“That just a few months later she went to live with that guy in a filthy apartment in filthy Hialeah, nothing more and nothing less than Hialeah, turned out to be the definitive proof for the mother of the mental insanity that affected her daughter.”
This is a paragraph from Like dust in the wind, the newly published novel by Leonardo Padura about the Cuban diaspora. There will be opinions for all tastes, but it is safe to say that Hialeah, north of Miami, is not a filthy place. Yes, it is a very special place: it is the most racially and linguistically homogeneous city in the United States (almost unanimously white, Spanish-speaking and of Cuban origin) and it is the only industrial city in the country that has not stopped growing. A neighbor defines it as “the New York of Cuba.”
The rancid aristocracy of the Cuban exile does not live here, the one who drinks coffee on 8th Street in Miami and dreams of recovering property on the island. Nor does the new Cuban-American aristocracy of the Marco Rubio, the Mauricio Claver-Carone, the John Barsa or the Carlos Trujillo. In this bustling city of 243,208 inhabitants, according to the latest census, people who are neither very affluent nor very poor congregate (median annual income is $ 24,192) wanting to work and prosper. In Hialeah it sweeps Donald Trump. For very diverse and altogether quite understandable reasons.
The Rosales-Hernández family is peculiar because its origins are not Cuban, but Salvadoran. Just a month ago, in full pandemic, invested their savings in the purchase of a Cuban cuisine restaurant, Las Pavas 2, and now they are trying to merge the old menu with their own specialties and a continental potpourri. The menu includes suckling pig, pork rinds, choripán and Colombian soft drinks. “It’s not easy,” says one of the daughters. They need to get the business going. The last thing they want is lockdowns and quarantines. And that, the closures and quarantines against the coronavirus, is identified with Joe Biden. Better, therefore, Donald Trump.
Aylín runs a travel agency specializing in flights to Central America and the Caribbean (especially to Cuba) and now, due to the pandemic, she hardly has any activity. She arrived from Cuba in 2013. Her husband had recently settled in Hialeah. Blonde and light-eyed, Aylín deviates from the Caribbean physical cliché. Almost her entire family stayed in Cuba, she maintains frequent contacts with them and, despite “the sadness for communism”, she does not feel like an exile but an emigrant. He also departs from the local cliché because he does not share the majority enthusiasm for Donald Trump: he does not plan to vote, the two candidates seem bad to him. But he believes that “Trump is right in saying that if Biden wins this country will take a step towards socialism and poverty.” And if they forced her to vote, she wouldn’t hesitate: Trump. “Donald Trump is going to win in Florida, sure,” he says.
Jeweler Mike buys and sells gold. He acknowledges that his business is doing well: “Some have to sell, others want to buy.” His accent is Cuban but with nuances. “Our family has roots in Cuba, Spain and Portugal and I am from Miami. What you hear, “he explains,” is the Hialeah accent. ” As in other places visited, Mike and his family show kindness to the reporter. Friendliness and Cuban coffee. After several thimbles of that delicious and explosive concoction (and legal, unlike cocaine), the correspondent’s hands are shaking and he barely understands his own notes.
Aylín, the director of the travel agency, had previously commented that not everyone got used to the noise and constant activity of Hialeah (do not draw the wrong conclusions: it is a clean and orderly town). Mike loves this city “where if you want to have dinner at three in the morning, you have many restaurants to choose from” and where “good things are very good and bad things can be remedied”. “This is Cuban New York,” he proclaims. The jeweler, without a mask, shakes hands with the reporter. He is skeptical about the pandemic. “The important thing,” he says, “is to keep working and that the economy doesn’t stop.” Summed up in two words, that phrase means “Donald Trump.”
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