The little violinist, 20 years after the Cuban rafter crisis
Lizbet Martínez, the Cuban rafter girl who warmed the hearts of U.S. Coast Guard officers and many others across the nation 20 years ago with her rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner, still has the violin that made her famous.
Martínez, then 12 years old, became the endearing face of a successful campaign to bring other children out of Guantánamo refugee camps and into “the land of the brave and home of the free.”
She was among more than 30,000 Cubans rescued in the Florida Straits during a one-month summer exodus from Cuba that became known as the rafter, or balsero, crisis.
Today, she’s a Florida International University graduate with a music degree, teaches preschool children in Hialeah and is raising two kids of her own as a working mom.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/08/31/4320871/the-little-violinist-20-years.html
