NATALIE

CATASÚS

Echoes off the Straits

of Florida:
The Rafts of the Cuban
Balseros
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In the decades since the 1959 Cuban Revolution,
tens of thousands of Cubans have taken to the Straits of Florida

197
by raft or small boat, embarking on a precarious journey away
from the island. Their reasons for leaving are many and nuanced,
but a combination of political, social, and economic factors
typically motivate these voyages across the unpredictable and
shark-infested waters that comprise the ninety-mile border
1 between our countries.1 The people who make these journeys
are known as balseros, named for the rafts (balsas) or other
Holly Ackerman, “The Balsero Phenomenon,
1991–1994,” Cuban Studies, no. 26 (1996): precarious vessels they hope will land them on U.S. territory.
169–200.
They are the navigators, the passengers, and, in most cases, the
builders of their own seafaring vessels. There is no telling how
many balseros have died attempting this journey. Some estimates
suggest that as many as one hundred thousand have perished at
sea since 1959, but because neither Cuba nor the United States
has established a system for recording the number of deaths
and the identities of the dead, a precise estimate may never be
2 possible.2
The Straits of Florida form a unique border that
Maria C. Werlau, “International Law and
Other Considerations in the Repatriation of subsumes the bodies of those who cross it but pushes their
Cuban ‘Balseros’ by the United States,” Cuba
in Transition, no. 14 (2004): 50. belongings to our shores. The vessels are incredibly varied in
form: inflatable zodiac-style rafts filled with expanding foam,
rubber truck-tire inner tubes covered in burlap and canvas, inner
tubes sandwiched between wooden planks, old wooden boats
retrofitted with car engines, and bulky hulls carved from scraps
of foam collected from the beach and melted together. Rafts
and other possessions wash up onto Florida beaches, husks that
remind Floridians of the balseros who do not arrive with them.
In the absence of human bodies, the empty rafts emerge from
the water worn and rusted, masses of swollen, cracked wood
and tattered canvas. On land, these ephemeral objects, perhaps
created only to last for the few days’ journey anticipated by their
makers, deteriorate over time.
A moment’s pause on the word: “raft,” or “balsa,”
implies the absence of a hull, the watertight body of a ship that
sits below the surface of the water. Despite the diversity in the
construction of the balseros’ vessels, the frequent use of “raft”
as a catch-all term suggests a condition of exposure to the open
air and sea. It projects an image of flatness that positions the
imagined vessel as resting flush with the waterline. The term FIGURE 1.
“raft,” with its connotation of flatness, constructs a perception of
Tío B, in History & Ourselves. HistoryMiami.
the balsero phenomenon as an event that occurs on the visible Miami, Florida. October 15, 2014.
surface of the water rather than in its depths, a misconception
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that excludes those who have drowned and passed beyond the
realm of the visible.

