Miami is not the place one expects to say a large mural of Aung San Suu Kyi. The majority of people in Miami are either Immigrants or children of Immigrants, at least half of them from Cuba. So a staunch anti-communist discourse and hatred towards anything that smacks of any liberalism hangs in the air.
During the many years, The Lady spent under house arrest in Rangoon (the Military Regime of Burma has to be one of the worst to govern a country as placid as Burma), her face became known to the world and it was seen all over the world. In Paris, certain intersections had huge banners pleading for her release. In Havana, we could even buy the Spanish translation of her book.
but MIami?
When immigrants arrive at new shores, almost all of them driven by economic forces, they tend to become selfish and inward looking and very oblivious to the needs of the local people. Only when their children grow up in the new lands that they begin to question the political thinking of their parents. Something like that may be happening in Miami, where hatred of Cuba (they cant distinguish between Cuba the country of their birth and Fidel Castro who ruled it for a long time, so dislike of one flows into another) was prevalent, I see signs of it slowing down, with american born, well educated Cuban-Americans, being kinder to their ancestral land. Also there is a gentrification of Miami downtown area. This restaurant and a coffee shop we visited nearby are in a place where no one would have dared to tread a few years ago, now abounds with galleries and cafes and other symbols of gentrification.
Welcome to the New Miami.. hopefully soon the Gateway to Cuba!
The flight from Miami to Cuba takes only 32 minutes but it is truly an experience of modern travel to transit two so different worlds: same people but different brains...
The twining of Miami and La Habana, which is bound to happen, can only be good for the psychology of the cuban minds in Miami and economically beneficial to the Cuban businesses in Cuba..
The following Lunch was at Morgans Restaurant in this newly gentrified Wynwood area of downtown Miami..
