Travel Blog

Yesterday at lunch I found myself sitting in a restaurant off Brickell with four Cuban-Americans. Two of them couldn't stop talking about Obama's speech in Havana.

"I'm a Democrat but I'm anti-Obama," the younger of the two men said. "But he hit the ball out of the park.

"Exile is a word you can't use in Cuba," he said, "because it has connotations of fleeing the regime. Obama used it again and again. He shoved it in their faces." The man was convinced a Cuban-American wrote the speech.

"He mentioned Miami three times. They hate hearing that Cubans have done well in Miami."

When he got off the speech, the man gave a short survey course in Cuban-American history.

"When Cubans first came here, people wouldn't hire them. But that was good. Because instead of working for someone else, they'd go buy a lawn mover and set up their own business.

"My father always said that the Cubans were the first immigrant group that came to the United States with a superiority complex. Because their life had been so much better back home.

"He studied at a college in Nova Scotia, so he learned English, but when he came back to Miami, every time he'd go into a store he would ask if they had someone who could help him in Spanish. I asked him why, and he said: 'So they'll hire our people.' Cubans looked after each other; they had solidarity, which is different from chauvinism.

"When I got to the age when I was able to vote, my father had a talk with me. He said, 'Your mother and I are Republicans. Your grandmother and grandfather are Republicans. You should be a Democrat.' I was surprised. He said: 'Then our people will be represented in both parties."