MIAMI (AP) – In the photo, a girl crouches on a wooden raft, surrounded by solemn men. Her large brown eyes stare intently at the camera. A few wisps of her dark hair float in the breeze.
In a moment, she will be pushed out to sea.
William Castellanos snapped the black and white photo in August 1994 when he was an art student in Havana, capturing the moment when 35,000 Cubans took to the sea in makeshift rafts.
Twenty years after President Fidel Castro encouraged a mass exodus from the island, the images still trouble him.
Did the rafters make it, or did their flimsy vessels break apart in the turbulent, 90-mile Florida Straits?