Mangroves and Memory: Tracing the Hidden Currents Between Pine Island and Cuba
Red mangroves—key to both Cuban and Pine Island coastal ecosystems.
Pine Island, Florida is not the kind of place that loudly announces its stories. Tucked away from the bustling coastal development of Fort Myers, it rests quietly behind a screen of mangroves and still waters. But if one listens closely—to the tides, to the fishermen, to the soil itself—there is a whisper, drifting up from the south. A whisper shaped like Cuba.
Though 400 miles of water separate Pine Island from Havana, the anthropological ties between these two geographies run far deeper than maps reveal. Not just through trade or migration, but through a shared cultural ecology—an interwoven story of human lives shaped by saltwater, mangrove roots, and resilient traditions.
Tides of History Before the Cold War sealed Cuba behind the veil of embargo and ideology, boats moved freely across the Gulf of Mexico. Pine Island fishermen brought back tales of Cuban docks, and Cuban boats sometimes followed the current northward. Tobacco, seafood, and handmade tools were traded quietly. After 1959, the currents carried more than goods—they carried stories of exile, of risk, of longing. Though Pine Island was not a hotbed of Cuban migration like Key West or Miami, it was not untouched.
Handmade fishing boats like this were often seen crossing Florida Straits.
Local oral histories tell of fishing vessels that changed course, of lights seen on the water at night, and of families who arrived silently and stayed briefly. The Cuban story in Pine Island is more subterranean—told in gestures and names, not monuments.
Ecologies in Mirror The mangrove is the great unifier. Both Cuba and southwest Florida host vast estuarine labyrinths where red, black, and white mangroves shape life at the water’s edge. The Calusa people of Pine Island and the Taino of Cuba built their lives around these aquatic forests. The manatee swims between both shores, as does the tarpon—migratory emblems of a shared sea.
The tarpon—migratory emblem of the Caribbean Gulf.
Fishermen in both regions, even today, use remarkably similar techniques—hand-lining, cast nets, and silent stalking through flats. These are cultural practices passed not through books but through muscle memory, observation, and oral teaching—what anthropologists call traditional ecological knowledge (TEK).
Cosmologies of Water Dig deeper, and the parallels extend into the symbolic. In both Indigenous and Afro-Caribbean traditions, water is not merely habitat—it is spirit. In Cuban Santería, Yemayá is the orisha of the sea, mother of all life. Among the Calusa, water spirits governed both nourishment and danger. The mangrove, seen as a protector and a trickster, features in both cosmologies. While Pine Island today might be populated by retirees and weekend gardeners, its land still remembers. Cuban royal palms grow here. Spanish is spoken—softly, in passing. Folk beliefs about tides and fishing days endure in corners of conversation.
Silence as Memory Anthropologists often study memory by what is said. But in places like Pine Island, memory resides just as much in what is not said. There are no museums commemorating Cuban arrivals here. No plaques or murals. Yet gardens bloom with hibiscus and guava. The winds shift south in summer, bringing rainstorms from the Caribbean. And sometimes, when an old fisherman casts his line from a weathered dock, you hear it in his voice: the cadence of another shore.
Fisherman’s dock in Pine Island—stories travel farther than boats.
Pine Island is a place that remembers—not in words, but in rhythms. The rhythms of tides, fish, storms, and stories that cross the water long after the boat is gone.
