The Cuban Heritage Collection

An interview with Amanda Moreno about the Cuban Heritage Collection, its community outreach, and its aim to bolster research on Cuba and its diaspora.

Posted on October 2, 2024 in Ask an Archivist

In this interview, Esperanza Bravo de Varona Chair and Director Amanda T. Moreno joins Choice to discuss the Cuban Heritage Collection (CHC) at the University of Miami Libraries. Amanda describes the mission and history of the Collection, along with its work to facilitate research on Cuba and its diaspora. Amanda underscores the value of CHC’s oral history projects and shares how members of CHC’s team serve as “memory workers” to preserve the Cuban exile experience. Throughout the conversation, Amanda also touches on CHC’s community outreach, fellowships, and connection to the University of Miami’s Program in Cuban Studies. 

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How would you describe the Cuban Heritage Collection to a stranger?  

The Cuban Heritage Collection is the largest, most comprehensive archive and library dedicated to preserving and sharing the cultural heritage of Cuba and its global diaspora. As a department within the University of Miami Libraries, the Collection supports academic inquiry and serves as a community hub for those wishing to engage with our heritage. The CHC is a top-tier repository that facilitates the scholarly study of Cuba on local, national, and international levels, while also playing an essential role for members of the diaspora community who are committed to preserving their cultural heritage. 

How did the CHC come about? In what ways do the collection’s values mirror those of the University of Miami Libraries and the wider university? 

The University of Miami began collecting materials on Cuba in the 1920s, aligning with its early vision of becoming a “Pan-American University” in a city aiming to be a cultural “gateway to the Americas.” The Libraries’ collections expanded over time to support research in Latin American and Caribbean studies, with a significant focus on Cuba after the 1959 revolution. Many exiled librarians, including Rosa M. Abella and Ana Rosa Núñez, joined the university in the 1960s and began documenting our community’s exile experience by acquiring books, periodicals, maps, photographs, and ephemera. This effort led to the establishment of the Cuban Collection within the Library’s Archives and Special Collections Department in 1980, with Esperanza Bravo de Varona serving as its archivist.  

The CHC was officially founded in 1998 through Esperanza Bravo de Varona’s vision to compile all the Libraries’ Cuba-related materials. Alongside longtime colleagues Lesbia Orta Varona, the Collection’s bibliographer, and Gladys Gómez-Rossié, our Community Relations Coordinator, our founders shaped the Libraries’ early Cuban collecting practice. They worked with the local exile community to make materials available for research needs while documenting the cultural production of the diaspora. Esperanza, Lesbia, and Gladys built strong relationships with the community, growing the Collection through donations. As a result, CHC became more than just a repository; it evolved into a gathering place for the community to celebrate its history.  

Today, the University of Miami embraces a hemispheric orientation, fostering initiatives that connect us with global networks of scholars and students, particularly across Latin America and the Caribbean. The CHC naturally aligns with this vision and the library’s mission of “transforming lives, opening worlds” by supporting open access to information and fostering new knowledge in Cuban Studies. 

I understand that the CHC focuses heavily on research and supporting work in Cuban Studies. How do you see visitors, both within academia and beyond, engaging with the collection? 

Located within a university, the CHC excels in supporting the research activities of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as emerging and senior scholars. Community members often visit us to conduct genealogy research, exploring their family histories through our resources. We are also expanding our K-12 outreach initiatives by offering tours and class field trips for younger audiences and working with educators to provide access to digital resources for teaching with primary sources. Additionally, artists have found inspiration in the Collection, using it to create new works and demonstrate the impact of archival connections and collaborations.  

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The CHC also supports residence and fellowship programs. Could you describe these in more detail? How does the CHC support Cuban Studies curricula more broadly? Do CHC faculty support educators directly? 

Thanks to the generous support of The Goizueta Foundation, the CHC offers a variety of fellowship programs to activate and provide access to our holdings. The Goizueta Graduate Fellowship Program allows graduate students to spend one to three months conducting research at the CHC for their doctoral dissertations. Since 2010, this program has supported over 140 fellowships for visiting students in fields such as history, modern languages and literatures, art history, and anthropology.  

The integration of CHC and UM’s Cuban Studies initiatives allows the CHC to be the hub for Cuba-focused activities on campus and enhances our profile as a research destination for the academic community. 

How does the CHC acquire content? Are there any guidelines for which materials are included in the collection? 

We grow the collection through a combination of donations and purchases, with significant support from The Goizueta Foundation through a generous acquisitions endowment. Our collection development is guided by a formal policy. While our collecting practice is comprehensive, we particularly focus on documenting the Cuban diaspora community in South Florida, theater, and artistic practice. We are keen to expand our holdings of artists’ books, which are frequently used in our teaching.  

The 2023 CHC symposium, “Diaspora in Recent Film from the Spanish Caribbean,” asked: How “are contemporary filmmakers from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico—whether on their respective islands or residing abroad—contending with diaspora as subject of their work, as site of production, and/or as intended audience?” How does this apply to the CHC? In other words, how does the collection contend with Cuba and members of its diaspora as both its subject and audience? 

