Cafecito Crisis at Nostalgia

After munching on ropa vieja, platanitos and congri for lunch at Cuba Nostalgia Friday, I bee-lined for the Pilon stand, eager for a cafecito. But NO! The espresso machine was broken. Poor Linda Guerra working the counter kept having to apologize. Caffeine-craving Cubans kept coming. "Como que esta rota? Esto si que es como Cuba," one lady said. "Ni aqui ni alla encuentras cafe."

Top photo is of a repairman working on the machine. Below is Linda Guerra posing with her cafecito clunker.

Comments

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

Article states: "Como que esta rota? Esto si que es como Cuba," one lady said. "Ni aqui ni alla encuentras cafe."

Ah, and what if there were "real" Americans in attendance? How would we be able to understand what she was saying. Clearly this racist event was designed "only" for Cubans, and not Americans.

[Floridiano]

¡Pero si tú eres un portorro renegado!
¿Ya no quieres entender el Spanish, jabao?

[a thought....]

John, you're PUERTO RICAN???!!!!

[Robert Barrocas]

Say it ain't so, John. I thought you had a direct lineage to Sitting Bull and George Washington!

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

A.T.

They are refering to "Pancho" the blogger that came and went during the Val Prieto thrashing. A.T. go back and reread both of our posts and you tell me if they are the same. You have seen me accused of being many nationalities, and nicknames. I will only say it once more i am "American" from up north, and i only use this nick, and no others. I am not Hassan,Oscar, i not under the employ of Oscar, or the Miami Herald. I am not Mexican,Cuban,Puerto Rican, etc etc, i do not speak Spanish, as i can not roll my tongue, and quit trying out of frustration. Now sugah, do you see why these immigrants get on my nerves so badly.

[Florida]

Oh, yes....Longfellow...aka "Warthog", aka Colonel Mitchell, etc...

He's a New York Rican that moved down to Miami 7 or 8 years ago.

His nicks are always flamboyant and bombastic English sounding names.

He's not one of those white and pink Puertorricans, but a red dark mulatto, jabao.

From five to seven years ago he was present in every message board. First he started with his Spanish name, but he evolved to his present personality when he was evicted from the shack he lived near Miami River.

A Cuban bought the land and kicked him out.

During the late 40's and 50's many Puertorricans like him suffered atrocius educational programs whose only intention was to make "White Americans" out of them.

Like many Indians and Puertorricans that endured a similar education, "Longfellow" went crazy.

He hates Cubans because he envy and resents them. In his interior, he can't stand and he can't understand that Cubans climbed the American ladder being Cubans, not "Real American" like him.

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

A.T. go look about half way down in "ch22" article, i cut and pasted Pacho post, this is who they are talking about. Have you EVER seen me write like this?

Posted by: Juan (Pancho) Valquez | May 19, 2006 at 02:23 PM

--------------------------------------------
rac·ism ( P ) Pronunciation Key (rszm)
n.
- The belief that RACE accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.

- Discrimination or prejudice based on RACE.
--------------------------------------------

People living in Havana don't constitute their own race. Cuban's don't aren't even a separate race. The label Cuban refers to NATIONALITY not RACE.

Even if I felt superior to the impoverished prostitutes I banged. The feeling of superiority would arise from the difference in socioeconomic status not race. The last time I checked Eastern Europeans are mostly Caucasian.

The whole White vs. Hispanic racism argument doesn't hold water anyway.

Everyone who is of European descent and has Caucasianoid features is considered to be Caucasian or 'White'. So people who can trace their roots back mostly to: Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, Greece, etc. are all considered 'White'. We're all part of the same race.

The differences you're referring to are differences in: dress, preferred food, native language, culture and accepted behavior. These are differences in ethnicity not Race.

For example I doubt anyone would argue that a Caucasian Italian is not 'White'. Yet Italians speak a different language, eat different kinds of food, dress differently, have different accepted social behaviors.

This is because Caucasian Italians have a different ethnicity then Caucasian Hispanic or Caucasian English people. They're all considered 'white' they just have different ethnicities.

Oh and by the way when I said: "you people" I was referring to Cubans who came here illegally. Nationality has nothing to do with race.

--------------------------------------------
"Have fun paying women to sleep with you."
--------------------------------------------

Don't worry I will. Maybe you could give me your extended families address so they could hook me up with their daughters.

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

A.T. go look about half way down in "ch22" article, i cut and pasted Pacho post, this is who they are talking about. Have you EVER seen me write like this?

Posted by: Juan (Pancho) Valquez | May 19, 2006 at 02:23 PM

--------------------------------------------
rac·ism ( P ) Pronunciation Key (rszm)
n.
- The belief that RACE accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.

- Discrimination or prejudice based on RACE.
--------------------------------------------

People living in Havana don't constitute their own race. Cuban's don't aren't even a separate race. The label Cuban refers to NATIONALITY not RACE.

