Lizbet Martínez is a Cuban violinist and English teacher at M.A. Milam K-8 Center. During the ""balsero crisis" of 1994, over 30,000 Cubans immigrated to the United States from Cuba on rafts. Seen as a symbol of the balsero exodus, Martínez first became known on August 21, 1994, as a 12-year-old rafter from Cuba. This was when the U.S. Coast Guard picked her and her family out of her raft. The Coast Guard wanted to take her violin because they thought the case might contain a weapon. She then opened the case and started to play The Star Spangled Banner on her violin. She spent five months at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base before being relocated to Miami.