199
Echoing the balseros who have disappeared into the
water, the empty rafts continue their journeys. The U.S. Coast
Guard’s approach to dealing with the empty rafts out at sea
has varied over the years, resulting in an inconsistent practice
of either deliberately sinking vessels because of the potential
hazard they pose to other ships, or allowing them to remain
adrift. Though rooted in the practical need to remove potentially
hazardous objects from the water, the sinking of these vessels
performs an act of interment. The violence inherent in this
becomes apparent upon considering that some of these vessels
are “loaded with trash and gasoline and burned,” while others
3 are “blown from the water by machine-gun fire.”3 Although
the Coast Guard has prioritized rescuing rafters from their
Mary C. Williams, “Empty Rafts Help Crisis
FIGURE 2. Hit Home,” Sun Sentinel, August 26, 1994, physically precarious situation, the obliteration of the rafts in
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1994-08-26/
news/9408260031_1_rafts-coast-guard- this militaristic fashion highlights the precarious situation of
History & Ourselves exhibition, gulf-stream.
balseros at sea.
HistoryMiami, Miami, Florida.
October 15, 2014. The rafts that remain adrift ride the current that
curves beneath the southeastern edge of the Florida peninsula,
delivering hundreds of rafts to the shores of the Florida Keys and
as far north as Cocoa Beach, on the state’s eastern coast. The
Coast Guard has marked vessels with the spray-painted letters
4 “USCG-OK” to indicate that the passengers have been rescued,
but its inconsistent application of this procedure renders the
Kevin Davis and Fred Lowery, “Why On Our
Shores?” Sun Sentinel, August 27, 1994, unmarked rafts all the more mysterious.4 The empty and
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1994-08-27/
news/9408270069_1_rafts-coast-guard- unmarked vessels that accumulate on U.S. beaches evoke a sense
florida-straits.
of absence and loss that is inextricably bound to the unknown
5 fates of their passengers. Each vessel is a reminder that the
situation of the balsero is not an anomalous event, isolated in
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in
1991, Cuba lost approximately 75 percent time and space, but an ongoing phenomenon.
of its imports, and the resulting petroleum
shortage paralyzed Cuban industry, agricul- What is haunting about the Cuban raft is not simply
ture, and transportation. Deemed by Castro
El Periodo especial en tiempos de paz, or
the absence of the bodies of its passengers, but the question
the Special Period in Times of Peace, this that its arrival on U.S. shores raises: under what circumstances
widespread economic crisis persisted from
the 1990s into the 2000s and was marked by is such an object created? Under what conditions is such an
sustained hunger, frequent blackouts, and a
sharp decline in the general quality of living object necessary? In the decades following the triumph of Fidel
conditions. Incomes and services in food
FIGURE 3. Castro’s 1959 Revolution, the Castro regime tightly restricted
distribution, healthcare, education, housing,
and transportation all suffered, and Cuba’s travel out of the country. Illegal sea departures on hijacked
Museum label for Tío B, HistoryMiami. strict ration system broke down. For more,
see Luis Martínez-Fernández, “Socialism or ferries or boats—often captained by exiles who had come from
Miami, Florida. October 15, 2014.
Death! The Long Special Period, 1991–2000,”
in Revolutionary Cuba: A History (Gainesville:
Miami to collect relatives—offered a way out. But the makeshift
University Press of Florida, 2014). balsa was relatively uncommon until the early 1990s, when Cuba
sank into a deep economic crisis known as the Special Period
and food and resources became extremely scarce on the island.5
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6 Knowing that they had a chance at landing in the United States
or other neighboring countries, Cubans who were desperate to
Ackerman, “The Balsero Phenomenon,