Even if I felt superior to the impoverished prostitutes I banged. The feeling of superiority would arise from the difference in socioeconomic status not race. The last time I checked Eastern Europeans are mostly Caucasian.

The whole White vs. Hispanic racism argument doesn't hold water anyway.

Everyone who is of European descent and has Caucasianoid features is considered to be Caucasian or 'White'. So people who can trace their roots back mostly to: Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, Greece, etc. are all considered 'White'. We're all part of the same race.

The differences you're referring to are differences in: dress, preferred food, native language, culture and accepted behavior. These are differences in ethnicity not Race.

For example I doubt anyone would argue that a Caucasian Italian is not 'White'. Yet Italians speak a different language, eat different kinds of food, dress differently, have different accepted social behaviors.

This is because Caucasian Italians have a different ethnicity then Caucasian Hispanic or Caucasian English people. They're all considered 'white' they just have different ethnicities.

Oh and by the way when I said: "you people" I was referring to Cubans who came here illegally. Nationality has nothing to do with race.

--------------------------------------------
"Have fun paying women to sleep with you."
--------------------------------------------

Don't worry I will. Maybe you could give me your extended families address so they could hook me up with their daughters.

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

Posted by: Florida | May 23, 2006 at 12:31 P
His nicks are always flamboyant and bombastic English sounding names.

That is a lie right there, as i went by John for a long time. Dude you just got here, and you think you know me. You see two people making pointed comments about Miami Cubans, so you assume they must be the same. Note: that often happens with new visitors, as the old-timers no that there is only "ONE" john. Every Cuban and i mean EVERY Cuban has done exactly what you are doing. Over time they ALWAYS discover that there is only one me. But since you are under the false impression that no Americans in SouthFlorida take issue with Miami Cubans i will go get an article for your reading pleasure. So hang on you illegal alien right wing Cuban exile militant radical Cuban Chicano "immigrant."

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

Why do you Cubans always attempt to deny the obvious? Why do you strut around in your arrogant ways, bragging about how Americans want to be just like Cubans? I am an "American" who "has" to live in this immigrant pit of sin, rude ass hellhole for my research paper. As soon as im finished im out of Miami, like the rest of my brothers and sisters who have escaped beneath. Stop thinking that you arrogant Cubans are so beloved, and no other American could possibility take issue with you and your fucked up ways in Miami. You Cubans have NOTHING i want, NOTHING!! If every American is so jealous then why are they escaping to "wealthier" and "nicer" Weston. Why arent we moving to Hialeah and Little Havana if we want so badly to be your neighbors? Somebody, anybody please explain to me why I would want to move to Homestead, downtown Miami, Hialeah etc etc. Perhaps, Coral Gables, but even then I would prefer to live on SouthBeach with the rest of the Americans. A.T. Please explain to me what is it that the Cuban community has that I cant get in "American" run SouthBeach? BREAKING NEWS CUBANS!!! MIAMI IS THE POOREST CITY IN THE NATION, FILLED WITH CRIME, CORRUPTION, GANGS, ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS, RUDE PEOPLE, ALLIGATORS, NON-ENGLISH SPEAKING PEOPLE, HURRICANES, TRAFFIC, EXPENSIVE HOUSING, HIGH TAXES, POOR SCHOOLING, HIGHEST STD'S INFECTIONS IN THE NATION, yes i am so envious of cubans, this is the best cuban run city in AMERICA!!

Cite: www.washingtonpost.com

A White Migration North From Miami

Gated entrances and patrol cars provide Weston, Fla., residents with security. By Andrew Itkoff for The Washington Post)

Fifth in a series of occasional articles
By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 11, 1998; Page A1

WESTON, Fla. – Everything here is nice and neat, just the way Joanne Smith likes it. The developers call their new city on the edge of the Everglades "Our Home Town," and Smith agrees. "It's more like America," she says.

Like thousands of others, Smith moved to this planned community 40 miles north of Miami just a few years ago, searching for a safe and secure neighborhood like this one, where both modest homes and rambling mansions sit against the manicured landscape of palm and hibiscus, and gated streets called Wagon Way and Windmill Ranch gently curve around the shallow lagoons and golf links.

Weston is a boomtown filling with refugees. But the migrants pouring into this part of Broward County are rarely those from the Caribbean, Central and South America – the immigrants to the south who have transformed Miami and surrounding Dade County into a metropolis proudly called by its business and political leaders "The Gateway to Latin America."

Instead, the refugees here are mostly native-born and white, young and old, and they have been streaming up from Miami for years now, creating a new version of the traditional "white flight" in reaction not to black inner cities, but to immigration.

While Miami is unique in many respects, because of both geography and politics, the out-migration of whites is occurring in other high-immigration cities. New York and Los Angeles, for example, each lost a million U.S.-born residents in the last decade, as they gained a million immigrants.

According to an analysis of the most recent census data, for almost every immigrant who came to Miami-Dade County in recent years, a white non-Hispanic left.

