The Hispanization of Miami

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Ralph Sasson Soc. 429 Dr. Feinberg 4-21-2007 THE HISPANIZATION OF MIAMI Miami is the most Hispanic large city in the fifty states. In the course of thirty years, Spanish speakers, overwhelmingly Cuban, have established their dominance in virtually every aspect of the city’s life and fundamentally changed its ethnic composition, its culture, its politics, and its language. The Hispanization of Miami is without precedent in the history of major American cities. This process began in the early 1960s with the arrival of middle- and upper-class Cubans who did not want to live under the Castro regime. In the decade following Castro’s victory, 260,000 Cubans fled the country, mostly to South Florida, which historically had always been the refuge for Cuban political exiles, including two Cuban presidents buried here. Cuban immigrants to the United States numbered 265,000 in the 1970s, 140,000 in the 1980s, and 170,000 in the 1990s. The U.S. government classified them as refugees and provided them special benefits which aroused the resentment of other immigrant groups. In 1980, the Castro regime permitted and even encouraged the migration of 125,000 Cuban’s through the port of Mariél to Florida. These Marielitos were generally poorer, less-well-educated, younger, and more likely to be black than the earlier migrants. They had grown up under the Castro regime and their culture was the product of that regime. Castro also included some criminals and mentally retarded people. Meanwhile, the economic growth of Miami, led by the early Cuban immigrants, made it a magnet for migrants from other Latin American and Caribbean countries. By 2000, 96 percent of the foreign born population of Miami was from Latin America and the Caribbean, almost all of whom are Spanish speakers except for the Haitians and Jamaicans. Two-thirds of Miami’s people are

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