Down at the grill the other evening I met a woman who's lived in my building for 20 years. (I've been here 18; I don't grill very often.) She had grown up in Miami, she said, and left because of the Cubans.
Moving here from the north, I always accepted the fact that Miami is a Cuban city. On my first visit, given a tour by a friend, I had asked where the Cuban neighborhood was, and he had said "You're in it" - meaning, of course, that Cubans were everywhere. Just like Toronto is the city that Montreal made (because of the Quebec separatist movement), Miami is the city that Castro made.
Likewise, I've always accepted that Spanish is widely-spoken there. Yesterday the cashier at my parking garage in Coral Gables handed me my change with a "Gracias" (probably not a Cuban, since she pronounced the 's'). I found it rather pleasing. We all like variety in our diet; why not in the languages we use?
Back at the grill, it may have been my Ukrainian beer speaking, but I told the woman that I was Cuban.
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