Ian Macllelan, in “Kakuma Refugee Camp Free Press,” writes, “In Osire Refugee Camp, Namibia, The Voice of Refugees was a handwritten newspaper that was snuck out of the camp and then spread around to shed light on what happens there. The Namibian Government and UNHCR shut down the venture before long.”
“If a free press spreads among the hundreds of camps in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and appears on the World Wide Web, indeed a feedback mechanism will have been established. We know of only one other newspaper, TheVoice of Refugees, produced in Osiri Camp in Namibia, but it is not using modern information technology.”
Place of Publication: Refugee Detention Camp, Base Naval de la Bahía de Guantánamo (Spanish), officially known as U.S. Naval Station, Guantánamo Bay (commonly called GTMO, or “Gitmo,” in military jargon), Cuba
Frequency: Irregular
Volume and Issue Data: 1994-1995
Size and Format: Variable
Editor/Publisher: Juan Avilés Castaigne (PoLO) (?) and others
Title Changes and Continuation: None; see other (related?) Cuban Refugee papers from this same place and period: Exodo and El Bravo
General Description and Notes:
The cover and additional pages from one of the Cuban rafter refugee newspapers entitled El Balsero (The Rafter) are part of a collection of handwritten papers published by Cuban refugees detained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, during the so-called “Cuban Refugee Boat Crisis” in the mid-1990s. Intercepted by U.S. Coast Guard ships, as many as 30,000 Cuban refugees floating on makeshift vessels were taken to U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, under the orders of U.S. President Bill Clinton’s administration. While detained and unsure of their futures, some of the Cuban detainees produced handwritten newspapers and other political and cultural materials on the base. Beginning in May 1995, the Clinton administration decided to allow the majority of the detainees to immigrate to the USA.
The caption on the newspaper’s front page (shown above) reads “Goodbye Guantánamo, the most beautiful land that eyes have seen.”
Information Sources:
Bibliography: “The Cuban Rafter Phenomenon,” website, http://balseros.miami.edu/ (accessed, December 1, 2022), University of Miami, Miami, Florida; see also the Caribbean Sea Migration collection, 1959-2014, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University, Durham, NC: https://archives.lib.duke.edu/catalog/caribbeansea (contains original black-and-white pen and ink drawing by Juan Avilés Castaigne (PoLO) showing Bill Clinton as a spider with rafters caught in net, 1995 March 14, https://repository.duke.edu/dc/caribbeansea/csmep02016
Locations: From the collection of Siro del Castillo, Cuban Heritage Collection, University of Miami
Gazette-Extr., Philadelphia, 1846; attributed to Herman Melville; courtesy of Prof. Roger Stritmatter, Dept. of Humanities, Coppin State University, Baltimore, MD, USA
The Handwritten Newspapers Project 
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