Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The Cuban exiles disparaged assimilation (and sometimes the US), because the dream
of return animated their lives. Miami became two parallel cities, Cuban and North Americ-
an, that rarely spoke each other's language.
In the 1980s and 1990s, poorer immigrants flooded Miami from all over the Latin world
- particularly El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, the Dominican Re-
public and Haiti. These groups did not always mix easily or embrace each other, but they
found success in a city that already conducted business in Spanish. By the mid-1990s,
South Florida was exporting $25 billion in goods to Latin America, and Miami's Cubans
were more economically powerful than Cuba itself.
Today, Miami's Cubans are firmly entrenched, and those of the younger generation no
longer consider themselves exiles.
At the height of the industry in the 1940s, Florida's sugarcane fields produced one of
every five teaspoons of sugar consumed in the US.
After WWII, the advent of effective bug spray and affordable air-conditioning did more for
Florida tourism than anything else. With these two technological advancements, Florida's
subtropical climate was finally safe for delicate Yankee skin.
Hurricanes, the Everglades & Elections
Florida has a habit of selling itself too well. The precarious foundation of its paradise was
driven home in 1992 when Hurricane Andrew ripped across South Florida, leaving a wake
of destruction that stunned the state and the nation. Plus, mounting evidence of rampant
pollution - fish kills, dying mangroves, murky bays - appeared like the bill for a century
of unchecked sprawl, population growth and industrial nonchalance.
Newcomers were trampling the very features they were coming for. From 1930 to 1980,
Florida's population growth rate was 564%. Florida had gone from the least-populated to
the fourth-most-populated state, and its infrastructure was woefully inadequate, with too
few police, overcrowded prisons, traffic jams, ugly strip malls and some of the nation's
worst schools.
In particular, saving the Everglades became more than another environmental crusade. It
was a moral test: would Florida really squander one of the earth's wonders over subdivi-