201
1991–1994,” 175. Additionally, in this early leave Cuba but unable to do so by legal means were taking to the
demographic study of the Cuban Rafter
Crisis, Ackerman concludes that the sea in increasing numbers, often secretly in the night when the
“economic crisis was a catalyst rather than
a cause,” and that over 60 percent of the
Cuban Coast Guard was less likely to catch and jail them. Early
balseros who participated in the study had estimates suggest that two-thirds of the balseros who left Cuba
been planning to leave Cuba since before the
collapse of the Soviet Union (Ibid., 189). between 1991 and 1994 used small motorized boats, while those
who departed on homemade rafts were in the minority.6
However, mid-August to mid-September of 1994 saw
an enormous outpouring of balseros on makeshift rafts during
what became known as the Cuban Rafter Crisis. Following an
unprecedented demonstration protesting the conditions of the
Special Period, Castro called off the Cuban Coast Guard and let
7 the balseros leave.7 This achieved the dual effect of diffusing
mounting internal tensions in Cuba and shifting pressure onto
Marifeli Pérez-Stable, The Cuban Revolution:
Origins, Course, and Legacy (New York: the United States, whose “open arms” policy toward Cuban
Oxford University Press, 1993), 146–7.
immigrants established by the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act
meant that it would have to contend with the sudden influx of
8 rafters.8 Over 32,000 Cubans fled Cuba via the Straits of Florida
in the months of August and September alone. Looking toward
The 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act extends
nearly all Cubans the right to permanent reelection and wanting to avoid a repeat of the 1980 Mariel
residency in the United States, regardless
of their means of arrival and whether they Boatlift that saw over 125,000 Cuban migrants flood the U.S.
arrive with a visa.
border, President Bill Clinton took measures to control the
situation. Clinton revised the previous “open arms” policy and
declared that all refugees intercepted at sea would be detained at
the American naval base at Guantánamo or at other “safe haven”
camps, hoping that this would deter Cubans from attempting
9 the journey.9 Under the resulting “wet foot/dry foot” policy,
Cuban migrants must set foot on U.S. soil in order to be granted
Luis Martínez-Fernández, “Socialism or
Death! The Long Special Period, 1991–2000,” a path to residency, while those who are intercepted at sea are
217.
repatriated.
One balsera, interviewed in 1995, offered this
jarring explanation of her decision to leave: “We talk in Cuba of
being forced to wear masks of compliance and we say we want to
take them off. But, over time, they have been grafted to our faces
and we would rip our own features off if we suddenly revealed
what’s underneath. So, we leave and hope they will dissolve in a
10 new environment.” 10 The image of the mask incorporated into
one’s body, into one’s identity, implies the balseros were already FIGURE 4.
Ackerman, “The Balsero Phenomenon,
1991–1994,” 194. ghosts well before they endeavored to risk death in the Straits.
Humberto Sánchez with Refugee Makeshift Rafts.
They trade one form of precarity for another. In the absence of Photo by Steve Starr, January 1, 1992.
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human bodies, the empty rafts that emerge from the water come
to stand in for the bodies of those who have died there.

203
The raft that washes ashore, then, might be figured
as a relic. Consider the relic as a remnant of something now
inaccessible, the trace of a lost people or culture. Though it may
be connected to a now abstract origin, the relic is necessarily
a material object that exists in the physical world. In her book
On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir,
the Collection, Susan Stewart contrasts the relic with the
souvenir. She theorizes the relic as a kind of souvenir of the dead,
proposing that while souvenirs represent “the transformation
of materiality into meaning,” relics “mark the horrible
11 transformation of meaning into materiality.”11
Consider the relic as remains, for instance, the
Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of
the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the finger of a saint or the Buddha’s tooth. This kind of relic
Collection (Durham: Duke University Press,
1993), 139. represents the most profound transformation of the living
body into an object, yet such objects are venerated because of a
perceived connection between itself and its origin. Despite the
relationship between the empty rafts and the lost balseros and
the resulting potential for the vessels to serve as relics of the
dead, their continual arrival on U.S. shores strips them of the
mystical quality that would inspire the reverence we typically
associate with relics. As Stewart explains, “We do not need
or desire traces of events that are repeatable. Rather we need
and desire souvenirs of…events whose materiality has escaped
12 us.”12 Materiality is all that is left of the lost balseros, and this
materiality announces itself over and over again with each
Ibid., 135.
arrival of a raft or some other trace along U.S. shores. We value
souvenirs because the events of their origins cannot be repeated,
though we may long for them to be. We venerate relics in part
because the events of their origins should not be repeated. The
13 rafts paradoxically represent death and regeneration at once. The
event is repeatable—the rafts accumulate in excess—and so they
Mike Clary, “Finding Art in the Despair of
Cuban Refugees: Exhibitions: As More Rafts have come to be regarded as refuse rather than as relics.
Find Their Way into Galleries, Artists and
Curators Struggle with Presentation of a The tension between relic and refuse embodied by
Primitive Craft Used to Escape a Communist
Regime,” Los Angeles Times, December 30,
the rafts is perhaps best illustrated by the story of the Cuban
1994, http://articles.latimes.com/1994-12-30/ exile Humberto Sánchez, who, while living in Miami, recognized
entertainment/ca-14704_1_cuban-artists.
a profound relationship between the abandoned vessels and the
FIGURE 5. 14 lost balseros. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Sánchez accumulated
a collection of over five hundred rafts and five thousand personal
Maya Bell, “Cubans’ Rafts Tell Sad Tales
Cuban Chugs Exhibit. Key West
Of Desperation,” Orlando Sentinel, August items recovered from the vessels.13 Sánchez immigrated to the
Botanical Garden. Key West, 10, 1992, http://articles.orlandosentinel.
Florida. August 20, 2014. com/1992-08-10/news/9208100332_1_ United States as a child through the Freedom Flights program,14
cuban-rafters-humberto-sanchez-sea.
which was initiated in response to the chaotic Camarioca
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boatlift of 1965 during which thousands of Cubans took to the the raft ought to represent, and whether the badly damaged
Straits on the boats of relatives who had come to take them back raft represents a history that would be undesirable to represent
15

