Little Havana looks to life after Castro

The rebounding Miami neighborhood is finding its own identity, Fidel or no Fidel.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published September 24, 2007

MIAMI - Travel guides list Little Havana as the heart of the Cuban exile community, ground zero for anti-Fidel Castro activists and a must-see for its row of galleries, cigar shops and espresso stands.

But with so much of its identity wrapped into its role as the symbolic hub of opposition to Castro, the question remains whether this stretch of Miami can survive the eventual death of the very man whose existence helped define it.

A handful of shopkeepers, artists and city officials are betting it can. Over the past eight years, this group has slowly breathed life into a neighborhood once awash in crime. They, rather than the activists or even the bearded leader himself, are responsible for Little Havana's burgeoning renaissance. And they must walk a delicate line as they seek to bring back the neighborhood while staving off the plastic surgery of gentrification that has erased the wrinkles of history in so many other downtown Miami neighborhoods.

"I don't have a crystal ball of what will happen when Fidel and Raul Castro go, but I believe the exchange will only increase," said painter and former Cuban political prisoner Augustin Gainza, one of the first artists to return to the neighborhood in 2000. "After Fidel, there will be Havana - and Havana del Norte."

Neighborhood declines

The neighborhood that became Little Havana wasn't always a slice of the Caribbean. It was a thriving Jewish community in the 1930s, until the Jews began moving to the suburbs and the beach. Then, in 1959, Castro and his rebels ousted dictator Fulgencio Batista and established a Communist government. Exiles from Cuba poured in.

Little Havana outreach coordinator Pablo Canton was among them. His family settled there in 1961, when he was a teen. But like the Jews, Canton and other Cubans moved to the suburbs in the 1970s and '80s as their families and incomes expanded.

It was years before Canton returned to Little Havana. He took a job in the city's code enforcement office in the 1980s, demolishing crack houses.

"Everybody has a piece of their heart in Little Havana," he said recently as he sipped cafe con leche at a local bakery once owned by Cubans but now by Guatemalans. He compared Little Havana's recent rebirth to what has happened in Miami Beach.

"We're seeing the same thing that happened in South Beach beginning to happen in Little Havana. South Beach deteriorated years ago and look how it is right now. It's incredible," he said.

Renaissance begins

As bad as things got in Little Havana during the 1980s and 1990s, one thing never went away: Domino Park, the corner lot where old Cuban men in guayaberas came to play their favorite game, smoke cigars and trade gossip. And it was this corner that continued to attract tourists, even as the rest of the neighborhood fell into decay.

Cuban native Jackie Sarracino discovered this phenomenon almost by accident.

Her family settled in New York but later moved to Miami to be closer to relatives who came during the 1980 Mariel boatlift, when Castro allowed 125,000 Cubans to flee the island. One afternoon in 1999, she drove to Little Havana on a whim.

"I found absolutely nothing except for a tour bus in front of Domino Park, and there's all these German tourists with cameras hanging from their neck looking at the flies," she said. "They left. Another bus stopped. I'm going, 'What is the attraction here?' But in my New York capitalist mentality, I thought maybe I can make a dollar."

A week later, she signed a lease for her first store on Calle Ocho, the neighborhood's main drag. At first, people thought she was crazy.

"It was probably one of the scariest places I'd ever been to: the prostitution, the drugs, the homeless, the streets were dirty," she recalled from her upscale Cuban memorabilia shop.

But Sarracino, who soon lost her father, was determined to celebrate the history of his country. She sold nostalgia prints and later added items for her clients' grandchildren, such as the popular "Made in the U.S.A. with Cuban parts" T-shirts.

She began hanging work of unknown artists in her windows, and to everyone's surprise, they sold.

A thriving hub

Eight years later, more than a dozen art galleries dot the street. More cigar shops are moving in. Along with the Cuban food, Nicaraguan, Peruvian and Spanish eateries have opened their doors.

The neighborhood is home to the small Bay of Pigs Museum and the house where the young Elian Gonzalez was held for more than six months before he was reunited with his father and sent back to Cuba more than seven years ago. And last year, when a local activist went on a hunger strike on behalf of a group of Cuban migrants, he held court for weeks at the Bay of Pigs Monument on Calle Ocho.

It was there that thousands gathered last summer upon hearing news that Fidel Castro was ill and had ceded power to his brother, Raul.

Sarracino believes the neighborhood's future is bright with or without Castro.

On a recent day, a Russian cigar dealer came into her husband's art gallery looking as if he'd just stepped out of circa 1940 Havana in pleated pants, a guayabera and a black-banded fedora.

"Look how he's dressed," Sarracino said, smiling. "Everyone still wants a part of that Cuban mystery."

[Last modified September 24, 2007, 00:24:14]