Visual Project Management | Grant Work: Democracy + Communism: 2. Cuba: Communism Relived: Cuba_Paskova_009

(L-R) Melani Conpagine, 13, holds her brother Mauro Peña, 1, next to the wife of a relative, Nancy Mena, 48, as she gives her father, Juaneto Mena, 82, a shave in the port city of Mariel, Cuba, a town whose tranquil appearance belies its important place in both the history and future of Cuban-American interaction. It is where Russians unloaded nuclear warheads in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, and the gateway through which 125,000 Miami-bound emigres fled during the Mariel Boatlift of 1980. The town is now the site of construction of a deepwater container port and a free-trade zone, a critical ingredient for which will be the future of the U.S. embargo against Cuba, in place for more than 50 years but now under speculation of being lifted.

(L-R) Melani Conpagine, 13, holds her brother Mauro Peña, 1, next to the wife of a relative, Nancy Mena, 48, as she gives her father, Juaneto Mena, 82, a shave in the port city of Mariel, Cuba, a town whose tranquil appearance belies its important place in both the history and future of Cuban-American interaction. It is where Russians unloaded nuclear warheads in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, and the gateway through which 125,000 Miami-bound emigres fled during the Mariel Boatlift of 1980. The town is now the site of construction of a deepwater container port and a free-trade zone, a critical ingredient for which will be the future of the U.S. embargo against Cuba, in place for more than 50 years but now under speculation of being lifted.