205
to Miami.15 Considering that Sánchez’s own departure from in the context of a museum. How is value measured in this
Felix Masud-Piloto, From Welcomed Exiles Cuba closely followed this large and risky sea exodus, it is not context, and how is this value reflected in the different modes of
to Illegal Immigrants: Cuban Migration to
the U.S., 1959–1995 (Maryland: Rowman & surprising that as an adult he would find himself compelled to contending with the vessels’ material bodies?
Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1996), 57.
recover the traces of the balseros. During the late 1980s, Sánchez Exhibitions of the rafts that make up the material
was out fishing off the coast of Miami when he came upon a legacy of the balseros subject the balsero phenomenon to a
single life jacket floating in the ocean. The sight of the lone jacket process of reduction—often down to a single vessel or just
moved him to consider the balseros who had died trying to leave a few. As a result, the visual representation of the balsero
Cuba, and so he made an arrangement with the U.S. Coast Guard crossings fails to articulate the quantity and accumulation that
16 that allowed him to claim the vessels that would otherwise be are essential characteristics of the phenomenon itself. While
destroyed.16 He would spend weekends driving up and down communicating the scale of the balsero phenomenon would
Sánchez shared his life jacket story with
journalist Maya Bell (1992) and later with Florida’s southeastern coast searching for rafts and gathering be a challenging task, as the story of Humberto Sánchez’s
journalist Mike Clary (1994).
them in his homemade wooden trailer.17 collection illustrates, exhibitions of the rafts often lack crucial
17 Over the course of ten years, hoping they would one contextualizing information, effectively separating the object
day find a permanent home in a museum, Sánchez amassed what from its origins to the point where the balsero phenomenon is
Bell, “Cubans’ Rafts Tell Sad Tales Of
Desperation.” would become the largest collection of Cuban rafts. He kept his reduced to the status of anomaly.
growing collection in his house, in his driveway, at the homes of The HistoryMiami Museum in downtown Miami
friends, in warehouses, and even in an airplane hangar he rented. showcases a single raft, called the Tío B (fig. 1). The Tío B has
By the late 1990s, his collection had grown unsustainably large, a distinct bow and stern as well as a sail, although its canvas
and no one seemed to show interest in preserving or exhibiting siding and plywood frame betray its handmade origins. It is
the rafts in a long-term capacity. He could no longer afford part of a sparsely curated exhibition called History & Ourselves
the storage, and many of the vessels were deteriorating from that, according to the museum, features “the top artifacts and
18 dampness.18 Sánchez had to dismantle his famed collection, and archives from the museum’s collections over the years that
its legacy exists primarily as the stuff of local legend. 20 relate to the themes Arrive, Adapt, Grow, and Live” (fig. 2).20
Daniel De Vise, “Exiles’ Rafts Vanishing,”
Miami Herald, August 22, 2004, http://www. The story of Humberto Sánchez’s decade-long effort The objects themselves are not interrelated, outside of having
latinamericanstudies.org/exile/vanishing. HistoryMiami, “History & Ourselves,”
htm. to recover the rafts is a testament to the spatial and material accessed March 21, 2015, http://www.histor- some connection to the city of Miami. The Cuban raft appears
ymiami.org/museum/exhibitions/details/
presence of the vessels. I imagine them piling up and overflowing facing-history--ourselves/. alongside basketball court floor panels featuring the Miami
in his driveway, the damp Miami humidity seeping into the Heat logo and a sign for the fictional Miramar Playa Hotel—the
already battered vessels with their swelling wood and fabric setting for a television show set in Miami called Magic City that
parts. Without the protection of a climate-controlled room, the ran for two seasons and was cancelled in 2013. How does the
environment makes its way into the object. Few vessels have museum’s positioning of the raft alongside a set piece from a
been preserved or restored in the museological sense for exactly fictional television show impact the viewer’s reception of its
this reason. Oftentimes, the rafts arrive in such poor condition historical and political significance? Is the raft just another
that they are beyond restoration. The fact that Sánchez was feature of Miami’s colorful local history?
never able to find an institution to house his rafts or to raise the For many residents of Miami, whose regional
funds to establish one himself highlights the lack of support for history has been so heavily impacted by the balsero crossings,
public recognition of the balseros. Many rafts ended up sitting the raft is likely legible as a trace of the balsero phenomenon.
19 in a Miami City Hall basement for years and were ultimately But the complete removal of the vessel from the international
discarded.19 For some museums, the fact that the rafts are context of Cuban migration to the United States is problematic,
Deborah Ramirez, “Rafter Mementos Getting
a New Museum,” Sun Sentinel, February 22, in such a state of disrepair means that they are no longer especially when considering that both locals and tourists
1998, http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1998-
02-22/news/9802210136_1_cuban-rafters- representative as original historical objects and thus cannot be ostensibly come to HistoryMiami to learn about local history.
transit-home-florida-straits.
exhibited. Such a viewpoint begs the question as to which history The extent of the museum’s dehistoricization of the vessel is
206
207

