Castro Hatred Shapes Miami Cuban Life

Miami's Cubans loathe Fidel Castro with such passion that the mere suggestion he was near death this week had them dancing in the streets. But for all their hatred of the Cuban dictator, perhaps no other figure has shaped their lives — and South Florida's culture and politics — more than he has.

Today, the Cuban-American community in South Florida is more than 800,000 strong. Cuban espresso stands dot the avenues. Salsa music fills the airwaves, and the area's Cuban artists include music producer Emilio Estefan, actor Andy Garcia and salsa artist Albita. In many neighborhoods, you can go an entire day without hearing a word of English.

And those who were driven into exile by Castro make up, along with their children and grandchildren, a political force to be reckoned with.

Four members of Florida's congressional delegation are Cuban-American, and politicians who take the "wrong" side on issues related to Cuba, such as encouraging an end to the U.S. embargo against the communist island, risk their careers. Many experts believe Cuban-Americans helped deliver Florida — and thus the White House — to George W. Bush during the 2000 election.

"Cuban-Americans are viewed as the swing vote in a swing state," said Dario Moreno, director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University in Miami. "The Cuban-American community has played a rather unusual role for its size, in a way that is different from most other immigrant groups."

When Castro came to power in 1959, he nationalized businesses, expropriated U.S. owned-land and purged his government of opponents, prompting tens of thousands of Cubans to flee to Florida, including many of the country's business leaders, academics and artists. Since then, thousands more have arrived.

To many first-generation exiles, Castro "is an obsession," said Luis Martinez Fernandez, director of the Latin studies program at the University of Central Florida. As for the baby boomers and other younger Cubans, Castro has a strong influence on them, too, in part because he is the only leader many of them have ever known, he said.

"Castro is an everlasting presence in our lives," said David Hernandez, 30, an accountant who came to the country at 21 and worked two jobs as a security guard to put himself through college.

Hernandez saw his family split apart under Castro's rule. After the revolution, his grandfather was thrown in jail when the government sought to seize the family's property.

Hernandez's mother fled to the United States in 1991 in search of a better life when he was 14, promising to send for him. It took four more years for Hernandez's mother to make good on her promise. Many of his relatives, including his father, remain on the island, unable to leave.

"I think about (Castro) every week when I call my father, who lives 200 miles away and has not yet seen my 7-month-old daughter," Hernandez said.

Florida's proximity to the island, combined with the passion of the exiles, made it the perfect staging ground for the CIA sabotage operations against Castro in the early 1960s and helped make the Miami area a "key piece in this geopolitical chess game" during the Cold War, said Cornell University history professor and Cuban immigrant Maria Cristina Garcia.

The majority of South Florida's Cubans have consistently voted — and voted Republican — ever since 1961, when President Kennedy failed to give air support to the small band of Cuban exiles trained by the CIA for the Bay of Pigs invasion. The exiles were killed or captured by Castro's forces.

The Cuban exile political strength grew during the 1980s, when Cuban business leaders formed the Cuban American National Foundation to lobby Congress to take a harder line against Castro.

At a time when most Hispanic voters lean toward the Democrats, President Bush received 80 percent of South Florida's Cuban-American vote in 2000, enabling him to capture the state by 537 votes. Many believe the Clinton administration's forced return to Cuba of Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy who was found adrift at sea, drove Cuban voters to the polls in record numbers for Bush.

The influx of Cubans changed the racial dynamics in South Florida from black and white to black, white and brown decades before most of the rest of the country was talking about multiculturalism.

Still, the exile community is hardly monolithic. While wealthier families flew to Miami immediately after Cuba's revolution, others came on leaky boats as recently as last week. Second- and third-generation Cuban Americans are more varied in their views of U.S. policy. According to a 2004 survey by Florida International University, less than 43 percent of those born here were registered as Republican.