The Cubans have changed Florida

The Cubans have changed Florida
Maya Bell Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted August 6, 2006

MIAMI -- It is a supreme irony: The most-hated man in Miami is arguablythe city's greatest benefactor and among Florida 's greatest agents of change.

In the 47 years since Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba , unleashing an exodus
that continues today, Miami has become the world city dreamed about
since Henry Flagler brought his railroad to the wilderness settlement in 1896.

"I always say the arrival of the train and the arrival of the Cuban refugeesare the most defining moments of our history," said Miami historian ArvaMoore Parks.

"The greatest change [brought by the Cubans] has been inMiami, but their influence can be felt everywhere."

Few other groups have as profoundly changed Florida as the 700,000-plus
refugees who have fled Castro's oppressive regime by plane, boat and homemade
rafts since the now-ailing dictator marched into Havana the firstday of 1959.

Today, a million Floridians identify themselves as Cuban.

Paving the way for other Spanish-speakers to follow, they helped transform nearly every facet of life in Florida, from the economy to the culture, from politics to foreign policy, from entertainment to sports.

"They created an outpost for Latin America in Miami , which attracted
millions of other Latin Americans, which decidedly changed Florida," said
Sergio Bendixen, the nation's leading pollster on Hispanic opinion. "It's made
it bilingual, bicultural and the economic hub for Latin America."

Largely from Cuba 's professional class, the first wave of refugees who landed in Miami brought their business acumen, a knowledge of LatinAmerica and the Caribbean, and, of course, Spanish. Coming from bustling, cosmopolitan Havana, many were stunned by what was then a winter playground."

Miami was a seasonal, sleepy town," said Tony Villamil, who arrived in1960 at age 13. "I remember going down Calle Ocho and crying, 'What am I doing here?'
It was almost like a country road." The Cubans would, of course, turn Eighth Street into the vibrant heart of Little Havana.

Initially, taking menial jobs, such as janitors and seamstresses, they became
teachers and bankers and opened gas stations, restaurants, hardware stores,
pharmacies, law firms and doctor offices.

By the early 1970s, they had created a prosperous enclave where English wasn't
essential, but passionate political conservatism and virulent anti-Castroism was.

Many old-time Miamians, resentful of feeling like strangers in their own town,
moved north. But the ability to conduct business in a familiar culture and language
was inviting to successive waves of Latin American entrepreneurs and immigrants,
many who were escaping economic or political turmoil in their own homelands.

A mixture of South American flight capital and Cuban management skills would become a recipe for the creation of banks and construction companies.

By1979, Cubans owned about half of the major construction companies inMiami-Dade,
according to City on the Edge, a book by Alejandro Portes andAlex Stepick."

Cuba basically exported its professional class to Miami , to Tampa and throughout the state. What you saw was an infusion of human resources with international skills," said Villamil, now an economist who served as undersecretary of commerce in the administration of the first President Bush. "That was the catalyst that sparked the globalization of Florida that has been going on for 46 years."

Today, the results are everywhere. Known as Wall Street South , Miami 's Brickell Avenue is home to the largest concentration of international banks in the
United States outside of New York.

Scores of multinational corporations have planted their Latin American
headquarters on Brickell orin nearby Coral Gables or Miami Beach.

Ditto for the Latin entertainment and music industry.
MTV's Latin Americanheadquarters is, for example, on Miami Beach.

Miami International Airport is the No. 1 airport in the United States for international cargo because of its trade with Latin America .

It also hasthe most international flights to Latin America of any airport in the world.And last year alone, 70 percent of the $95 billion
worth of goods thatmoved in and out of the state's seaports, primarily in Miami and Tampa , was from the same region.

"Of course, you can't say the $95 billion is attributable to the Cubans,but their presence was the building block," Villamil said.

"Given our location,we were poised to be a global state, but without the Cubans,
it would have been different or slower. Definitely slower."

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