Naked and Torn

Saw this painting at Cuba Nostalgia last weekend. A naked woman standing proud before a blend of the American and Cuban flags, her vulnerability evident as she is torn between loyalties to two cultures, yet showing poise even as she is  humiliated.

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[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

The Cuban Chicano may be torn, but "real" Americans are not!!

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]

Posted by: nonee moose | May 23, 2006 at 10:31 AM
careful luis, don't get the chicano loujohn riled up... he might just cut and paste another article...

Luis, next time listen to nonee moose!! As I have plenty more hard-hitting, ruthless Cuban Chicano illegal immigrant articles. So dont force my google button again.

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

Nuff said

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

Yes, finally silence from the illegal alien, right-wing exile, militant, arrogant, lazy, radical,crazy, rude, Cuban Chicano who illegally "snuck" into "MY" country. SILENCE from you yapping cuban puppies. SILENCE I SAID!!! God almighty silence

[Juan (Pancho) Valquez]

Nice tits.

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

Dude they swear im you, say something to them.

[a thought....]

This is all I have to offer on this: If my grandparents learned English (my grandfather even taught in a public high school in St. Petersburg)and all four died being American citizens (although still very proud of being Cubans) then there is no excuse for anyone to come here and not learn the language. I get annoyed when Spanish-speaking people tell me that they don't need to learn English; that's why they moved to Miami. Miami is still part of Florida which is still part of the USA which was a British colony. So, while I understand it will take some time to learn English, learn it, wherever you're from because now you're here.

[Cheo el Feo]

Jose Marti must be rolling in his grave.

Combining the imperial flag of the United States with that of long-oppressed but ever-courageous Cuba is offensive. It is as if people have forgotten all that Marti warned us about cozying up to the Giant of the North.

Que error!

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

Cozy up? Hell, they think they are us!!

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

A.T.

Sugah, there is something about you. You are unlike any other American i have ever met in this immigrant city. You are so above these regular Cubans which run around this blog. I would be proud to have you has my next door neighbor. You could make it in a "real" American city, unlike some of these pesky "immigrants" which nip at my heels.

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

Article quotes: 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.

Wow, how many times have i heard that from Cubans in this blog!! They will never let you forget that Miami is theirs.

[a thought....]

John, why are you being accused of being Puerto Rican? Are you a boricua who is having fun riling up the Americans and the Cubans? Are you one of those Ricans who drive around with the "mi orgullo" sticker on their car? Please remember Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory so "mi orgullo" is actually the U.S. (irony again). I don't care if you are, but don't lie to me, Johnny! I was honest with you about my toes....

[nonee moose]

as to the english language question:

that is an economic decision. clearly a non-english speaker in miami, of a certain age, who must find employment would be well served by learning the language. yes, one can find gainful employment without it in miami, but the prospects for improvement beyond low-paying jobs are not good. so the economic self-interest will decide.

likewise, the non-spanish speaking person, of a certain age,who must find employment in miami would be well served by learning the language. yes, one can find gainful employment without it in miami, but as a marketing matter, why would one limit themselves consciously?

Furthermore, the fact that one can't roll their tongue does not only impact their economic prospects, but it can be argued it could severely enhance one's romantic prospects as well. (snicker)

[Robert Barrocas]

John,

What exactly was the use of posting this article? Apart from entertaining us with blatant snippets of racism, such as:

People say things, 'Oh that's change and that's progress,' but I like it clean and green – and everybody speaking English," Smith says.

"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."

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."

Besides, I thought your problems with Cuban Americans stem from the fact that we "run away" from our problems, so how do you explain this "white flight?"

A thought,

I am in total agreement that Cubans should learn to speak English when they emigrate to this country. But that doesn't seem as though it's enough for some of the people interviewed in this article.

To those who've left, I say good riddance. Miami is a beautiful city that's been put on the map precisely because of the variance of cohabitants. If you need to be surrounded by others "of your own kind" to feel comfortable, you're a racist and you're unwelcomed.

[Robert Barrocas]

And, John, trust me, No Cuban thinks they are like you. No Cuban wants to be.

