Miami: A Young but Turbulent History
A New Beginning
To Miami’s Anglo and black communities, mayoral candidate Manny Diaz seemed no different than the other six men running for mayor in 2001. Like five of his opponents, Diaz was born in Cuba, so he appealed to the powerful Cuban American voting bloc. The only non-Cuban running for mayor that year was Maurice Ferre, a career politician who was born in Puerto Rico and became Miami’s first Hispanic mayor in 1973.
Diaz was viewed with skepticism when he vowed to unite Miami’s divided cultures. After all, he was one of the attorneys for Elian Gonzalez’s Miami family during the four-month saga. Most Anglo and black voters didn’t even bother voting that year.
But a look into Diaz’s background shows that perhaps he does have a genuine interest in reaching out to other cultures. In 1980, when Diaz was fresh out of law school and the Mariel boatlift was creating serious rifts between Miami’s Anglo and Cuban communities, Diaz stepped in to lead the newly formed Spanish American League Against Discrimination. Although the primary goal of the organization was to protect Cubans against discrimination, Diaz took it a step further by protesting the double-standard that was applied to Haitian refugees who were being shipped back to Haiti.
And in 1979, Diaz joined Carrie Meek’s campaign, helping the African American politician to get elected to the Florida House of Representatives. Four years later, Meek became the first black to be elected to the Florida Senate. Diaz spent the next twenty years building a multimillion dollar law firm while helping democrat candidates get elected, preferring to remain behind the political scene.
But even though he was a lifelong democrat, Diaz registered as an independent prior to running for mayor in 2001, perhaps in an attempt not to be compared to a Castro-loving communist by his fellow exiles. Diaz said he switched parties during the Elian fiasco because he had become disillusioned with the party. Regardless of the reasons, it was Miami’s Cuban community that got him elected.
Diaz shocked Miami residents by not firing anybody during his first two weeks of taking office, a tradition that had been established during the prior decade with Mayor Loco and Crazy Joe. And four years into his term, he has not spent a night in jail for domestic violence or been investigated for voter fraud.
For Miami standards, he was boring. For New York standards, he was impressive. In 2004, the Manhattan Institute, a respected think tank based out of New York City, awarded Diaz with its Urban Innovator Award. After all, since Diaz took office in 2001, Miami’s bond rating went from junk to investment status, leading to a surge in private investment and a multibillion dollar development boom that is altering the city’s skyline. Another factor was that major crime in Miami had plummeted to its lowest level since 1978.
Diaz also led the way in persuading Latin Grammy organizers to return to Miami in 2003, giving the city a chance to repair its image of right-wing extremism. Diaz struck a deal with organizers of the event that placed the obligatory Cuban exile protesters in an area that would not put the attendees in direct contact with them. The exile groups voiced their disappointment, reminiscing of the days when Crazy Joe gave them his full support. But Diaz stuck to his guns, saying he was looking out for the entire city rather than a boisterous constituency.
As it turned out, the protesters got their way anyway, thank to President George W. Bush, who denied entry to the Cuban performers by not authorizing their visas. Miami officials proclaimed the event a success, a step in the right direction for Miami’s tarnished image. And even though Latin Grammy organizers decided to host the show in Los Angeles the following year, the 2003 event had laid the groundwork for an even bigger event – the MTV Video Music Awards show.
In 2004, for the first time in its 21 year history, the MTV Video Music Awards show was held in a city other than New York or Los Angeles. The unpredictable, sometimes racy event was a perfect match for Miami. And it pumped an estimated $100 million into the local economy, a godsend considering it was held in August during Miami’s slowest tourist month. It was deemed such a success that MTV chose Miami for its award show in 2005. For perhaps the first time in history, Los Angeles and New York were outshined by their younger rival to the south.
But Mayor Diaz refused to get caught up in the hype, a mistake that has plagued Miami for more than a century. Instead, he told members of the Manhattan Institute that Miami was on its way to becoming a world-class city, but it most likely won’t happen under his administration, even if does get reelected in 2005. And unlike the time when Mayor Loco flew to New York and told analysts that Miami’s financial shortfalls were a work of fiction, no one in the room doubted him.
The truth is, beneath all the glamour and the glitz that Miami loves to promote, there are serious issues that affect any city experiencing growing pains. In 2000, the U.S Census said Miami was the poorest city in the United States. In 2003, Miami still had a high rate of poverty, but it had become the fifth poorest city in the country.
And although immigrants from the Caribbean and Latin America continue to pour into Miami, they are quickly absorbed into the local economy. Colombians, Brazilians, Venezuelans, Argentines and Jamaicans continue to diversify the city that was built by Bahamians and revolutionized by Cubans and internationalized by everybody else. There is even a growing Russian community that is informally referred to as “Little Moscow.”
Twenty-five years after the Mariel and Haitian boatlifts, a significant portion of the arrivals have started their own businesses, setting the standard for the new arrivals. Many of their children have graduated college and speak two languages.
And the face of Miami has spread beyond its borders up to Broward and Palm Beach Counties, where the populations of Colombians, Jamaicans, Haitians, Brazilians and Asians have skyrocketed in the last decade. There was a time when these counties wanted nothing to do with Miami. The old joke was that you needed a passport to drive from Broward into Miami-Dade County.
But in 2004, civic leaders from the tri-county area formed the South Florida Regional Business Alliance, a regional push to obtain government funds for infrastructure, attract investors and promote tourism for the three counties. In 2003, the federal government recognized the tri-county area as the sixth-largest metropolitan area in the nation.
The U.S. Census also said the tri-county area, an area referred to as South Florida with a population of more than five million people, is the most diverse region in the country.
Many sociologists believe that Miami is the city of the future, a reflection of how the rest of the nation will look during the next century. Some economists believe Florida, led by Miami, will dominate US trade this century, replacing New York and California as the major points of transport. After all, they say, the trading routes will run north to south rather than east to west.
Others say those theories are hype considering the area was nothing but a snake-infested jungle when New York and Los Angeles were older than Miami is today.
But if history is any indicator, anything is possible in the Magic City.
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