FREEDOM TALKS
- Jul 3
- 4 min read
As America marks its 250th anniversary, Voices of Miami reminds us that the nation's story has always been written by people seeking freedom, opportunity, and a place to call home.
By Yulia Strokova
Photo courtesy of Museum of Art and Design, Miami Dade College
As visitors to Miami’s Freedom Tower move through a dim corridor leading into Voices of Miami, illuminated historical vignettes line the passage. They trace the Tower’s origins as the home of The Miami News, before revealing its later role as the Cuban Assistance Center, also known as “El Refugio,” where around 400,000 Cuban exiles received food, medical care, and counsel upon arrival in the United States.
At the top, the exhibition opens into an immersive encounter. A grid of 400 black-and-white portraits fills a touch-activated wall, inviting visitors to pause, listen, and meet the person behind each image through a first-person story.
Artists, community leaders, entrepreneurs, parents, veterans, and ordinary people return the viewer’s gaze. Each portrait carries a quiet dignity, each voice holds a story waiting to be heard. Together, they form a living archive of Miami, diverse, layered, and continually unfolding.
Across rotating digital screens, four words appear in Spanish and English: Oportunidad, Libertad, Hogar, Amor. Opportunity, Freedom, Home, Love. They reflect both the immigrant experience and the deeply personal journeys that have shaped this city.
The Voices of Miami project began not with images, but with words spoken aloud. Its foundation lies in oral history interviews collected from Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, Bahamian immigrant families, and many others who once passed through the Freedom Tower seeking assistance during moments of profound transition.
“From the beginning, the idea was to record oral histories and let the community guide us,” says Amy Galpin, executive director and chief curator of the Museum of Art and Design (MOAD) at Miami Dade College. “We wanted to let the community tell its own story.”
As the interviews grew, so did the project’s purpose. These were not just testimonies of arrival, but reflections on belonging, resilience, and identity, stories that demanded to be preserved and shared across generations.
“I am deeply inspired by the students from the New World School of the Arts and Miami Dade College who visit the exhibition,” Amy adds. “Touring the galleries with them is an honor. I learn from their questions, their perspectives, and their reactions. This work is about honoring those who lived these experiences while ensuring their stories reach those who come next.”
Photo courtesy of Museum of Art and Design, Miami Dade College
Today, the Freedom Tower Oral History Archive brings together a rich range of voices. Visitors encounter firsthand refugee accounts from cultural icons such as Emilio Estefan and Willy Chirino. They hear personal recollections from Rafael Peñalver, whose father Dr. Rafael A. Peñalver served as a physician at El Refugio and helped pave the way for thousands of Cuban exile physicians and health professionals to practice in the United States. And they listen to generational stories shared by Miami Dade College President Madeline Pumariega, whose family history is deeply intertwined with the building itself. Pumariega’s parents, immigrants from Cuba, arrived in Miami and were processed through the historic Freedom Tower, now shepherded by Miami Dade College.
As the archive expanded, one realization became unavoidable: Voice alone was not enough. These stories needed faces.That insight brought photographer Clara Toro into the project.
Born in Colombia and based in Miami for more than three decades, Clara has spent her career documenting lives often overlooked by photographing people in their homes, workplaces, and neighborhoods. For Voices of Miami, she traveled across the city, from Miami Dade College campuses to Coral Gables, Miami Beach, West Kendall, and Aventura, taking monochromatic portraits of both well-known figures and those rarely seen.
“When you are a documentary photographer, the hardest part of the job is gaining access and trust,” Clara says. “Here, people were ready to share. They trusted the process.”
The choice to work in black and white was deliberate as well.
“When you move to this country as an immigrant, you always have a black-and-white photo taken of you,” she explains. “For your passport. Your ID. Your new identity. The white background becomes a blank slate.”
In Voices of Miami, the absence of color does not erase difference, it expands it. Each face stands on equal ground. Time collapses. The archive remains alive, continuing to grow and welcoming new participants into its unfolding story.
Today, more than half of Miami’s residents are foreign-born. Over the past forty years alone, migration has accounted for more than 70 percent of Miami-Dade County’s population growth. Here, migration is not an abstraction, but a daily reality woven into language, food, neighborhoods, and memories.
In Voices of Miami, these lived realities take form through faces and voices that invite reflection. Every journey asks the same questions: What is left behind? What is gained? What does it take to begin again?
“I was born in Colombia. I’ve lived most of my life here. Miami is my home. Home is where your family is,” Clara reflects. “This project is a beautiful way to remind people of the value, strength, joy, and hard work immigrants bring, and how they made Miami the city it is today.”
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