"I loved Miami, but it's a mad scene down there now," said Smith, who is semi-retired and asked that her occupation not be given. Before her move to Weston, Smith lived in Miami for two decades, "in a nice neighborhood gone bad. People say things, 'Oh that's change and that's progress,' but I like it clean and green – and everybody speaking English," Smith says.

In discussions about the historic demographic transformations occurring in the United States, which is absorbing almost 1 million immigrants a year, most of the attention focuses quite naturally on the newcomers: Who are they and where are they from and how do they make their way in America?

But immigration is a two-way street – and the welcome the immigrants receive from the native-born is crucial for the continued idea of America as a fabled "melting pot." Of course, there are many whites – and blacks, too – who have remained in Miami-Dade County, to either continue their lives as before or accept, even embrace the Latin tempo of Miami, who have learned how to pronounce masas de puerco at lunchtime and to fake a respectable merengue dance step, who enjoy the culture, the business opportunities and caffeinated hustle of a metropolis dominated by immigrants. No one could call Miami dull.

But it is almost as if there are two kinds of native whites – those who can deal with multiculturalism that has transformed Miami over the past several decades and those who choose not to. Either way, if the country is to successfully transform itself into a completely multicultural industrialized nation, what these internal migrants say – and there are millions of them around the country – needs to be heard and understood.

Those transplants interviewed by The Washington Post, including those who asked that their names not be used, take pains to explain that, for the most part, the people like them who are moving out of Miami-Dade to Broward are not anti-immigrant xenophobes.

In several dozen interviews with a cross-section of these "domestic migrants," a picture emerges of a segment of the non-Hispanic white population in Miami-Dade County that feels marginalized, exasperated and sometimes bitter, and who move from Dade to Broward with a mix of emotions.

Migrants to Broward give many reasons for the move north: Their money buys a bigger, newer house in Broward; they are tired of the traffic and congestion; they worry about crime; they complain about the overcrowded schools; those with young families often say they are looking for a place where their children can play ball in the front yard and ride their bikes down the block.

But all these things, the good and bad, can also be found in booming Broward County. Sooner or later, many of the refugees moving north mention immigration and the sense that they are no longer, as many transplants describe it, "comfortable."

Phil Phillips was born and raised near what is today downtown Miami, where his father worked for the Immigration and Naturalization Service during the postwar years, at a time when the immigrants to Florida were mostly from Europe. Phillips served in the Navy, taught vocational classes at Miami High School, and made a living running a small air conditioning and refrigeration business.

Until the rise of Fidel Castro in Cuba, Phillips described the Miami of yesteryear as a more sleepy, more southern town. It had its glitz in the fanciful playground of Jackie Gleason's city of Miami Beach, but the county was still filled with open land and farms.

"Miami was a very happy place," Phillips remembers with nostalgia. "We had our demarcations, don't get me wrong. But we didn't have the animosity." When pressed, Phillips does remember that the beaches, restaurants and nightclubs were often segregated, not only for African Americans. Jews had their own country clubs.

The Miami of black-and-white all began to change with the arrival of the Cubans in the early 1960s. "The vast majority of the Cubans came here and worked two and three jobs," said Phillips, who is retired and living in Weston. A man who worked with his hands all his life, Phillips respects that. "I saw them do it. And in time, they took over, and some people resent that. But that's the way it is."

"There's this myth out there that a Cuban will screw an American in a deal," Phillips says. "I don't think that is so, but that's the feeling the whites have, and it's because the two sides don't communicate, sometimes they can't communicate, and so they don't understand the other guy."

Phillips has seen decades of change, as the demographics of his home town kept skewing toward Hispanics, in fits and starts. After the first big influx of Cubans in the 1960s, there was Cuba's Mariel boatlift in 1980. Then all through the proxy wars and upheavals in Central America and the Caribbean through the 1980s and 1990s, refugees from Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Haiti kept coming to Miami.

"We're great in America at blaming somebody else for our problems," Phillips said. "But I will tell that for a lot of the people who leave Miami, they might not tell you, but they're leaving because of the ethnics."

Tim Robbie, proprietor of The Sporting Brews restaurant in Weston, Fla. (By Andrew Itkoff for The Washington Post)

Phillips offered his opinions as he sat sipping soup at the counter of a new restaurant here in Weston opened by Tim Robbie, whose family owned the Miami Dolphins for years, before they sold out to Wayne Huizenga, who is "The Man" in Broward County, as much as Jorge Mas Canosa, the power behind the Cuban American National Foundation, was "The Man" in Miami before his death last year.

Robbie was raised in Miami. His family, lead by his father Joe, was a civic institution. But Robbie himself recently moved to Weston, too.

"I know a lot of our friends down in Miami were disappointed with us," Robbie said. "They asked: How can you do this to us?"