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

A.T. you know it is always like this when a new Cuban immigrant comes in here. First, they accuse me of being 4 or 5 different nicks. Then they accuse me of being EVERYTHING but American. Then i have to "learn" their asses the hard way, by posting my articles. This new person Floria or whatever the hell his "immigrant" name is, swears i have been in here for 5 years. I didnt even know this blog was 5 years old. I thought Val's 3 year old blog was the oldest. But, whatever, this new blogger, i think is talking about Pancho. Pancho and i both take issues with right wing Cuban exiles. So now of course everyone swears i am really Pancho. So then ANOTHER Cuban Connection "immigrant" pissed me off "AGAIN" and forced me to reach for "ANOTHER" nasty article about Miami Cubans, for which i have discovered hundreds. So everytime the Cuban immigrant says that SouthFlorida loves Cubans or that we are jealous and really want to live next door to the illegal alien Cuban immigrants. Then im going to post another nasty hard-hitting article, until these illegal alien Cuban Chicano "immigrants" learn that i dont want to live next door with them in Hialeah, or Little Havana. Watching all kinds of chickens and rosters running around the streets, with stalks of corn growing in the front yard.

Nuff said,
john

[Robert Barrocas]

Cheo,

This country gave Cubans a home and allowed us to thrive when our homeland was overtaken by a tyrant. Show some respect.

[Robert Barrocas]

John,

You ramble on about Cubans wanting to be white Americans because that's what you want to be. There is nothing wrong with being Puerto Rican.

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

Ah, you know what is so ironic? The Americans who fled were probably the conservative republicans, which you Cubans so dearly love. And the Americans that stayed behind, particularly the ones on the beach, are liberals, and you hate them. Why? Because according to Cubans here, they are commie liberals. You Cubans are so backwards. Its kind of sad really, when you step back and see the big picture.

[Robert Barrocas]

John,

My feelings stay the same if the ones that left are Republicans or Democrats. If you need to be surrounded by others "of your own kind" to feel comfortable, you're a racist. I have no problem with liberals. I have a problem with communists.

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

Cheo,
Posted by: Robert Barrocas | May 23, 2006 at 03:19 PM
This country gave Cubans a home and allowed us to thrive when our homeland was overtaken by a tyrant. Show some respect.

Respect! You want some respect for fleeing your nations righteous fight? You want respect for starving your homeland to destroy one man? You want respect for your well-documented bigotry as cited in above article? You want respect for turning your back on your fellow countrymen, after you got comfortable in Miami? How about you show some respect for Americans who allowed you to cowardly flee here in the first place. Even the other half that you despise, the Democrats. Rather than thumping your finger in our chest, bragging about how this is your poverty-ridden, pit of sin city, and calling us liberal commie bastards. You show us some respect.

P.S.
And what is a cheo, speak English.

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

Robert,
You ramble on about Cubans wanting to be white Americans because that's what you want to be. There is nothing wrong with being Puerto Rican.

Robert, you can pretend to be a white American all you want, i always play along. I have learned how to smile real big and pretty in Miami when im talking to a right wing Cuban exile. But, you cant have it both ways. If you want to be a proud Cuban, then be one. If you got a pair of cohoneys then let them hang, no matter what man you are speaking with. Obviously, you are becoming very sensitive with who you are, and your nationality. Probably another self-loathing Cuban like Val Prieto, who pretends to be white one day, spanish the next, and yet cuban another. All of course playing to the particular audience on a particular day. Robert, after my time in the Balkans i learned that race,religion, and national origins are often hidden by self-loathers such as yourself, out of pure self-preservation. So im not talking down to your sensitivity. All im saying if you got a pair, then you should not have to pretend who you are. If i were Puerto Rican, i would have no problems admitting to it. After all, i hold them in higher esteem than i do Cubans. After all they are Americans, and they dont have to sneak in, like you or your forefathers had to.

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

Robert,
You ramble on about Cubans wanting to be white Americans because that's what you want to be. There is nothing wrong with being Puerto Rican.

Robert, you can pretend to be a white American all you want, i always play along. I have learned how to smile real big and pretty in Miami when im talking to a right wing Cuban exile. But, you cant have it both ways. If you want to be a proud Cuban, then be one. If you got a pair of cohoneys then let them hang, no matter what man you are speaking with. Obviously, you are becoming very sensitive with who you are, and your nationality. Probably another self-loathing Cuban like Val Prieto, who pretends to be white one day, spanish the next, and yet cuban another. All of course playing to the particular audience on a particular day. Robert, after my time in the Balkans i learned that race,religion, and national origins are often hidden by self-loathers such as yourself, out of pure self-preservation. So im not talking down to your sensitivity. All im saying if you got a pair, then you should not have to pretend who you are. If i were Puerto Rican, i would have no problems admitting to it. After all, i hold them in higher esteem than i do Cubans. After all they are Americans, and they dont have to sneak in, like you or your forefathers had to.

