How Cuban alliance-building and progressive policies helped Latinos gain political and electoral influence in South Florida
Miami is home to the third largest Latino population in the United States. In this book, historian and policy analyst Jeanine Navarrete examines how Cuban and Puerto Rican civic leaders, progressive diversity policies, and widespread voter mobilization transformed Miami’s political makeup in the twentieth century, turning the city into a majority-minority political center where Latinos employed political power on their own terms.
Navarrete discusses the effects of the Cuban Adjustment Act in 1966, which allowed Cuban immigrants to maintain dual citizenship; the Dade County Bilingual and Bicultural Resolution of 1973, which demanded language accommodations in county services; and the Voting Rights Act Amendment of 1975, which banned discriminatory literacy tests. Miami’s evolving racial, cultural, and political landscape during this time set the stage for alliances between Cuban leaders like Bernardo Benes and white politicians like Claude Pepper. As voters and politicians, Miami’s Cuban Americans expressed a unique understanding of American citizenship that accommodated their bilingualism, culminating in the 1985 election of Miami’s first Cuban-born mayor, Xavier Suarez. In Building the Cuban Vote, Miami provides an important window into the intersection of immigration, civil rights, and Latino political identity during the rise of the Sunbelt.