Robbie agreed that something akin to "the tipping point" phenomenon might be at work, whereby one or two families in a social or business network can leave a community and nothing much changes. But at some point, if enough people leave, the balance suddenly tips, and large groups start selling their homes, and over a period of several years, they create mass demographic shifts.

Robbie himself said he was comfortable down south in Miami, but concedes that many are not. "Anglos are accustomed to being in the majority, and down in Dade, they're not. And that puts some people outside of their comfort zone. People tend to like to stick together."

Robbie's business partner is Bob Green, who also moved from Miami to Broward. A longtime denizen of funky and fun Coconut Grove, Green describes himself as one of those who never would have thought about moving north to Broward.

But then he saw the new business opportunities, and also found himself liking a place like Weston. "It has this midwestern feeling," Green said. "More downhome and friendly."

This mass internal migration is the latest version of a classic "push-pull" model of residential segregation, whereby many whites in Miami feel lured north by the offerings of a development like Weston, but also feel pushed out of Miami – not only by their fatigue with crime or congestion, but the cultural and demographic upheavals caused by three decades of immigration.

Peter Schott is a tourism official who is changing jobs and, reluctantly, moving with his wife, who works for a cruise ship line, to Broward. The couple, both in their thirties and expecting their first child, are looking for a bigger home. Schott says he will miss the exotic, foreign feel of Miami. Miami, Schott says, is a media noche, the name for a Cuban sandwich, while Broward he fears is "white bread and baloney." While he will miss Miami, Schott knows that many of those moving north to Broward may not.

"Some people are real frank," he said. "They say they want to be with more people more like us. If they're white Americans, they want white Americans around them."

For non-Hispanic, non-Spanish-speaking whites to survive in Miami, there is no choice but to move, or to adapt. "It is our city now," many Cuban Americans say, and the numbers tell part of the story.

In the 1990s, some 95,000 white non-Hispanics left Miami-Dade County, decreasing that group's presence by 16 percent, to around 492,000, or about one-fifth of the county population.

They either moved away or, in the case of elderly residents, particularly in the Jewish community, died. (The Jewish population in Miami-Dade County has decreased from about 250,000 to 100,000 in the last two decades. The new destination for Jewish retirees and younger migrants is Broward and Palm Beach counties).

As whites left Miami, they poured into Broward. Between 1990 and 1997, the white non-Hispanic population here increased by about 82,000, or 8 percent, to more than a million residents.

These dramatic numbers follow an equally large out-migration of whites during the 1980s. So many non-Hispanic whites left Miami-Dade in the previous decade that Marvin Dunn, a sociologist at Florida International University, who has followed the trend, said in 1991, "You get down to the point below which those who are going to leave have left and the others are committed to stay. I think we're close to that with whites."

But Dunn was wrong. The whites keep leaving.

"White migration to Miami-Dade has essentially stopped," said William Frey, a demographer at the University of Michigan, who coined the phrase "demographic balkanization" to describe the ongoing trend of ethnic and racial groups to self-segregate – not only within a city, but from city to city, and from state to state.

"The two appear almost like mirror images of each other," Frey said of Broward and Miami-Dade counties. "There is definitely something going on here and we can only guess what it is. But this 'One America' that Clinton talks about is clearly not in the numbers. Segregation and non-assimilation continue."

Many times, native whites on the move explain that Miami now feels to them like "a foreign country," that they feel "overwhelmed" by the presence not just of some Spanish-speakers, but so many.

"You order a Coke without ice," said an executive and mother of three who moved to Broward from Miami in 1996 and asked that her name not be used. "And you get ice. You say no starch and you get starch. You call government offices, and they can't take a decent message in English. You spell your name letter by letter and they get it wrong. They keep saying 'Que? Que? Que?' (Spanish for "What?') You go to the mall, and you watch as the clerks wait on the Spanish speakers before you. It's like reverse racism. You realize, my God, this is what it is like to be the minority."

"The white population feels increasingly beleaguered," said George Wilson, a sociologist at the University of Miami who is studying the phenomenon.

"Their whole domain is changing at the micro-level," Wilson continued. "At the malls, in the schools. A lot of the whites I talk to say they feel challenged by the rapid ethnic and cultural change. A whole population of whites has gone from a clear majority to a clear minority in a very short time . . . and a lot of them simply say, 'To hell with this,' and move up the road."

This feeling of being the beleaguered minority is creating among some a new consciousness of "white ethnicity," and for those who see America's future as a relatively harmonious multicultural state based on shared ideas of capitalism and freedom, this may not bode well.

For if whites do not want to share power and place, or if they feel increasingly shoved aside or overwhelmed in the cities and states with high immigration, they will continue to vote with their feet, by moving away, creating not a rainbow of citizens, but a more balkanized nation, with jobs, university enrollments, public spending, schools all seen through ethnic or racial prisms, including among whites.

