Friday, March 29, 2024 | Ramadan 18, 1445 H
clear sky
weather
OMAN
25°C / 25°C
EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

60 years on, Cubans bring Caribbean flair in Miami

minus
plus

Underpinning Miami, Florida, is sixty years of Castroism in Cuba: The island’s diaspora has transformed the city into a towering skyline, where smells of fried “croquetas” and sounds of Spanish fill the air.


Roughly 370 km apart, Havana and Miami were already closely connected by trade and tourism at the turn of the 20th century.


But 1959 and the triumph of Fidel Castro’s revolution saw an end to that — and the Cuban diaspora was born.


The first Cuban exiles to leave the island in the 1960s are now around 80 years old.


They once dreamed of liberating their country — but now live between frustration and nostalgia, having spent decades conspiring over dominoes on the porches of their homes.


“We were losing everything our family had worked for for years. We couldn’t accept it,” said 78-year-old Johnny Lopez de la Cruz, a member of the 2506 Brigade, a group of CIA-sponsored Cuban exiles who tried to invade Cuba’s Bay of Pigs in 1961.


But their greatest enemy was John F Kennedy, the former US president who “betrayed” them by withdrawing CIA support mid-operation, in an attempt to keep America’s involvement under wraps.


“Almost all of us were captured,” said Lopez.


Cubans like Lopez have anti-Castro sentiment coursing through their veins. To them, detente between Washington and Havana equals surrendering.


As the years went by, the diaspora grew and southern Florida was irrevocably altered: Cuban sandwiches became a permanent fixture and English was relegated from its spot as default language.


It’s a common joke that Miami is the only foreign city Americans can visit without a passport.


According to the US census, 67 per cent of Miami’s population was Hispanic in 2017 — with more than half of those Cuban-Americans.


“Cubans turned parts of sub-tropical Miami into a city with tropical flair,” wrote historian Anthony Maingot in his 2015 book Miami: a Cultural History.


When superstar Cuban-American singer Celia Cruz died in 2003, tens of thousands of people paid their respects to her at Freedom Tower, a monument to the exiles among downtown’s skyscrapers. However, despite that flair, it’s still distinctly American. “The city’s welcome Latinization is counterbalanced by the forces of an America which has always encouraged renovation and change,” Maurice Ferre, six-time Miami mayor, wrote in the book’s prologue. — AFP


Leila Macor


SHARE ARTICLE
arrow up
home icon