Immigrants and Politics Blog

[KR: It is unlikely that FL will be as much a tossup this year as Ohio or Pennsylvania, but back in July 2008 when an Obama landslide looked possible, this story may have been plausible. Chances are that, come November, Cuban Americans and Florida will follow the same pattern of the last 2 Presidential elections.]

July 13, 2008
Will Little Havana Go Blue?
DAVID RIEFF
New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/magazine/13CUBANS-t.html

On the surface, political life in Cuban Miami seems unchanged. Little Havana is still partly a Disney version of a displaced Cuba and partly a genuine community hub, where families who have long since left for suburbia still come for nostalgic weekend lunches… Most officeholders in Florida and, for that matter, most national politicians continue to at least pay lip service to the dream of a post-Communist Cuba, even though, early this year, Fidel Castro succeeded in seamlessly handing over power to his brother Raúl — testimony, if any was needed, to the stability of the regime.

Yet if Cuban Miami does indeed continue to dream, it is also beginning, quietly, tentatively and painfully, to adjust. Backstage, something very new is happening. Call it the Miami Spring, or Cuban-American glasnost. This community that has clung for decades to its certainties — about the island itself, about the role the exile community would play after the Castro brothers passed from the scene, about where Cuban-Americans should situate themselves in terms of U.S. domestic politics — is in ferment. This matters not only in terms of the destiny of the Cuban-American community itself but also in terms of the 2008 elections since, despite claims made on background by some of Barack Obama’s advisers, Florida is likely to play a pivotal role in determining whether Obama or John McCain becomes president, and the Cuban-American vote is likely to play its usual outsize role in deciding which candidate prevails in the state.