The CHC was born out of our community’s need to document and understand its experience of exile. As subsequent generations have taken on leadership of the archive, we strive to expand the diversity of voices represented in the Collection. Our collecting and descriptive practices play a crucial role in what Schwartz and Cook call the “business of identity politics,” influencing what it means to be Cuban within the diaspora community. As memory workers, we must recognize the inherently interpretive nature of archives, the ways communities create collective memory, and how our professional interventions impact what is preserved for posterity.  

Our focus on diaspora collecting sets us apart from other institutions documenting the Cuban experience. However, we also emphasize preserving the island’s past and present. Recent oral history efforts, like the Movimiento San Isidro Oral History Project, which documents contemporary artists protesting censorship, and social media archiving related to anti-government protests on the island, are vital to building a collection that comprehensively represents the Cuban story. This dual focus ensures that we address both Cuba and its diaspora as subjects and audiences of our work. 

The El efecto Mariel: Before, During, and After program description explains that “By bringing together multiple perspectives on this historic event, the series aims to frame Mariel, not in the past, but in the present, underscoring its enduring relevance and legacies.” Could you speak on the value of multidisciplinarity in Cuban Studies? How do you see the CHC contributing to both cultural memory and contemporary conversation? 

Presenting various critical perspectives on historical events brings history to life for present-day audiences. Our work at the Collection is deeply connected to forming and preserving cultural memory for the Cuban diaspora community. The academic and cultural programs that we organize facilitate focused conversations about our community’s past, present, and possible futures. By incorporating multiple disciplines, we enrich these discussions and highlight the ongoing relevance and legacies of events like the Mariel boatlift, ensuring meaningful engagement with our heritage and contributing to dynamic discourse.  

Given the collection’s focus on Cuba and its diaspora and its inclusion of many Spanish-language materials, how does the CHC ensure that it is accessible for both English and Spanish-speaking users? Does the collection provide research guides and metadata in Spanish?  

We have developed bilingual descriptions for several collections, such as the Junta Provincial de Patronato de Matanzas records and the Ernesto Fonts y Sterling papers. We are moving towards adopting a language justice approach in our descriptive practices to foster inclusivity for our patrons. Our team regularly offers reference services, primary source instruction, and tours for students and community groups in Spanish, and we encourage researchers, students, faculty, and community members to communicate with us in their preferred language. Additionally, we host bilingual events like the biennial New Directions in Cuban Studies conference, providing a platform for graduate students and early career scholars to showcase innovative research in the field of Cuban Studies.  

The Cuban Heritage Collection has multiple sources of funding including the Amigos, “a group of volunteers who came together in 1995 to support the CHC’s mission.” I understand that the Amigos provided funding for the Luis J. Botifoll Oral History Project. Could you talk about the project in more depth and describe how the CHC benefits from the Amigos’ support? 

The Luis J. Botifoll Oral History Project was the CHC’s inaugural community oral history initiative, made possible through the generous support of our Amigos. Launched in 2008, this project aimed to capture firsthand accounts of the Cuban exile experience nearly 50 years after the Cuban Revolution, particularly from elder members of our diaspora community. The project has documented stories from entrepreneurs, civic leaders, former political prisoners, artists, writers, and community activists. Moving forward, we are working to expand our oral history efforts to include testimonies from community members who arrived in later migratory waves, aiming to diversify the demographic representation among interviewees.  

The Amigos play a crucial role as a direct connection between the Collection and the community we serve. Their support not only funds important initiatives like the Botifoll Oral History Project, but also strengthens our ability to engage with and preserve the cultural heritage of the Cuban diaspora.  

The CHC engages in a multitude of outreach efforts including conferences, exhibitions, and public events. How do these help the CHC support and educate the community? Do you think this work is part of the responsibility of an archival collection? Why or why not? 

I often contemplate the complexities of collecting the “heritage” of a place divided by ideology and fractured by time—of a pre-revolutionary Cuba preserved in the memories of elders, the Cuba of my imagination, and the Cuba of today. To be Cuban-American is to be part of what Tölölyan characterizes as a “transnational collectivity, broken apart by, and woven together across borders.” ​My journey with the Collection has been profoundly enlightening, and I’m excited to continue to collaborate with colleagues, students, faculty, and our community. Together, we are advancing the CHC’s mission through new initiatives that broaden access and expand innovative programming to collectively chart our future direction.  

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About the interviewee:

Amanda T. Moreno, MSLIS/MA, is the Esperanza Bravo de Varona Chair and Director of the Cuban Heritage Collection (CHC) at the University of Miami Libraries. She holds a dual MA/MSLIS degree in Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Library and Information Science from New York University (NYU) and Long Island University, supported by a NYU MacCracken Fellowship, American Library Association Spectrum scholarship, and a fellowship from the Association of Research Libraries’ Initiative to Recruit a Diverse Workforce. Amanda participated in the Smithsonian’s Latino Museum Studies Program in 2015 and was awarded a Rare Book School-Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage in 2020. 

In her role as Director of the CHC, Amanda oversees departmental operations, collection development, public outreach, community engagement, and fundraising. She previously served as the Collection’s Archivist from 2017 to 2023, managing and processing historical collections related to Cuba and its diaspora, and providing reference and instruction services to students, faculty, and independent researchers. 

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Learn more about the Cuban Heritage Collection (CHC) and follow the CHC on Instagram.

This interview was conducted by Ashley Roy. She is the digital media assistant at Choice.

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