Several of those interviewed complain that the politics of Miami-Dade are dominated by the issues of the newcomers, particularly the Cuban Americans, who wait for the fall of Fidel Castro; they see in the city hall, where a number of officials were recently indicted and convicted of taking kickbacks after it was discovered that the city was broke, a "banana republic" of ethnic cronyism; they dislike being referred to in Spanish media as "the Americans" by Miami's Hispanic residents and politicians, as if they were the foreigners.

And many balk at the dominance of Spanish – on television, in official news conferences, on the radio, in schools and meetings and in their day-to-day lives. The movement of so many whites from Miami-Dade to Broward is viewed by many Hispanics as understandable, even natural, though hardly something to be encouraged.

"We had a tremendous exodus of Anglos, especially Anglos who did not feel comfortable with the new demographics of Miami, who were intimidated by the Spanish language and the influx of different people," said Eduardo Padron, a Cuban American and president of the Miami Dade Community College. "It is a natural trend for them to move out. Many of them kept working in Miami, but they found refuge in Broward."

Padron believes the rapidity of demographic changes, and the creation of a Hispanic majority, was "intimidating" for many whites, particularly those who did not speak any Spanish.

Some whites interviewed say they know they may seem like "whiners," as one woman put it, but they feel they are not being met halfway by the newcomers, and this is an especially acute feeling in Miami, where Cuban Americans and other immigrants from Latin America now dominate the political landscape, serving as city and county mayors and council members. Both of Miami's representatives to Congress are Cuban Americans.

Recent elections reveal that voters in Miami-Dade select candidates along stark racial and ethnic lines in classic bloc voting. The 1995 county mayor's race, pitting Cuban American Alex Penelas against African American Arthur Teele, Jr., turned almost entirely on demographic lines, with exit polls showing that the overwhelming majority of Cuban Americans voted for Penelas, as most blacks voted for Teele. What did whites do? A lot of them did not vote at all.

Over the years, there has been sporadic, organized resistance by whites in Miami to hold back the changes. One group, calling itself Citizens of Dade United, was successful in passing a referendum in 1980 that declared English the "official language" of county government. But it was overturned in 1993. Enos Schera, who is a co-founder of the group and who is now 71, is still filled with vinegar, and says he refuses to move from Miami – though he says he and his group have received death threats.

"I'm staying to fight this crazy thing," Schera said. "I'm not a bad guy, but I don't want to be overrun. They come here and get all the advantages of being in America and then they insult you right on top of it." He is writing a book about the changes. "That will tell all," he promises.

But it seems as if Schera is fighting in retreat. He, and his group, have largely been relegated to the role of stubborn whites whose time is over.

Many of the others, like Weston resident Joanne Smith, have already left. "There's no room for us in the discussion," said Smith. "It's like we were the oppressors."

Smith says she likes to eat at Cuban restaurants, has Hispanic neighbors in Weston and admires the strength and striving of the newcomers. She herself is the granddaughter of immigrants, from Europe. But Smith feels the immigrants should try harder to understand the feelings of native Americans. "If they can survive coming here on a raft," she says. "They can learn to speak English."

Here at Weston, almost all of the communities are closed with security gates, requiring a visitor to punch a code or be cleared by a guard before entering the enclaves. In addition to the gates, a private security firm patrols the neighborhoods.

One researcher on the topic, Edward Blakely of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, says that gated communities like Weston's are the fastest growing new developments around the country. Blakely deplores the trend, claiming it creates "fortress neighborhoods," dividing citizens, creating walls between "us" and "them."

But obviously, many home buyers like the concept, and many of the residents of Weston say one of the things they like most about the neighborhood is its sense of community, of safety and the ability of their children to ride their bicycles on the streets.

Yet the gates cannot keep demographic change at bay. Though two of every three residents in Weston is white, most of them in their thirties, about one in four are Hispanic. But these are the most assimilated, often second-generation, solidly middle-class Cuban Americans who come north for the same new schools and golf courses as the white migrants, allowing almost everyone to continue to live within their comfort zone.

But not all. As one three-year resident, who declined to give her name, observed, "I keep hearing more and more Spanish in the grocery store. I don't know if they live here or are just working here. But I started to see some Spanish magazines for sale. Maybe I didn't move far enough north."

Special correspondent Catharine Skipp contributed to this report from Miami.

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

AH, reread that article, and it was interesting to note, that even Cubans are fleeing Miami. LOL the self-loating people that they are. They cant even stand to live in their own Cuban neighborhoods.

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

I guess you Cubans take credit for building up Broward too!!

[Floridiano]

Yes, he's a Rican from the Bronx. He's a dark-reddish Mulatto (jabao).

No, he couldn't live in Weston, no way.

[Floridiano]

Hey, Longfellow, negrón, do you still to be a descendant of Ol' Winnetou and General Sherman?

You haven't changed a bit in 5 years. You must be in a mental institution by now. If you had money you could do like Michael Jackson.

