Dr. José Manuel Garcia was born in Cuba and immigrated to the U.S. during the Mariel Boatlift in 1980. He is a professor of Hispanic Literature and Latin American Studies at Florida Southern College. Dr. Garcia’s academic research has focused mostly in the areas of U.S. Latino and Cuban American immigrant experience, film and culture. He wrote the script and co-produced the international award-winning documentary Voices From Mariel. The documentary is based on a book by the same title that was published in Spanish in 2012 and in English in 2016. His book and documentary are some of the most comprehensive oral history accounts of the 1980 Cuban exodus that is also known as the Mariel Boatlift. His documentary gained national recognition when it was featured on the Spanish language TV station NatGeo Mundo in North America and the Caribbean in the spring of 2012 and again in the fall of 2015 on the 35th anniversary of the Mariel boatlift.
(Source: https://www.flsouthern.edu/faculty/modern-languages/garcia-jose-manuel.aspx)