Mirta Ojito is a Pulitzer Prize-winning Cuban American journalist based in Miami. She has worked both for the Miami Herald as well as its Spanish-language sister publication, El Nuevo Herald. Born on February 10, 1964, in Cuba, Ojito immigrated to the United States with her family as part of the Mariel boatlift in 1980. They lived initially with Ojito’s uncle Oswaldo in Hialeah, Florida, and Ojito went on to attend Miami Dade College and Florida Atlantic University.

Like her parents, Ojito was critical of the Castro regime. Throughout her childhood in Cuba, she knew that she would leave Cuba for good. Although not yet old enough to have her career dictated by the state like her parents, she was subject to discrimination at school and in her neighborhood because she was religious and because her family’s anti-Castro position was widely known. The regime demanded such zealous support from Cuban citizens that any individual who did not explicitly proclaim their loyalty to Castro and his revolutionary project was suspect. Ojito was a bright thinker and an avid pupil, but despite her scholastic aptitude, she was still passed over in school. In addition to the persecution that she herself experienced, Ojito recalls seeing evidence of Cuba’s surveillance state and suppression of dissidents everywhere.