FIGURE 7.
FIGURE 6.
Cuban Chug #1 at the
Cuban Chugs Exhibit. Key West Cuban Chugs Exhibit. Key West
Botanical Garden. Key West, Botanical Garden. Key West,
Florida. October 18, 2014. Florida. August 20, 2014.
208
most evident in the descriptive plaque for the Tío B (fig. 3), which
reads as follows:

209 CUBAN RAFT. 1994

This raft carried seven people, all rescued by the U.S.
Coast Guard and taken to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The raft later washed up on Soldier Key.

GIFT OF WORLD RESOURCES.

In this context, the Tío B sheds its history. No
mention that 1994 was the year of the Cuban Rafter Crisis,
when more than thirty-two thousand Cubans attempted to
cross the Straits of Florida. No mention of the thousands who
have died during the journey. Even the name of the vessel has
been omitted, despite the fact that it prominently features in
white spray-painted letters on the hull. Through this lack of
context, the exhibition dehistoricizes, and more importantly,
depoliticizes the object. A crucial detail that the museum plaque
evades is that during the rafter crisis, the rafters were not
simply “taken to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,” but transferred to the
U.S.-operated Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, where the refugees
lived for months in the overcrowded and unsanitary detention
camp surrounded by barbed wire. The display of this Cuban raft
halts the narrative of rescue in a moment that articulates U.S.
humanitarian aid prior to detention or repatriation. Identified
only by the national and cultural name “Cuban” and the year
it was found, the raft is presented as if it were some foreign
or ancient artifact whose origins are unknown. The brief and
descriptive nature of the circumstances of the raft’s discovery
read scientifically, rhetorically positioning the vessel within an
archeological discourse so that the raft becomes an artifact.
At the outset, exhibiting the single raft seems to offer
the possibility of making visible the invisible. But what’s at stake
when the balsero phenomenon is displaced by an object that has
been stripped of its relation to its sociopolitical context? The
challenge of exhibiting the rafts directly relates to the dynamic
between relic and refuse, where the raft is an uncomfortable
FIGURE 8. reminder of crossings that happen continuously, of death that
repeats and repeatedly announces itself upon our shores. Because
Cuban Chug #9 at the
the balsero phenomenon is ongoing, exhibiting the rafts within a
Cuban Chugs Exhibit. Key West
Botanical Garden. Key West, historical museum runs the risk of historicizing the event in such
Florida. August 20, 2014. a way as to suggest that it is over. At the same time, to exhibit the
raft without the necessary context both dehistoricizes the event
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and relegates it to the past. Thus, presenting the lone Tío B as them. What Sánchez possesses might be considered the truest
an artifact without context not only erases the broader balsero Cuban balsas, the most makeshift of the makeshift. The deflated

