How About That!!!
Back on September 15th, 1982, the great visionary Al Neuharth founded USA Today. Since 1982 I have subscribed to every home-delivered issue of Al Neuharth's invention, and my friends still often say that I "don't know anything unless I just read it in USA Today." Indeed, I can't remember a day since 1982 that I haven't clipped, saved, and studied my favorite USA Today articles.
Today USA Today is America's most-read and, I think, America's most important newspaper, especially now that both the NY Times and the Washington Post have evolved into extreme left-wing propaganda machines. Alan Gomez is USA Today's Miami-based journalist specializing in Cuban and immigration news. This is Super Bowl Sunday in America and the world. The Friday-Saturday-Sunday edition of USA Today is its largest and most-read issue each week, and on this first weekend of February-2020 -- Super Bowl weekend -- the LARGEST article was penned by Alan Gomez and it started on the very First Page of the very First Section of the Four Sections. Yes, Miami is the site for this year's Super Bowl and this is the 11th time Miami has been the host, a record. But Alan Gomez's high-profile article is not really about Miami or the Super Bowl. Not at all. It's about Little Havana, which is what Miami has become and been called since January of 1959 when the Cuban Revolution astounded the world by booting the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship out of Havana -- all the way to nearby Miami. The Front Page article blared out from this weekend's USA Today screams out this bold-faced headline: "LITTLE HAVANA'S BIG EXODUS" and right there on the Front Page are two photos to illustrate the mammoth article. Even on Super Bowl Weekend the article about LITTLE HAVANA deserves to be the largest and most important article in America's largest and most important newspaper, USA Today. That's because since 1959 LITTLE HAVANA has emerged as the capital of America's second government, the headquarters for the exiled Batistiano-Mafiosi government even though it doesn't necessarily represent even most of the Cuban-Americans in Southern Florida, just like Batista and the Mafia didn't represent most of the Cubans on the island during the 1950's. But surely the Batista-Mafia leaders who fled Havana in the wee hours of January 1, 1959, had more than enough money and enough firepower to take over Miami financially and politically, which has been the case since 1959 because, despite help from the U. S. government, they amazingly HAVE YET to re-capture Havana. Therefore, through it all, LITTLE HAVANA has drastically changed Cuba but it has drastically changed the United States even more!! Therefore Alan Gomez's huge article about LITTLE HAVANA that started on the Front Page of USA Today even on Super Bowl Weekend is extremely appropriate. Thus, I hope you read, clip, and study the whole article...because it reveals how much LITTLE HAVANA, the capital of the government deep within the bowels of the U. S. government is itself changing and quickly becoming mostly non-Cuban.
As someone who has been to both Havana and Little Havana, and studied both for thirty years, I, of course, found the major USA Today article on Super Bowl Weekend to be nicely written and expertly researched by Alan Gomez, rending it verily both informative and intriguing. Americans, I believe, need to know about "Little Havana USA." USA Today's Alan Gomez tells us, for example, that Little Havana is drastically changing. One of the Front Page photos shows Cuban native Rodolfo Amaro Beltran inspecting handmade cigars at Casa del Tabaco, a store in Little Havana. Alan Gomez writes this explanation:
"Inside Casa del Tabaco, native Cubans spend their days rolling the cigars that have become as synonymous with the Cuban experience as rum, baseball, and salsa dancing. The tobacco leaves used to roll those iconic stogies hold a secret. The seeds are from Cuba, but the plants are grown in Nicaragua, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic. The store itself has another surprise. Its owner, Rene Diaz, isn't Cuban. He's from Chili.
"That same dichotomy plays out on a larger scale throughout Little Havana.
"Little Havana isn't even majority Cuban anymore. Officials estimate that the neighborhood of 60,000 is only a third Cuban."
Yes, Little Havana USA has drastically changed both Cuba and America since 1959. Alan Gomez's major article in USA Today this SUPER BOWL WEEKEND is important because it tells us that Little Havana USA is drastically changing from being predominantly Cuban to what Alan Gomez says is a vast "hodgepodge" of immigrants from a multitude of other Caribbean and Latin American countries. Of course, rich Cubans still dominate the politics of Little Havana, Miami, and Florida...as well as Washington and America when it comes to Cuban policies and Cuban narratives...but, after 6+ decades, Alan Gomez suggests that the omnipotent and unchecked Little Havana power may be wilting a bit.
And, uh, BY THE WAY:
The very same day that Alan Gomez's aforementioned article was published, the photo above was posted on Facebook by a young-adult Cuban who loves Havana but is not...uh, shall we say...very fond of Little Havana. That's why she spotlighted her beloved Havana in the background of this photo. Her Facebook comment explained this photo with this sentence: "When Havana is in the background, it invites this photo." On Super Bowl Sunday I believe that many Americans are wondering why Little Havana, after all these decades, hasn't re-captured Havana yet??? After all, Little Havana for all these decades has been supported by the largest treasury in the world, America's, and by the strongest military in the world, America's. Well, I think this photo helps to answer that age-old question. This young-adult on the island, like a strong majority of her generation and the generation that preceded hers, strongly supports Revolutionary Cuba. And by the same token, they strongly do not want a return of the Batistianos and Mafiosi from Little Havana...even if it means there would be Walmarts, McDonald's, and Macy's saturating the island and replacing the embargo/blockade that has existed since 1962. And...if that reality on the island was not so, Little Havana would surely have re-captured Havana decades ago.
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