[Robert Barrocas]

John,

I am beginning to think that Floridiano is right about you. Get out of that public library, get yourself off drugs, and clean yourself up. There is nothing more cowardly than a black Puerto Rican who calls himself a white American.

I was telling Cheo to show respect for the American flag. How can you be dense enough not to understand that?

You are the racist and you are the one who needs to learn some respect.

[Robert Barrocas]

John,

It's obvious that as a black Puerto Rican you can speak Spanish perfectly well so why don't we continue this in Spanish?

[gansibele]

"Besides, I thought your problems with Cuban Americans stem from the fact that we "run away" from our problems, so how do you explain this "white flight?"

Jejeje, my thoughts exactly when I read the article. What happened to stay and fight?

A thought... I don't really think this is about learning English. There will always be recent inmigrants who haven't had the time to learn the language and the xenophobes will always be offended. But I'm proud to say that I have met and had as part of my family many Americans who couldn't be more accepting and welcoming. A few bitter bigots don't mean anything. And yes, they can't move north enough.

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

yawn

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

Well folks i have to start night class in a couple of hours. It is more than likely i will be surrounded by illegal alien immigrant Cubans. I will nice and friendly to them. And of course, they will never, never suspect what i really think about their immigrant status. Hell, i might even pretend to be a hard core republican just to get along. Never know i might be able to score with one of the right wing Cuban immigrant divas. So i will take it nice and easy. Like i always do in Miami. I mean a woman is a woman after all. Besides i have never tried a Cuban diva before, so i might get a little nervous, if you know what i mean. Bye-bye until tomorrow.

[Juan (Pancho) Valquez]

I wonder how much they paided the prostitute in the painting to model nude. I mean you can fuck a Cuban hooker for about $10 and you can get a bj for about $5-$6 dollars on the island. So i'm thinking they paid her somewhere in the 3-4 dollar range to stand there naked.

[Robert Barrocas]

Pancho,

Do me a favor and go give a .45 a "bj."

[a thought....]

The language issue wasn't directed to any one group of people. I wrote: wherever you're from because now you're here. I'm not saying to give up your first language, but it never hurts to learn more than one language. I only know two and I wish I knew more. And, yes, xenophobes will exist no matter what because people fear what they don't understand. However, breaking down communication barriers help us at least to begin to understand each other. And even people who speak the same language don't like each other. Example: Venezuelans speak Spanish and a lot of other Spanish-speakers don't like them.

[Juan (Pancho) Valquez]

Go give a .45 a bj. Hilarious!

[Robert Barrocas]

Glad you liked it.

[Juan (Pancho) Valquez]

What can I say? It was witty.

[Manuel A. Tellechea]

"If i were Puerto Rican, i would have no problems admitting to it. After all, i hold them in higher esteem than i do Cubans." --Juan Boricua (aka Longfellow):

Well, I'm glad you have begun at last to embrace your Puerto Rican heritage. I even see the stirrings of ethnic-pride in you. But you don't have to hate Cubans to be a good Boricua. In fact, the closest thing to a Cuban on this planet is a Puerto Rican, and the closest thing to a Cuban is a Puerto Rican. As your great poet Lola Rodriguez de Tio wrote:

"Cuba and Puerto Rico share
A bird's wings, and cannot part:
Flowers and bullets they bear
Upon the very same heart!"

A recent poll found that the dearest wish of Puerto Rican parents is that their daughters marry Cubans. The 30,000 Cuban exiles in Puerto Rico virtually control that island's economy. Their success on the island reflects their success in the mainland, except that there Cubans are very big fish in a very little pond. So it is not surprising that the ultimate Puerto Rican aspiration is to marry a Cuban. Maybe that's your aspiration, too?

[a thought....]

Robert, I agree with your post to Cheo. This country took in our families so it is due our respect. I think it's interesting that Cheo called the flag of the U.S. the "imperial" flag....sounds vaguely reminiscent of another Che....sorry, didn't mean to leave off the "o"....

[h a s s a n]

The US took us in for the same reason the US takes in everyone else - they ruined our home countries to the point where it is impossible to live in them.

Between United Fruit, the IMF, Halliburton, Standard Oil, Hershey's, and the fecking Marines, what part of the developing world has not been ruined for its natives by the US?

Don't believe me?

Look at the largest groups of immigrants to this country and then study their countries' of origin and its' relations with the US prior to and after waves of immigration.