211
phenomenon, but also problematically positions the raft and the inner tubes in this image, strapped to boards and covered with
balseros’ crossing as an anomalous event of the historical past. tarps to protect them from sun damage and shark teeth, are
In removing both the historical context and the contemporary precarious vessels indeed. While balseros who journeyed on
relevance of the raft, the exhibition effectively depoliticizes the small boats or other cleverly constructed crafts that had been
object. outfitted with motors would have had some control out at sea,
To position the raft as an anomaly is to suggest that those who embarked on these plastic and Styrofoam contraptions
the balsero crossings are unusual, exceptional, or simply deviant 21 were the most vulnerable to the currents and the wind.21
from the norm, when in reality the rafts are traces of what has Looking at Sánchez and this small glimpse of his
Holly Ackerman and Juan M. Clark, “The
become a regular occurrence, an ongoing phenomenon. The Cuban Balseros: Voyage of Uncertainty” collection, one can begin to see how these vessels could be
(Miami: Policy Center of the Cuban American
arrival of rafts on Florida’s shores has become a normalized part National Council, 1995), 5. mistaken for trash, and why they never made their way into
of life and landscape, but the rafts are systematically removed a museum. It is easy to imagine a correlation between the
from the beaches upon arrival. If the vessels that have arrived state of the raft and the state of the lost rafter. The rafts that
over the past fifty years were left to accumulate on the shore, the have been the least valued among local museums are the ones
landscape would by now be visually overwhelmed by them. Their whose passengers occupied the most physically precarious
presence would be undeniable. But because they are removed one circumstances. The rafts, both relic and refuse, are the
by one as they appear, this accumulation never becomes visible detritus of the most desperate and ill-fated crossings and the
to the public. The traces are wiped away. materialization of this fraught political history. Perhaps this
Given this climate, Humberto Sánchez’s ever- is why Sánchez took so much care to collect them over the
growing collection may have offered a productive alternative to years. He recognized the metonymic relationship between the
curated museum exhibitions that insinuate closure. The group empty raft and the lost balsero and sought to counteract the
of rafts he had amassed over the years would have evoked the transformation of meaning into materiality. His efforts to salvage
overwhelming effect of accumulation that is lost when the the vessels act as a performance of recognition, one of the few
rafts are removed from the beach. The sheer number of rafts, ways to contend with the anonymous deaths and recover the few
held together in the visual field, would resist any expression traces that have the capacity to represent their absence.
of their arrival as anything other than mass migration. The In my search for current exhibitions of Cuban rafts,
unrealized dream of Sánchez’s museum reflects the irresolution I came across a strange and unexpected outdoor display at the
of the balsero phenomenon. That his collection fell apart as the Key West Botanical Garden. The Cuban Chugs Exhibit is the
result of the scale of accumulation and the limitations of space largest collection I have seen, hosting a group of twelve vessels.
illustrates the impossible scale of the balsero phenomenon, The collection is situated outside the paid area of the garden,
implicating it not as an abstract event of the historical past, just past the trees that line the entry road. A storm brews in the
but as an ongoing and even absurd phenomenon with forceful distance as I move past a group of scurrying iguanas toward
material presence. the spot where I find the exhibition. My immediate impression
A rare photograph of Sánchez taken in 1992 pictures is not of the vessels themselves, but of the lush plant life that
him squatting among a group of five or so dilapidated rafts (fig. surrounds them. Young plants sprout up among the brown, dead
4). The inner tubes and amorphous masses of sun-bleached fabric leaves that cover the ground. Plants and trees much taller than
and plastic sprawl across the tiled patio of his Miami home and the vessels themselves scratch at the white, overcast sky (fig.
overwhelm both Sánchez and the photo’s composition. The rafts 5). From where I stand, I can see three vessels labeled “1,” “8,”
can hardly be contained by the frame. Sánchez, who wears a and “2.” The numbers mark them as part of a series, though as I
striped dress shirt, looks directly at the camera with a serious meander around the area I realize I cannot see the entire group
brow and the corner of his mouth rising into a subtle smile. He at once from any single vantage point (fig. 6). Plant life obstructs
seems proud of the rafts, as he crouches to situate himself among the vessels and they obstruct one another, radically different
212
in size, shape, and material. My restless movement among the these vessels and wonder which of them made it and which
vessels highlights the restlessness of the site itself. Preventing me did not. It is not just the lingering memory of the balseros that

