During the refugee crisis, Fort Chaffee ran two different newsletters, La Vida Nueva, which was initially in Spanish but overtime changed to Spanish and English, and Crossroads for army and camp personnel. La Vida Nueva, edited by the Cuban-Haitian Task Force, ran three times a week and became an education tool for detainees. The newsletter included updates on things going on in Fort Chaffee, world news, health advice, lessons about United States politics and history, and messages from the camp director, Barbara Lawson. Some of the health advice within the newsletter pertained to venereal diseases and was divided into two sections, one for homosexual men and one for homosexual women.

La Vida Nueva also included information about American customs and values around the holidays. For example, on Thanksgiving 1980 Fort Chaffee held a turkey trot race, served Thanksgiving dinner, and the newsletter included a message from Lawson that read

“On this first Thanksgiving, it is especially important to remember those first refugees, the pilgrims…They had been able to overcome obstacles and…reach their proposed goal: freedom, just like millions of immigrants after them who triumphed over the barriers of language and culture. My prayer on this day of giving thanks is that we will soon have sponsors for each of you, so you can begin your new life in the U.S. as thousands of refugees have done before you.”

One of the refugees at Fort Chaffee, Ramòn Valdes Hevia, also published a piece in the Thanksgiving newsletter describing his experience on joining the history of immigration to America that read

“We Cuban exiles, who have found freedom in this land of open arms, which opens great gates of life, we join the Christian sense of this town commemorating the 27th of November… I thank God for being in this land of freedom.”