The two faces of Little Havana
By Max J. Castro
majcastro@gmail.com
MIAMI – Over the last couple of years, I have strolled smoking a cigar countless times through Little Havana’s main drag – famous Calle Ocho – as well as nearly every street and alley in the area.
It would take a book to capture all of the complexities, the nuances, and the ups and downs of the last 30 years in Cuban Miami’s iconic neighborhood. Maybe I will write that book someday, but here I will limit myself to the conclusions I have reached as a result of my recent ramblings.
These are three. Little Havana is changing. The change is mostly for the better. Yet there is still a very ugly side.
Take just one case that speaks volumes for the positive side of things. Only a few years ago, on the north side of Calle Ocho and the corner of 15th Avenue, right in the heart of Little Havana, across from the celebrated and newly renovated Tower Theater, stood a store that sold cheap caskets. That was a good reflection of the demographic and socioeconomic conditions of the area – older, less affluent people.
On that same corner there is now a cigar store as well-appointed as any in the city. A door down from the cigar store is Azucar, which serves maybe the best ice cream in town – and close to the most expensive. Within a space of two blocks there is an ultra-modern Asian/sushi restaurant and an expensively decorated place with the curious name of Catalyst. Catalyst seems to do a booming business, at least on weekends. I could cite many other examples.
All of this might be just a simple case of gentrification. There is, indeed, a bit of this.
I have witnessed gentrification and this is not it. For one, most of the old standards are still there. Reasonably priced restaurants that serve good Cuban food are seemingly surviving well. Then there are tons of reasonably priced modest restaurants that serve Mexican, Honduran, Nicaraguan, and Colombian fare, among other cuisines.
It’s not just the old flagship restaurants that are alive and well. Dionicio [that is how he spells it] still cuts my hair for 13 bucks. He is one of a plethora of modest hair salons in the area. There are myriad other types of small businesses. This is one sign that this is not a ghetto.
Another hopeful sign is the establishing of new businesses over the last five or 10 years, which neither fit the old mold nor cater mostly to tourists and the well-heeled suburbanites who live miles from Little Havana. One of my favorites is Top Cigar. There is nothing shabby about the place but neither is it sterile or pretentious. It’s homey. Guys who never buy nor smoke cigars sit there for hours playing dominos. Occasionally, the owner even offers them something to drink on the house. And in Miami this is the rare place where black Cubans and white Cubans mingle easily and gab. And the cigars are good too, though not cheap.
In the neighborhood surrounding Calle Ocho, there are many newly, spruced-up houses and a few, new apartment/condo buildings, usually a sure sign of creeping gentrification. But most of the old houses are still there, and there is no sense of massive displacement of the population.
Then there is the evolution of the monthly Viernes Cultural. It started out as little more than a kitschy flea market meant to promote a declining neighborhood. To be sure, the kitsch is still there, but in recent years Viernes has been imbued with a new energy because the neighborhood now has a lot more to offer, from dance clubs to Afro-Cuban music to a movie house that consistently offers excellent international films not shown anywhere else in the city.
And it’s not even the endurance of anachronistic hard-line attitudes among many of the older exiles that brings out the ugliness I speak of. It’s the fact that behind the façade and the undeniable reality of change, there is still huge poverty here and an even larger population that lives above the poverty line but below a decent standard of living.
Exploitation also is rife. Several employees of a restaurant not on Calle Ocho but within what has become Greater Little Havana even told me their boss does not pay them a wage and expects them to survive on tips alone.
Thus, despite all the improvement, there are still some things rotten in Little Havana –figuratively and literally. The amount of rubbish lying on the ground that encounter during each of my walks is overwhelming. The sum total of trash in the area creates a landfill. This bespeaks of neglect by city authorities and, even more seriously, a lack of pride and consciousness among too many of the area’s residents.
