Miami has a new mayor, next up on the agenda: Cuba and Venezuela
Al’s Loupe
Miami has a new mayor, next up on the agenda: Cuba and Venezuela
By Alvaro F. Fernandez
alfernandez@the-beach.net
Miami has a new mayor. His name is Tomas Regalado. Before his election last week, Regalado had served as commissioner for more than a decade. He distinguished himself for saying “no” — and in 1999, for a state attorney’s investigation into allegations of illegal use of a city-issued car and the overuse of his gas credit card.
I swear to you that over the weekend I had one, two, then three glasses of wine (to be honest, I lost count after the third glass) as I looked out my window and thought hard, I mean really hard, in search of other important characteristics Regalado might bring to make him mayor of probably the most important city in Florida. Then I vaguely remembered the last Thursday’s Miami Herald and things started falling into place. Finally it made sense. The Herald reported, and I quote, “One of the first things Regalado said as he made his way to his victory party Tuesday night was that he wouldn’t fear discussing Cuba or Venezuela from the dais.”
Of course! How could I have overlooked the obvious…? Gosh, I thought to myself, maybe I should cut back on my wine consumption. Had I forgotten that Miami’s influence is so great that we are often blamed for running the U.S. State Department from city hall in Coconut Grove — at least when the issue revolves around Latin America; definitely the Caribbean; and without a doubt everything to do with U.S.-Cuba relations?
Regalado, like U.S. presidents before him, had rekindled the hopes of so many Little Havana café con leche commandos. I understand that the kid (hell, what do you want me to call him, he’s only 61, and you should have seen the demographics of his voters) had promised his adoring voting public that next year, Christmas and New Year’s would be celebrated in Cuba around a pig cooked in a “caja china”, magically returning us all to 1958 when everything was perfect in Havana, including the light bulbs which never, ever blew out… they were that good. At one point, I heard somewhere, he even mentioned instituting a Thanksgiving holiday on the island, but there were some who accused him of Plattism and he quickly backed-off from the idea.
Seriously, Regalado’s penchant for saying “no” to every idea presented by outgoing Mayor “Money”, I mean Manny, Diaz may not have been a bad thing. The problem is that I have yet to run into any Miami insider who can tell me what other options Regalado presented to counter Mayor Money’s many dubious dealings while in office. And mind you, Regalado’s opponent during the race, Joe Sanchez, a Money Diaz rubber stamp while a commissioner himself, would only have improved the situation for two reasons: one, he’s younger; and two, maybe better looking. That’s it!
Miami is a city on the edge of bankruptcy. Most residents of the municipality are upset with the high taxes and declining services received. A baseball stadium will weigh heavily on the city’s finances — they’re in for millions to pay for an adjacent parking lot and if tourism keeps declining city leaders will have to dip into the city’s general funds to subsidize the millionaire baseball owner’s whim. Next on tap is a tunnel nobody’s sure can be built because of the bay’s coral limestone bottom. But still, the plan is to sidetrack downtown traffic to our cruise ship port at an estimated cost of about a billion dollars; those in the know insist that figure will topple $3 billion… With property values decreasing, tax revenues are doing the same. Foreclosures have hit Miami hard with more than 50,000 condominiums built in the last few years, and most of them found in empty but beautiful, glass towers in downtown Miami.
And let me not delve too deeply into what goes on nightly in one of the poorest, big cities in the country. As a Jackson Memorial Hospital resident doctor recently told me, “On any regular night in the emergency room I attend to no less than 12 to 15 gunshot wounds at Jackson.” (Please note this is just one doctor amongst many at the facility.) This doctor, himself a very young man, explained that the victims are mostly young men, under the age of 30, mostly from Liberty City, Overtown, and Little Havana. Just in case the new mayor’s not sure, all three are City of Miami neighborhoods. And as for Jackson Memorial, it’s also on the brink of bankruptcy and it’s the only public hospital in the area charged with taking care of anyone and everyone who shows up — no matter the condition, with or without insurance, legal or illegal.
As you can imagine, the Magic City, as Miami likes to be known, seems to be imploding. And the new mayor’s first thoughts are his lack of fear on a Cuba and Venezuela discussion from the dais. Sure offers great hope for the immediate future, doesn’t it?
Interestingly, last week Miami still garnered much praise because its voter turnout on election night was higher than the other South Florida municipalities also replacing mayors and commissioners. Turnout on election night hovered around 20% — that’s not counting the huge number eligible but not registered to vote which would have brought that figure down to about 10 percent. If you study who turned out carefully you will find out that white Anglos, Blacks, young people, and Latin Americans (except for Cubans over the age of 60) did not vote in the Miami election.
I wonder: Is this the type of democracy people like Tomas Regalado want to impose on places like Cuba?
