Word: cuban
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Hispanics account for more than half of the city's population (207,000 out of 370,000), and the overwhelming majority of them are Cuban. They have given Miami, as Rum Maker Gerardo Abascal observes, "a spontaneity and boisterous flavor that it never had before...
Some 700,000 largely middle-class Cuban refugees have fled their Communist-dominated island home for the U.S. since Fidel Castro took power. Of these, 430,000 have settled in southern Florida's Dade County, where they were initially welcomed with sympathy and federal relocation grants. The Cubans have long since spread out from Little Havana. Neighboring Hialeah (pop. 133,000) is 65% Latin, and the Cubans have moved on to such well-tended suburbs as Coral Gables, Kendall and Westchester. They have prospered mightily, prompting Cuban Writer José Sanchez-Boudy to boast with only slight hyperbole...
...Cuban enterprise has transformed Miami and Dade County into a dynamic commercial center. The area now boasts 230 latino restaurants, 30 furniture factories, 20 garment plants, a shoe factory that employs 3,000, and about 30 transplanted cigar factories. Hispanics are prominent in land development and make up 60% of the construction work force. They control 14 of the 67 local commercial banks. One, the Continental National, has seen its deposits swell from $2 million to $29 million in the past four years. Latinos generate an estimated $1.8 billion in annual income and have created 100,000 jobs. Says...
...Cuban middle class, hatching deals over lunch at Little Havana's American Club or lounging on weekends at the Big Five Club, life in the U.S. is a dream that grew out of a nightmare. Says Frank Soler, 35, who fled to the U.S. at age 17 and is now editor of El Miami Herald, a Spanish-language edition of the Miami Herald with a daily circulation of 50,000: "Suddenly we lost everything and were confronted with potential poverty and hunger. Fear spurred us to work our tails off to regain what we once had." Result...
...became the second official language for such things as election ballots, public signs and local directories. Despite this accommodating gesture, there is friction between Hispanics and non-Hispanics in Bade. Many English-speaking residents, particularly older ones, resent the pervasiveness of the new language. There are frequent complaints of Cuban clannishness (only 5% of Cubans intermarry) and of arrogance. Result: many anglos are gradually retreating from Miami...