When Fidel Castro announced that his government would not stand in the way of Cubans who wanted to flee the island, Domingo Perera saw the opportunity he had been waiting for.

A carpenter, Perera already had made several rafts and tried to leave Cuba, but he had been repeatedly thwarted and imprisoned four times. After the Cuban government opened the door in August 1994, Perera, his daughter and nine other Cubans launched a raft toward the United States. A U.S. Coast Guard ship picked them up and they were sent to the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, where Perera spent a year until he was sent to South Florida on a medical parole.

Today, Perera is a published author who owns a tile business on Florida's Gulf Coast. He is glad he risked fleeing his homeland.

"I never complain about this country," he said. "I tell people, `You have to thank God that this country opened its doors to you.'"

During a month in 1994, more than 35,000 rafters, or balseros, left Cuba for the United States, many aboard flimsy homemade rafts.

The rafter crisis emerged after a tense summer in Cuba exploded into anti-government demonstrations in Havana on Aug. 5, when an angry crowd clashed with police. Castro blamed the disturbances on U.S. immigration policies that he said encouraged Cubans to flee illegally, and he threatened to unleash a mass exodus. He made good on the threat a few days later when he told Cuban security forces not to stop anyone who wanted to leave the island.

Thousands of Cubans then built rafts and set sail for the United States, in a scene reminiscent of the 1980 Mariel boatlift during which 125,000 Cubans flooded into South Florida.

This time, however, the U.S. government halted the influx. President Bill Clinton directed the Coast Guard to intercept the rafters and later ordered them sent to camps at Guantanamo and in Panama. After weeks of uncertainty, the Clinton administration reached the first of its migration accords with Cuba and began paroling the detained Cubans into the United States. The Cuban government, for its part, closed its beaches to rafters.

The U.S. government, which had referred to those leaving Cuba as exiles or refugees, began calling them migrants -- a term that signaled a shift in immigration policy.

The designation meant that the U.S. government could now treat Cubans who wanted to leave their country for economic reasons the same as other would-be immigrants, said Richard Nuccio, special adviser to the Clinton administration on Cuba.

Migration accords the reached with Cuba in 1994 and 1995 also changed the way the United States processed Cubans the Coast Guard picked up at sea.

Before the agreements, the Coast Guard usually brought to shore rafters encountered at sea. Today, immigration authorities aboard Coast Guard vessels interview Cubans plucked from the water and, unless they demonstrate a credible fear of persecution if returned to Cuba, they are repatriated.

Cubans found to have a credible fear of persecution are taken to Guantanamo to wait for a third country to accept them.

Cubans who make it to U.S. soil, however, are generally allowed to stay and after one year can apply for permanent residency under the Cold War-era Cuban Adjustment Act. Most Cubans who have been intercepted at sea under the so-called "wet foot/dry foot" policy have been returned to Cuba.

The policy raised the stakes for Cubans attempting to flee to the United States, and since then many have turned from rafts to the go-fast boats of smugglers, who charge as much as $10,000 per person for the trip.

It also made U.S. immigration policy inconsistent, critics say. While the government deems some Cubans intercepted at sea economic immigrants, those who make it to the United States are treated as political refugees. "[The policy] is rife with contradictions and double standards," said Damian Fernandez, director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University. The ambiguity could be traced to the fact that the rafter crisis came on the heels of a Haitian refugee crisis in 1994, during which thousands of Haitian refugees fled the political climate in their country. The Clinton administration essentially decided to treat Cubans the same way it was dealing with Haitians at the time, Nuccio said.

While even powerful Cuban exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa supported the plan to take the refugees to Guantanamo, a stance for which other exiles criticized him, getting rid of the Cuban Adjustment Act was out of the question, Nuccio said.

"You just couldn't touch it," he said.

At the time, U.S. officials likely were planning to take military action in Haiti in hopes of restoring political stability, but there were no plans to take action in Cuba, Nuccio said.

While Nuccio said he disagrees with several aspects of the wet foot/dry foot policy, he said it did apparently stem the threat of mass migration from Cuba, and probably has saved many lives.

"During that summer of 1994 we know that we picked up 30-something thousand," Nuccio said. "We still don't know how many people drowned, how many people were lost at sea."

At the naval base in Guantanamo, the refugees used the materials at hand, such as pieces of their cots and cardboard, to build furniture, chess sets and pool tables, among other things.

Artists also held exhibitions of their work while musicians, dancers and actors put together performances for their fellow detainees.

Jorge Del Rio and fellow rafters published a newspaper at the base. Written in longhand, the first issue was just four copies.

By the time the last issue was photocopied, its circulation had grown to 2,000 and the paper included various sections and a crossword puzzle.

Del Rio, an environmental analyst in South Miami, said he thinks the rafters' ingenuity showed they were willing to come to the United States, work hard and get ahead.

"I think that was our entry visa," he said.

When the rafters came to the United States, they influenced South Florida's arts scene, observers say. The artwork reflected the balsero experience, said Guarione Diaz, the executive director of the Cuban American National Council who served as a federally appointed liaison between the rafters and the military at Guantanamo.

"There were tragic images that reflected feelings of death and desperation, the relationship between the United States and Cuba," he said.

When they settled into the United States, many in the new wave also came with a mindset different from that of Cubans who settled in the United States in earlier decades.

The younger rafters had grown up under the communist system in Cuba. Many also left close family members behind and were more likely than older generation Cuban-Americans to return to the island for visits. As a result, those who've come from Cuba since the rafter crisis tend to be more supportive of travel to the island and sending remittances to relatives there.

"They're much more willing to support humanitarian connections with Cuba," Fernandez said. "These ties of love have political importance."

Perera, 55, recalls the chilly reception he received from more established Cubans. Shortly after he arrived he met a Cuban who had been in the United States for years who reacted to being introduced to Perera with a dismissive "I don't want to hear about balseros."

"I said, `Sir, I am a balsero because I had no choice but to be a balsero,'" he said. "The Cuban balsero could be a doctor, could be an engineer, could be a simple laborer or could be a delinquent. The method we used to get here has nothing to do with who we are."

Staff Writer Eppie Vega contributed to this report.

Madeline Baró Diaz can be reached at mbaro@sun-sentinel.com or 305-810-5007.

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