In 1980, Miami Cuban culture got a lot queerer.
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Down the street, the Asis-Lopez family's Havana Collection retail store has been dressing the neighborhood in the quintessential Cuban look, the Guayabera shirt, since 1972. Businesses like the family-run fruit market Los Pinareños Fruteria have been making fresh guarapo (sugar cane juice) since the 1960s. However, an authentic culture thrives alongside the steady tourist traffic. This is the Little Havana you'll see on tourism websites, dotted with colorful murals and rooster sculptures, a cultural symbol for Cubans. Here, Spanish is the default language, salsa music blares from storefronts, and the smell of Cuban coffee permeates the air. The popular tourist strip between 12th and 17th avenue emerged in the new millennium, as the revitalization of the area's art scene attracted new visitors. It is a place where old-world traditions blend with progressive thinking - where machismo and queerness cohabitate.Ī post shared by JamieZ Ocho (8th Street) is the center of all things Little Havana. Little Havana is a funky mix of cultures. Nowhere do these co-existing allegiances converge more than in today's Little Havana, the Miami neighborhood where Cubans started settling after the 1959 Cuban Revolution. But if there's one thing that has become crystal clear as thousands march in Miami in solidarity with Cuban protestors, it's that Rodrigo was right: "You'll never find a people more patriotic to two homelands." And we are everything in between and beyond. We are the conservative, mostly-white business owners who fled Cuba in the early '60s, and the queer Afro-Cuban artists who were among the 125,000 Cuban immigrants who arrived during the 1980 Mariel boatlift. We are Republicans, Democrats, Catholics, and Santeros.
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The Miami Cuban community is not monolithic. "You'll never find a people more patriotic to two homelands." "There is no one more American than a Miami Cuban, and there is no one more Cuban than a Miami Cuban," says Rodrigo, who I meet at the rum bar in Little Havana's Cubaocho museum and performing arts center while waiting for my late friends (a very Miami trait!). This article originally appeared on EDGE Media Network Categories: Travel Blog Two Homelands Converge for LGBTQ Cuban Americans in Miami's Little Havana