By Lázaro Fariñas. Resumen Latinoamericano, May 17, 2023.
The United States is a very complex country, both culturally, socially, ethnically and financially, with a diverse population in every sense. Culturally, it is a cluster of different ethnicities. I do not have the exact data but perhaps there is not a single country in the world that does not have at least one of its nationals living here. Although it will surely be difficult to find it, it would be curious to look for this information; perhaps it will appear in the census.
The variety of languages spoken in the US is immense, not only because of the millions of tourists who come every year, but also because of the people who live here.
In Northern California you will find thousands of Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese and Asians in general, and if you go down to the south of the same state you will see millions of Mexicans and thousands of Central Americans. All the states bordering the southern border with Mexico are full of Mexican descendants and immigrants.
In the northern states, such as New York, Puerto Ricans are concentrated, and in the Chicago area of Illinois, Mexicans are concentrated. In the nation’s capital there is a large concentration of Central Americans, mainly Hondurans, and if we go down south we find Florida, where there are all kinds of immigrants. But even there there are concentrations from different countries. For example, in the center of the peninsula, there are a large number
of Puerto Ricans, however, where there is a great mix of population is precisely in the south, specifically in Miami-Dade County. This is where the population of Cuban origin is predominant. Cubans, who make up only 40 percent of the county’s population, dominate it politically. Most of the municipalities that make up the county are presided over by a mayor of Cuban origin, as are most of the local institutions.
When the Cubans began to arrive in Florida after the triumph of the Revolution, there was already a small colony of the island, although the Colombians were at that time a larger colony, but in only a few years the Cubans were imposing themselves, until the time of the great waves of emigrants from Cuba, such as Camarioca or Mariel, which brought tens of thousands of rafters to these coasts and settled the population of Cuban origin as the ethnic majority.
According to the 2020 census, the Cuban population in the county was about one million, but in recent years, due to the problems that the country has been facing (due to the pandemic that exhausted the resources of the State and the criminal measures taken by the Government of Donald Trump and maintained by the current President Joe Biden), there has been a large number of migrants arriving to this land. The curious thing about Cubans is that, despite being less than 0.50 percent of the country’s population, they have three seats in the Senate, which is composed of one hundred senators, and about ten representatives in the Lower House, which is composed of 435 members. Well, this seems to be exaggerated, but it must be seen that there are more Cubans in the United States than inhabitants in at least eight states of the union.
What is also curious about this representation in the federal government is that they all defend the government’s criminal policy against the country from which they or their ancestors come. They may be called Cubans because of their customs and their origin, but politically they should be called anti-Cubans, because in reality that is what they are and they are there to harm Cuba, by trying to pass anti-Cuban laws.
The Latino population has become the first minority in this country and the Cuban population is among the three great majorities in this country, but it is in the first percentage to have representation in Congress. How is this possible? Are we smarter and more alive than the other Latin Americans? Should we Cubans who love and defend Cuba feel proud of the triumph of the anti-Cuban Cubans just because they are our compatriots? If they were not so rogue, so despicable and so hateful, if they were not such enemies of our homeland, maybe we could feel proud of them.
Lázaro Fariñas is a Cuban journalist based in Miami.
Source: Juventud Rebelde, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – US