The Miami streets steamed with anxiety. Rashes of new immigrants have flooded them, a steamroller of culture and language sweeping the streets inside the traffic-clogged, square grids of Miami’s neighborhoods.
The scent of sweet Cafe Cubano and grilled meat sandwiches called media noche filled the air of a small new enclave christened Little Havana, commonly known as Calle Ocho. It was 1967.
Catholicism broke the foothold of the Protestant and Jewish immigrants who came several decades earlier. Churches named after saints sprung up among the coconut palm-covered flat lands of a new Latin populace.