213
from seeing the whole group at once, the site asks me to retain gives the site its haunting quality. With its arrangement of
the images of the ones that slip out of view as I move through the vessels in various stages of decay, the site evokes the mythical
space. elephant graveyard, where the animals, sensing that death is
I approach the vessel marked 1, a homemade raft near, instinctively travel to locations where others before them
consisting of plastic sheeting and expanding foam on a rebar have gone to die. The vessels, quite literally, are becoming
frame (fig. 7). Despite its boxy construction, the rebar frame 22 landscape.22 The foam that disintegrates from years of exposure
echoes the shape of a typical boat, curving into a pointed bow to the rain, the peeling paint, the dirt and leaves that accumulate
The scholar Michel de Certeau writes of the
that asserts itself forward, made for breaking waves. At the notion of becoming landscape as it relates to in the hulls, and the new plant life that sprouts up in and around
the concepts of space and place in “Spatial
stern, a rusty rudder has been secured to the frame. But the hull Stories,” in The Practice of Everyday Life the vessels all mark the merging of the bodies of the vessels with
(Berkeley: University of California Press,
consists of expanding foam contained by the blue and yellow 1984).
their environment.
plastic sheeting. The foam fills the edges of the vessel and seems The Cuban Chugs Exhibit, like the exhibition of
to line its bottom, as little hills of it rise up through the dead the Tío B, lacks historical and political context for the vessels.
leaves and twigs that have collected in the belly of the boat over However, the collection establishes a new and productive
time. I expect the yellowing sponge-like matter to bounce when context for encountering these traces of the balsero phenomenon.
pressed, but when I reach out to brush the leaves away, the old Despite its shortcomings, the Cuban Chugs Exhibit has more to
dried-out foam dissolves under my touch. offer than HistoryMiami’s exhibition, perhaps in part because
As I move deeper into the area, it strikes me that the the botanical garden makes no claim of serving as a historical
word “raft,” with its connotations of wood, had been somewhat institution. Rather than construct a view into the history of the
misleading. While several of the twelve vessels on display are balsero phenomenon, the garden’s happenstance exhibition of
boats constructed in the traditional sense with wooden planks donated and deteriorating rafts creates an experience that moves
or metal, almost all have undergone significant modification or, the encounter with the balsero phenomenon out of the image,
like vessel 1, have been constructed completely from items at out of the history museum, and into the local landscape. It
hand. Another remarkable vessel is the wooden boat marked 9, implicates the visitor’s body in the history and facilitates a view
which has been augmented with expanding foam in its interior of the rafts as part of a phenomenon situated within local space
as well as two long agricultural tubes filled with foam that flank whose impact is palpable.
its sides for extra buoyancy, likely intended to protect the boat This site acts as an alternative resting place for
against capsizing during a storm (fig. 8). Number 9 is filled with the vessels, and they have been gathered here in a way that
what appears to be either trash or traces of its passengers: an implies the cemetery that the lost balseros do not have. There
empty fuel tank, swollen plastic bottles filled with condensation is no representative vessel in this group. They resonate with
from the humid air, a single oar, a woman’s belt, and four pairs of one another and achieve an effect greater than the sum of the