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

Funny how you are ignoring how "Americans" have fled Miami by the tens of thousands, the last decade. Also, funny how you ignore the fact that even your own kind have fled the Cuban Chicanos neighborhoods. One more thing, i could care less if you think im Pueto Rican. After all, at least they have their own country. (snicker)

[Floridiano]

Longfellito, aka. "Warthog Bembón".

No, you don't have a country.
You are only a crazy and deculturized Puertorrican mulatto.
You are a failure and the likes of you could never live in Weston.
You are nothing, you don't exist.

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

yawn

[a thought....]

Cubans are not responsible for the alligators...or the hurricanes for that matter. John, this Floridiano doesn't seem to like you...what did you do??

[Robert Barrocas]

BREAKING NEWS: Cuban Americans bring scourge of alligators and hurricanes to the once "sleepy, little Southern town" and its poor, defenseless white American inhabitants.

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

A.T.

I was talking about Cubans generally, and about Miami specifically. And, i dont know who this dude is. But im learning him sugah, im learning this illegal immigrant real good.

[nonee moose]

chicano loujohn:

are you running out of research? you are starting to re-post your own shit! or do you not recognize it the second time around?

you know loujohn, posting offensive dreck is bad enough, but a lack of creativity? that's just wrong...

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

Posted by: Robert Barrocas | May 23, 2006 at 03:35 PM
BREAKING NEWS: Cuban Americans bring scourge of alligators and hurricanes to the once "sleepy, little Southern town" and its poor, defenseless white American inhabitants.

Actually, now that you mention Cubans bringing hurricanes. Here is an timely article which i researched nearly 3 months ago.

The Cuban Mafia caused Katrina
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From: NCC - view profile
Date: Wed, Sep 7 2005 4:05 am
Email: "NCC"
Groups: alt.conspiracy
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Hurricane Katrina was a man made disaster created by the republican
administration and powerful hard-line Miami Cuban American Mafiosi for
the sole purpose of revenge and genocide. Miami Cuban Americans along
with the CIA worked hand in hand to create the greatest disaster the
American South has seen. Thought by all to be a natural disaster,
Katrina was a man made weapon of mass destruction carefully planned and
used by the administration and its Cuban American minions. It has
been proven many times that Cuban Americans are the ones who stole two
elections in South Florida for the Miami Mafia crime family, so it comes to no
surprise that the Miami mafia was behind Katrina and the black genocide
that followed.

Why do you think the peaceful island of Cuba is always being hit by
lethal hurricanes? Is it a coincidence or an act of God? No, it is not
a coincidence, and the Cuban American mafia with the support of the CIA
is behind hurricanes directed at Cuba that annually kill and destroy
thousands of brown-skinned people, and billions of dollars in
infrastructure. Soon after Fidel Castro became Cuba's president and
all the rich white Batista dictatorship plantation owners, along with
the prostitutes and gangsters were expelled from the island, a top
secret cabal of criminal minds met in Santiago de Chile at the
invitation of the fascist General Augosto Pinochet. Present at this
convocation of terror were Cuban Mafiosi, Grand Wizards of the American
and Cuban KKK, American gangland elements angry at their losses in
Cuba, ex Gestapo men, Nazi scientists from Hitler's terror weapons
programs, white Rhodesian mercenaries, Corsican under world figures,
expelled Trotskyite party members angry at the Soviet Union, South
African Afrikaner architects of apartheid, and fundamentalist white
Christians belonging to the racist and militaristic John Birch Society.
Pinochet hosted the week long event which was also sponsored by the
CIA.

The Weather Weapon of Mass Destruction was created in Chile very
similar to when the United States created the AIDS virus in a super
secret laboratory off the coast of long Island to be used as a weapon
of genocide on Haiti, Africa, and places like Harlem and the South
Bronx where people of color live.

With this in mind and using blueprints that were smuggled out of
Germany before Gobbles death, the Miami Nazi Mafia was able to re-adapt
the Nazi Propaganda Minister's blueprint to slander Jews and use it
instead on people of color. For instance, according to Rachel
Baumgarden and Rebecca Goldstein of the Wymin's Social Justice
Southern Coalition of Justice, Peace and Fairness in the Media Project,
there were no black looters in New Orleans, but in fact packs of Miami
Cuban Mafiosi in black face.

It all worked this way. After creating Katrina with their weather
machine, and using Radio Marti jamming devices that successfully jammed
radio and TV signals in the mostly black ghettos of New Orleans, so
that blacks would not receive warnings that they should evacuate the
city [this is why only whites left en masse]. The operation of terror
was orchestrated and carried out in a secret bunker in Miami's
infamous Little Havana neighborhood were a great majority of
Batista's henchmen took up residence after the triumph of the Cuban
Revolution that expelled all reactionary elements. Batista henchman
Otto Reich was the main project manager for the Cuban Americans.

