New Cubans Keep Culture, Embrace America
Nov. 15 -- Perhaps nowhere is the desperation to come and live in America felt more than in the state of Florida.
Two weeks ago, a boatload of more than 200 Haitian asylum seekers who ran aground off Virginia Key, Fla., were summarily returned home. Yet, eight Cubans who arrived in Florida's Key West International Airport via a crop duster on Monday will reportedly be released soon to family members in Florida.
While the preferential treatment of Cuban asylum seekers remains controversial, Cuban immigrants and refugees are fully integrated into every level of society in Miami, where they make up 30 percent of the population. The family of Good Morning America's Entertainment Correspondent Alex Cambert is part of that statistic.
"My father came from Cuba for what he thought was a temporary stay, and is still hoping for the demise of [Cuban President Fidel] Castro," Cambert said. "I'm born here and know that my parents' struggle gave me the freedom to choose, even if that means rejecting the very things my parents adhere to."
Cambert, a second-generation Cuban-American, is one of the so-called "new Cubans."
It's Fuacata-licious!
Perhaps unlike the old Cubans, the new generation embraces Miami's frenetic nightlife. At 2 a.m. on a recent Friday morning, Cambert headed to a weekly nightclub event/sociological experiment known as "Fuacata." As Cambert observed, it wasn't his father's Little Havana.
"Exactly," said one woman at the event.
Like Miami itself, Fuacata is impossible to define without using some Spanish. The word is actually Cuban slang and means something like "wham," yet the Cuban-inspired party is somehow entirely American.
Fusion is what the new generation of Cuban-Americans is all about.
"They are successful, they are pursuing their careers," said Alejandro Portes, author of Miami City on the Edge. "And they are less interested in politics," he said.
Leaving It All Behind
The first wave of immigrants never planned for their children to be Americans. They fled the regime of Castro, certain the dictator would be overthown quickly. They left everything behind, except their resolve.