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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]

¿Quién es el morito Hassan?
¿No debería estar en Guantánamo?

[h a s s a n]

How quaint: a crude school yard attempt at humour courtesy of yet another Miami "Cuban" bigot.

Flori

No debes 'star resando para Posada Carriles y todos los otras terroristas?

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

floridiano wrote: ¿Quién es el morito Hassan? ¿No debería estar en Guantánamo?

Someone please translate!!

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

No debes 'star resando para Posada Carriles y todos los otras terroristas?

and that too

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

Robert Barrocas ignorantly asked: What exactly was the use of posting this article? Apart from entertaining us with blatant snippets of racism, such as:

I posted the above article, because i am sick and tired of hearing you immigrant Cubans tell me how desperately we want to be your next door neighbor. And nothing could be further from the truth. Nearly every American and European i know are sick of the arrogant right wing immigrant Cubans. And would not want to be them,like them, or live near them. After all, the only Americans left are liberals, as we tend to be the ones most accepting. Of course, you hate us because we are liberal commie bastards according to immigrant Cubans. I will continue to posts more nasty ass, thinly veiled racist articles like that from SouthFloridians until you quit telling me that i want to be your neighbor and im jealous of you immigrants.

Article states: People say things, 'Oh that's change and that's progress,' but I like it clean and green – and everybody speaking English," Smith says.

I dont consider that racist. I have heard much worse from "real" SouthFloridians about Cuban immigrants.

you wrote: "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."

Good, im glad that you admit that we dont want to be your neighbors anymore!!

Article state: As one three-year resident, who declined to give her name, observed, "I keep hearing more and more Spanish in the grocery store.

Yup, this is what i hear from "real" Broward residents all the time. Its like you Cubans are chasing us, rather than the other way around. If we moved to the moon, you Cuban immigrants would follow us there. And swear that you built the moon.

You wrote: Besides, I thought your problems with Cuban Americans stem from the fact that we "run away" from our problems, so how do you explain this "white flight?"

Good point!!

A.T. angrily wrote: To those who've left, I say good riddance. Miami is a beautiful city that's been put on the map precisely because of the variance of cohabitants.

Actually, Miami is on the map, because of "SouthBeach" which is the only part of Miami that we didnt flee from. However, i suspect that once Cubans take over, then we will flee, and you will of course follow us like little puppies.

A.T ignorantly wrote: If you need to be surrounded by others "of your own kind" to feel comfortable, you're a racist and you're unwelcomed.

I would like to see what Cubans in Hialeah would think if Hiatians would begin to intergrate that neighborhood.!!

[a thought....]

Ummm.... A.T. (if that's me) wrote none of that stuff that John just posted above.

[nonee moose]

see AT? he's turning... he's just swinging wildly now... doesn't matter who he hits.

loujohn, did the screaming of the screaming of the lambs make you angry...?

[a thought....]

Nonee, I think you're right. He has abandoned me. Fine, John....

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

nonee wrote: did the screaming of the screaming of the lambs make you angry...?

Cute, but not quite. Im feeling rather irritating lately, because i have to start making drives to the campus. And quite frankly, there is nothing that angers me more than some illegal immigrant (with no insurance) cutting me off.

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

a thought shamelessly wrote: I think you're right. He has abandoned me. Fine, John....

Fine, you want broken up with? I was so good to you. I talked sweet to you, hell i even sent you a lovely Cuban love poem. With women it is never enough. Gimmie more, gimmie more, gimmie more. Until the man is flat broke, and frankly pissed off. It always starts innocently enough, with an expensive dinner, and then before you know it, the woman is living out of your wallet. Hell, i can barely live out of my own wallet, and now i have got an immigrant mouth trying to live out of my wallet. At the end of the relationship, the woman always walks off with the treasures, and the man only has pictures and not so fond memories. That is why i take my women to McDonalds only. No high class, expensive Steak and Shake from me. Here, in this case A.T. walked away with a Cuban love poem to treasure, for the rest of her selfish life. And quite frankly, i didn't get a damn thing. So, FINE sugah! FINE

P.S.

Nonee,

Are you happy now you immigrant bastard. Always, ALWAYS sticking your nose where it doesn't belong.

[John Longfellow aka Lou Dobbs]

Im sorry, i really didnt mean that, i want you back!!

[nonee moose]

Like sands through the hourglass....

[a thought....]

I was just pointing out that you were getting upset about something I didn't post, although you attributed it to me. Nonee, are you enjoying this?