Cuban exile racist elements then dressed in black face and started
breaking into electronic stores and stealing computers, camcorder
cameras, CD Players and plasma TVs in plain view of the media thus not
only killing thousands of people of color, but also, slandering the
survivors pf color as looters, criminals, rapists, and even in a couple
of accounts - cannibals!

In 2004 it was already determined that the secret weather weapon was to
be directed at poor Louisiana and Southern Afro Americans who mostly
voted for Gore and Kerry in the last presidential elections. Also as a
weapon of genocide, it would be used against the brown-skinned
populations as a way of racially cleaning the American social fabric of
what Miami Cuban Mafiosi and the fundamentalist Christian religious
right saw as undesirable elements in society. Both the Cuban Miami
mafia and Christian fundamentalist had their reasons for using the
terror weapon against Afro Americans. For the white Cuban American
gangsters they viewed the weather weapon as a way to get back at the
large percentage of Afro Americans who have always held Commandante
Fidel Castro in high esteem as a liberator of colored people around the
world. The Cuban Americans along with the Christian religious right
also saw the weapon as a cleansing devise designed to eradicate the
growing popularity of Afro American urban culture within society. In
her groundbreaking study of Miami Cuban criminals, (The Cuban KKK in
America) Dr. Mindy Shroumberg has stated that white Miami Cubans were
concerned that their white European way of life was being taken over by
American blacks who infested their children's minds with vagrancy,
prison culture, rap music, socialism by way of public assistance, and
general promiscuity that got many Cuban American daughters pregnant
with mixed breed offspring.

The Cuban Americans were also behind Katrina because they basically
wanted to clear the greater New Orleans area of blacks in order to
level the whole place and start colonies or enclaves where a new Cuban
American master race could form homelands very similar to the white
ruled zones in South Africa. The Cuban Americans also planned to obtain
valuable prime real estate in order to sell it back to the Federal
government as well as the creation of land set aside for nuclear power
plants and jails to accommodate the Bush administration's military
prison industrial complex.

The levies and dams of New Orleans were not destroyed by natural forces
but by explosive devices set off by members of the Cuban American
terror group Alpha 66 commandos to further expedite the genocide and
disaster. Before this could happen the republican administration removed more
than 3/4 of the Louisiana National Guard and sent them to the Middle
East so they could not help out once the disaster happened.

The CIA, republican administration, and Miami Cuban gangsters also used the
weather weapon as a way to burn Louisiana's Democrat female governor
for her pro-abortion stance and for attempting to break the United
States blockade of Cuba when the governor wanted to sell produce and
farm machinery to Fidel Castro. As you know, Cuban American gangsters
from Miami have hijacked American foreign policy regarding Cuba, and as
specially trained CIA terrorists and agit prop commandos they have
unleashed many acts of revenge and terror on moderate and progressive
elements who have wished to bring Cuba and the United States together
in peaceful personhood.

[nonee moose]

Wow! loujohn... i don;t know what to say. you blew the cover off this one....

i take back every criticism of your views, every attack on your intellect, every contemptuous statement about your manhood, every doubt as to your sanity...

i am truly speechless, i had no idea. i must, from now on, consider myself a self-loathing, right-wing, extreme illegal alien chicano Cuban exile...

i am... vanquished.

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

Ah, one of many who have attempted to resist. You may now kneel before THEE

[nonee moose]

loujohn:

be careful, or i'll huff and i'll puff, and i'll blow your house down...

[Floridiano]

Long armed ape fellow - aka Warthog

You only have to consider yourself what you are. Much healthier for your tormented soul.

You are a no-push, dickless freak born as a dickless, no-push, cartucho-coloured Rican whose cucaracha mother shat in some cucaracha infested tenement in the Bronx.

[a thought....]

Cuban-Americans are also responsible for the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, the rising prices at Disney World, and the unholy proliferation of Starbucks...for this, we apologize...

[Robert Barrocas]

John,

You just went up a notch in my book for posting the article about how the Cuban Mafia caused Katrina. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time.

That puts you at notch one.

[a thought....]

All of this has nothing to do with the espresso machine breaking at Cuba Nostalgia...wait...that was our fault, too...sorry..

[nonee moose]

the lindbergh baby, the 1906 earthquake, the great depression, bubonic plague, the war of the roses... the list goes on and on...

[a thought....]

New Coke, Paris Hilton, the Valentine's Day Massacre, killer bees....all abominations brought about by Cubans....

[nonee moose]

John Tesch, "Joe vs. the Volcano", the Exxon Valdeeeeez (!), carpal tunnel syndrome, citrus canker, the brazilian pepper, Carmen Lunetta, pollen, PolPot.... yep that was us too...

[a thought....]

The Backstreet Boys, N'Sync, New Kids on the Block, Spice Girls, Keanu Reeves movies (any of them; just pick one)....for these alone we should all be deported...whether we were born here or not...

[Robert Barrocas]

"...Paris Hilton..."

A thought,

That is hilarious! Good one!

