She's taking the Flag.

I just got an e-mail from one of my friends back home telling me she's given up and she's moving out to some hole in the wall town out of state. It's sad cause her family has been around as long as mine ( her people moved in around the mid 1850's) and she is the last of them left in the area.
We both have that Spanish /Bohamian ansistory and yhea we're distant cusans if you trace things back a couple of generations beyond the families showing up in Key West so to me it's particularly painful to hear that she has finally had it with the foolishness down there.

Back in the days when there was the whole "official language" debate going on we were part of a group of residents who screammed at the tops of our lungs that allowing the shit that has happened since to take place (that is to say Allowing the Cubans who wanted a Spanish speaking Miami to have their way) would eventually kill the city. We offered up arguments about how with the regions dependancy on Tourist dollars and international buisness it made sence that we keep English as the primary if not the official language. Globe trotting type tourist and big business men from around the world learn English at least well enough to get by because you can always find people who speak at least some English in the places they visit and let's face it most international buisness is conducted in English. Hell you even find people who speak English in the tourist destinations of places Like France, Itially and Germany where English isn't taught in basic (grade school) schools. In fact on my recent trip to Slovakia I encountered a weird thing as the people under 50 in the cities there Speak better freaking English than I do! But I digress. SO back to what I was on about. We argued that people who have already had to deal with learning Engllish to do what they wanna/gotta do outside their home land are not gonna wanna have to learn yet another language to do their thing in some small region no mater how wonderful the place may be otherwise. And Americans ( particularly the students we were then busy tring to get from Daytona for Spring Break) are not gonna want to feel like they're visiting another freaking country when they're in the freaking US. But things have gotten even worse than we immagined.

She has teenaged kids now. They're better than half Spanish (Her husband is from Spain as is her great great great grandfather) they all speak perfect Spanish and have an understanding of Latin American history that would put alot of people to shame but they are an odd sort of outcast in the areas where their family has been for generations because they're not CUBAN. Her son has gotten in to a world of shit with the highschool kids that roll in to town (non locals but from Miami proper) to the point that she feels they have to move to keep him from becomming some freaking hoodlum. All this because they see him as the outsider little wanna be latino white boy telling them where to get off when he speaks up and tells them to show some respect when they get out of hand.

Yes, as the so called racist and xenophobes of the 80's predicted Miami and much of Dade county it seems has become but an extention of Cuba. They seriously feel they own the place and it's taking it's toll now. How much longer will it be before the poweres that be pull their heads out of their asses and realize that this whole "opening up to Latin America" has closed the area off to the rest of the freaking world including those who were there before all this shit started?

And don't even get me startted on all the construction designed to bring in more wealthy tourist and transplants! I'm just waitting for a nice big hurricane to come along and teach those fuckers a thing or 3 about how not smart it is to do this shit! Evacuation hell, their precious condos shot to shit oh yhea I'll be laughing my ass off when the shit happens and it will happen soon. Just look at the hurricane history of the area Andrew was the start of a patern that's repeatting in the next 5 years the shit is seriously gonna hit. Just watch.