordinance barring the sacrifice of animals during Santeria religious ceremonies.
Cuban exile widowed in 1961s Bay of Pigs invasion, Portela was motivated by a religious experience in the 1980s to sell her Miami home and move to Guatemala where she founded Misioneros del Camino (Missioners of the Road), an orphanage that currently has its own school and clinic.
Cuban activist and dissident who co-founded the anti-Castro organization Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE). Salvat actively worked against the Castro government in Cuba, and continued his dissident activities after his exile in 1960. He currently directs the publishing house Ediciones Universales in Miami.
Sonia Calero, a Cuban Rumba dancer, ballerina and choreographer. Calero is recognized worldwide for her work in Cuban dance with her late husband, Alberto Alonso. She was born in Havana to a working class family, and at eleven years old she enrolled at Municipal Conservatory of Havana specializing in ballet, later dancing for the Ballet Nacional de Cuba and the Conjunto Experimental de Danza. She and her husband Alberto Alonso left Cuba in 1993 for the United States where they continued their teaching and choreography.
Actress in radio, theater and TV in Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s, who married actor Carlos Badías. Her son, Carlos Alberto Badías, was a famous romantic lead in the early 1950s who later became a political prisoner under Castro
Aleida Leal, a Cuban-American journalist and radio personality who is well-known on Spanish language radio in South Florida. She started her career as a voice actress in Cuba doing commercials. In Miami, she was the host of several popular radio programs, worked on television, and voiced radio dramas. One of her best-known programs was Cita con las estrellas on WQBA Radio Miami, a celebrity talk show.
Havana-born, Sephardic Jewish activist who joined a group of Cuban Jews to fight for Israel's independence. Upon returning to Cuba, he left as an exile in 1961, living in Israel and New York before settling in Miami and opening the clothing store, Bichachi Originals. Bichachi was a founder of Temple Moses and served as president of the Cuban-Sephardic Hebrew Congregation.
