Páginas Blancas Caba -

However, these communities faced new forms of silencing: economic precarity, fragmentation of readership, and ideological divisions within the exile itself. The blank page emerged in this context as a paradoxical gesture — a refusal to produce content where content was expected, yet a decision to keep the page physically present. Through a content analysis of 30 rare exile periodicals from the University of Miami’s Cuban Heritage Collection, three main types of Páginas Blancas were identified:

However, within these texts, one finds a peculiar recurring feature: completely blank pages, often marked only by a small footnote — “Página en blanco intencional” — or no mark at all. These are the Páginas Blancas Cabá . This paper explores their multiple meanings, arguing that they are not voids but rather densely packed signs of trauma, censorship, protest, and the limits of language itself. To understand the blank page, one must first understand the obsession with filling pages. For the Cabá community (1960s–1990s), writing was survival. Censorship inside Cuba meant that exile print became the primary archive of dissent. Newspapers, literary magazines, and pamphlets proliferated in Miami, Union City, and Madrid. páginas blancas caba

Author: [Your Name] Course: Caribbean Diaspora Studies / Latin American Literature Date: [Current Date] Abstract This paper analyzes the phenomenon known as Páginas Blancas Cabá — a term used to describe the deliberate or circumstantial presence of blank pages in Cuban exile publications (particularly those from the Cabá network, a historical community of Cuban dissidents abroad). Rather than viewing blank pages as editorial errors, this study argues that they function as powerful semiotic and political tools. They represent silenced voices, lost histories, traumatic memory, and active resistance against both the Castro regime and the pressures of assimilation in the host country (primarily the United States). By examining specific exile magazines, books, and underground newsletters from the 1960s–1990s, this paper positions blankness as a form of writing — a deliberate aesthetic of absence. 1. Introduction The Cuban diaspora, particularly the wave known as the Cabá (a colloquial shorthand for Cubanos Ausentes or Cubanos en el exilio ), produced an immense body of printed material. From Miami’s La Luz to New Jersey’s Exilio journal, these publications aimed to preserve national identity, denounce communism, and build a counter-narrative to the official discourse of the island. However, these communities faced new forms of silencing: