Fig. 1. Crossing Waters: Undocumented Migration in Hispanophone Caribbean and Latinx Literature and Art (University of Texas Press, Copyright © 2022), front cover. (Courtesy of the University of Texas Press.)

Undocumented migration is one of the most pressing challenges today. In the United States, the border between the US and Mexico gains the majority of attention around this matter. Yet, migrants undertake movement—unauthorized by the state—in different locations, such as the Caribbean. Marisel Moreno’s 2022 Crossing Waters: Undocumented Migration in Hispanophone Caribbean and Latinx Literature and Art examines the cultural forms that arise out of and in response to the unauthorized movement of people between Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba. Much of this migration to and from islands occurs by sea. Migrants take to boats and other flotation devices and make the often treacherous journey to another place. Moreno analyzes poetry, literature, plays, and visual art to uncover what these cultural forms communicate about undocumented migration to and from islands in the Caribbean Sea.

Moreno draws on border and archipelago studies to theorize undocumented maritime migration in the context of the Caribbean. This move involves privileging water over land and the ways in which the sea connects seemingly isolated islands. Moreno’s work challenges the view of the Caribbean as a tropical paradise for tourism and as isolated islands with inhabitants sedimented in place. Undocumented migrants (Moreno mentions on page 19) are examples of “decolonial resistance” and their movement reveals their “agency of movement, that is, the power that unauthorized migrants exert when they engage in water crossings.” Undocumented migrants are also agents of their own survival, in that many are compelled—in their search for economic sustainability and security—to migrate due to economic circumstances in their home countries.

The book’s chapters are organized geographically around Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba. Chapter 2, “Puerto Rico: Border and Bridge to the Continental United States,” theorizes Puerto Rico as having a dual role as a conduit and a barrier to the United States. This island is considered by migrants as both an intermediary point to the United States and a destination in and of itself where mi-grants discontinue their journey. Many migrants from the Dominican Republic view Puerto Rico as holding out the promise of jobs and opportunity but they are met with racism, xenophobia, and criminalization. Cultural production, in the form of fiction and poetry, humanizes migrants by depicting the danger of their crossing due to taking to the sea in precarious vessels, and by describing human traffickers who deceive trusting migrants.

Chapter 3, “Dominican Crossings: Displacements Across Land and Sea,” examines migration from the Dominican Republic to other islands, as well as migration from Haiti to the Dominican Republic. This chapter is the only one that analyzes a land border. Moreno argues that race and blackness are central to undocumented migration, in that many migrants are Black. Histories of the transatlantic slave trade—an earlier process of forced migrations—undergird contemporary migration. For example, the paintings of Dominican artist Scherezade García depict figures in the process of migration. Moreno argues that Garcia’s paintings imbue migration with the meaning of a quest for salvation. She paints many of the migrants as Black, which counters white supremacy and antiblackness. García also makes visible the role of women in migration, which challenges male-centered migration narratives.

In Chapter 4, “Cubans at Sea: The Balsero Crisis in Literature and Art,” Moreno finds that cultural pro- duction around Cuban migration challenges the idea of Cuban exceptionalism, or the idea that Cubans will be treated as refugees upon setting foot in the United States. After 1996, the United States began intercepting Cubans at sea and returning them to Cuba. Like the US-Mexico border journey, the sea acts as a dangerous border between the US and Cuba. Cultural production such as poetry, a play, and visual art depict the dangers and deterrents to crossing. The mixed-media installations of Abel Barroso offer a satirical take on maritime migration. He draws a direct relation between the US-Mexico border and the sea—by depicting sharks as agents that police the border—in the work entitled Border Patrol. Cubans emerge not as migrants with easy access to entering the US, but as migrants who are subject to the dangers of crossing borders just as other migrants in the Caribbean and coming from Mexico.

Crossing Waters interrogates the practices of undocumented migration in a location that receives little attention around this issue. Yet, writers, artists, and poets have been bearing witness to the scale and scope of unauthorized migration in the Caribbean. The organization of the book along the boundaries of geography leads to the repetition of certain themes across cultural production, such as depicting the treacherous journey. But the range and diversity of material make for a depth of description about these important migration experiences. Moreno wades into this archive and then dives in, providing a trenchant analysis and theorization of current realities of Caribbean migrant lives.