People & Cultures

Florida’s historic trajectory is complete. How fitting that a place first called La Florida nearly five centuries ago—a colony, state, and Sunbelt megastate shaped by Spanish-speaking floridanos—has become one of the great centers of Hispanic life at the dawn of a new millennium.

On the eve of World War II, places such as Key West, Ybor City, and Tarpon Springs radiated with ethnicity, but Florida, when compared to Midwestern and Northeastern states, had attracted relatively few immigrants. Everything changed on New Year’s Eve 1958, when a young bearded rebel seized power in Cuba. Nearly 50 years later, Florida is still reeling with the consequences of a million Cuban émigrés. Immigration so profoundly changed Miami that one scholar argues it might be better named “Havana USA.” Miami is not simply a great American city; it is also one of the great immigrant centers.

But since the 1980s, immigration to Florida is more than simply an accounting of Cubans. Today, so many Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Caribbeans now reside in Florida that non-Cuban Hispanics outnumber Cubans as well as African Americans. Immigration is no longer a South Florida phenomenon; rather, it has altered the rhythms of places throughout the Peninsula.