[Machetero]

Nostalgia is now for sale, and it's costly

By Ana Menendez
amenendez@herald.com

Cuba Nostalgia drew thousands to the fairgrounds last weekend, a three-day extravaganza that proves there is no story so worn or threadbare that it can't be repackaged and sold at a profit.

There was old art, there was sad art and somewhere amid the hackneyed paintings of mulatas and their roosters there must have been some authentic sentiment. It was just hard to spot past the shameless shilling.

Well represented in this paean to sentimentality were: Bacardi Mojito, La Bodeguita Goya, Navarro Pharmacy and Southern Chevy Dealers, this last one honoring the heart-warming Cuban tradition of driving.

Yes, the Cuban American National Foundation was there, featuring a video installation that would have been right at home in an edgy Wynwood gallery. The CANF information booth (''Adopt a Dissident'') stood in solidarity alongside Costco Wholesalers, Comcast and Miami-Dade Transit, which was ready to fill the gap for all those not lucky enough to win the 2007 Chevy Cobalt in the drawing next door.

Not to be outdone, The Miami Herald was also there, chasing after the lucrative target audience of octogenarians who consider this paper the mouthpiece of Satan.

THE POSTER

The official posters near the entrance set the cartoon tone for the whole spectacle: Curvaceous Cubanas in frilly cuffs waved maracas while cigar-chomping, congenial-looking fellows strummed guitars. ''Bienvenido a Cuba Nostalgia,'' it said above a prominently displayed logo for Merrill Lynch.

It was downhill from there. After several hours of wandering the space, I was forced to face a series of painful existential questions such as: How many $3.50 magnets of the Virgin of Charity does the average family need? Who buys pillows that say La Habana? Isn't there a better venue for selling boxes of desiccated Gallo Pinto? Is that really a painting of Burt Reynolds with a hat of roosters?

By the time I got to the booth for Memorial Plan cemeteries, I thought I was prepared for anything. But my heart nearly stopped at the sight of dozens of people lined up for some promotional give-away that featured a spinning wheel. Fortunately, this one turned out to be not the Wheel of Fate but the Wheel of Umbrellas and Visors. At that point, I was just relieved that no one was raffling off a free plot.

Cuban Americans have come a long way in this town. Out of the sorrow of leaving family and lives behind, they rebuilt what they could in a new place and struggled through the bad and lean years only to arrive near the end of their story and find it written as farce.

From the sublime to the Bacardi Mojito lounge.

People strolling through the Expo Center Sunday sometimes seemed delighted and sometimes just plain stunned as they gamely powered through the commercial pitches.

''Your roots are your roots,'' said Stella Menéndez (no relation to me). ``Still, it's a shame. It used to be more historical.''

`I FEEL GOOD'

Her brother-in-law, Martin Menéndez, 67, had a simple reason to be there. ''I come because I feel good here,'' he said, browsing through the $59.95 guayaberas.

By a certain age, men like Menéndez have earned the right to their nostalgia. The sad thing is that there's so much money to be made from it.

Saturday marked the 104th anniversary of Cuban independence, a struggle that killed thousands, including Cmdr. Antonio Maceo, who survived 24 battle wounds in his career before dying at the battle of Punta Brava.

That was fortitude in the service of an ideal. Today anyone can sell a T-shirt of Ché Guevara with a bullet hole in his head and call it courage.

As rip-offs go, the $12 entrance to Cuba Nostalgia wasn't nearly as offensive as this notion of an Exile's Bazaar: a place where history is a marketing concept and memory is always priced for a quick sale.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/14652741.htm

[Floridiano]

¿Dónde se puede comprar la camiseta con el Che con el tiro en la cabeza?

Interesante.

[a thought....]

Floridiano: I also saw one that said "Ah-Che-sino". Classic!!!!

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

Ana Menendez article:

I always read this immigrant goddess columns. She is smart, correct, and always delivers hard-hitting opinions. Now if all immigrants would progessively think like she did, then America would be a much better place. Truth of the matter is, she is why i subscribed to the right wing exile immigrant militant Herald in the frist place.

[Will]

Too bad all of the Nostalgia in Miami can't produce any change in Havana. You can burn yourself out chasing the past in Florida and Cuba will surely continue on in its own direction.

I find it amazing that zero has been done to undermine the Cuban Communists. Nothing but isolation that leaves the Commies to their own devices.

Come on, at least one of you young Americans of Cuban decent can get something started that has a positive effect on Cuba!!! Forget BANNING everything that you can...it ain't worked for 45 years.

[Karola]

Todos somos iguales debajo de la piel, Cubanos, Puertorriquenos, Dominicamos, somos hermanos. Que se acabe esta disputa y que nos unamos mas, porque en realidad al final no importa raza, etnicidad, lenguage, cultura. Lo que importa es que somos seres humanos con sentimientos, con patria, con historia. Amemonos, y unamosno que es lo que nos hace falta a nosotros los Hispanos.