sneakers—one child-size (fig. 9). Fresh greenery bursts through individual rafts themselves. They expand the imagination as
the disintegrating foam. Despite the ghostliness of the objects to what the balsero phenomenon entails, and in between the
in the boat, life thrives here. I notice that the stern of the boat vessels that are present, the possibilities of many more emerge.
has been marked in white spray paint with the letters “USCG,” The partial obscuring of members of the group by the garden’s
promising that the people on board were rescued and the boat configuration reminds visitors that at any given moment,
abandoned. One hopes to find these letters on all of the vessels, something remains just beyond the range of the visible. By
but this is not the case. highlighting that invisibility, the garden gives the rafts, and
As I begin to apprehend the site with my body, I by extension the balsero phenomenon, an infinite quality. The
recognize that my own movement and reactions to the space objects echo their histories.
resemble how I might move through a cemetery. My steps are The exhibition creates a space for an embodied
gentle, my voice hushed. I think of the bodies that once occupied encounter with this piece of history while conjuring an
ephemeral quality appropriate to the situation of the rafts and
the rafters. While the rafts in Sánchez’s collection deteriorated
in private, against his wishes, the Cuban Chugs Exhibit puts forth
the material bodies of the rafts and highlights how they echo
the ephemeral state of the human body exposed to the elements.
The exhibition makes it clear that the rafts will follow the lost
balseros into the landscape.
There is a tragic beauty to the garden graveyard.
As I look at the vessels that will inevitably deteriorate into
their surroundings, I mourn for how they seem to have been
forgotten. While there is tragedy in their exposure and inevitable
disintegration, there is also an opportunity for mourning, a kind
of mourning that would not be possible within the context of a
museum that creates historical and political distance between
the viewer and the object. The rafts are not fossils from a lost
past, but bodies that continually undergo changes brought
about over time by organic processes and human intervention.
The conservational efforts of museums have a way of closing
off history and, by extension, the possibility for engagement
with that history. The rafts resist our desire to understand
incomprehensible tragedy, and metonymy naturally undermines
this historicizing, sense-making effort. The rafts keep arriving,
and there will never be enough museums to house them all.
While on the surface, Humberto Sánchez’s efforts
may resemble the acquisition efforts of museums, his was in
fact a performance of archive that would never be complete.
Unlike a museum that curates, Sánchez’s project aimed to be
comprehensive rather than representative, recognizing the
temporal quality of accumulating over the historicizing effects
of completing a collection. This crucial distinction marks the
difference between expansion and reduction, phenomenon and
anomaly. To be an immigrant oneself and see the traces of people
from one’s nation discarded along the beach like trash would
be a deeply unsettling experience. Had he not been forced to
dissolve his collection, Sánchez’s repetitive task of driving up
and down the coast searching for rafts would have continued to
occur in tandem with the ongoing balsero phenomenon. This
performative act is more telling and more productive than the
museum display he desired would have ever been. His would
have been a performance that would not have ended until
Cubans cease to enter the Straits, until crossing the Straits no
longer means becoming a balsero. He would still be driving up
and down the coast today.