This Land Is Our Land Stepick, Alex; Grenier, Guillermo; Castro, Max ...
04/2003
eBook
For those opposed to immigration, Miami is a nightmare. Miami is the de facto capital of Latin America; it is a city where immigrants dominate, Spanish is ubiquitous, and Denny's is an ethnic ...restaurant. Are Miami's immigrants representative of a trend that is undermining American culture and identity? Drawing from in-depth fieldwork in the city and looking closely at recent events such as the Elián González case,This Land Is Our Landexamines interactions between immigrants and established Americans in Miami to address fundamental questions of American identity and multiculturalism. Rather than focusing on questions of assimilation, as many other studies have, this book concentrates on interethnic relations to provide an entirely new perspective on the changes wrought by immigration in the United States. A balanced analysis of Miami's evolution over the last forty years,This Land Is Our Landis also a powerful demonstration that immigration in America is not simply an "us versus them" phenomenon.
Beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, significant numbers of Haitian immigrants began to arrive and settle in Miami. Overcoming some of the most foreboding obstacles ever to face immigrants in ...America, they have diversified socioeconomically. Together, they have made South Florida home to the largest population of native-born Haitians and diasporic Haitians outside of the Caribbean and one of the most significant Caribbean immigrant communities in the world. Religion has played a central role in making all of this happen. Crossing the Water and Keeping the Faith is a historical and ethnographic study of Haitian religion in immigrant communities, based on fieldwork in both Miami and Haiti, as well as extensive archival research. Where many studies of Haitian religion limit themselves to one faith, Rey and Stepick explore Catholicism, Protestantism, and Vodou in conversation with one another, suggesting that despite the differences between these practices, the three faiths ultimately create a sense of unity, fulfillment, and self-worth in Haitian communities. This meticulously researched and vibrantly written book contributes to the growing body of literature on religion among new immigrants.Terry Reyis Associate Professor of Religion at Temple University. He is the coeditor (with Alex Stepick and Sarah Mahler) ofChurches and Charity in the Immigrant City: Religion, Immigration, and Civic Engagement in Miami.Alex Stepickis Professor of Sociology at Portland State University and Professor of Global and Sociocultural Studies at Florida International University. He is coauthor (with Alejandro Portes) ofCity on the Edge: The Transformation of Miami.In theNorth American Religionsseries
The Racial Politics of Divisiondeconstructs antagonistic discourses that circulated in local Miami media between African Americans, "white" Cubans, and "black" Cubans during the 1980 Mariel Boatlift ...and the 1994 Balsero Crisis. Monika Gosin challenges exclusionary arguments pitting these groups against one another and depicts instead the nuanced ways in which identities have been constructed, negotiated, rejected, and reclaimed in the context of Miami's historical multiethnic tensions.
Focusing on ideas of "legitimacy," Gosin argues that dominant race-making ideologies of the white establishment regarding "worthy citizenship" and national belonging shape inter-minority conflict as groups negotiate their precarious positioning within the nation. Rejecting oversimplified and divisive racial politics,The Racial Politics of Divisionportrays the lived experiences of African Americans, white Cubans, and Afro-Cubans as disrupters in the binary frames of worth-citizenship narratives.
Foregrounding the oft-neglected voices of Afro-Cubans, Gosin posits new narratives regarding racial positioning and notions of solidarity in Miami. By looking back to interethnic conflict that foreshadowed current demographic and social trends, she provides us with lessons for current debates surrounding immigration, interethnic relations, and national belonging. Gosin also shows us that despite these new demographic realities, white racial power continues to reproduce itself by requiring complicity of racialized groups in exchange for a tenuous claim on US citizenship.
In addition to being a religious countryùover ninety percent of Americans believe in God--the United States is also home to more immigrants than ever before.Churches and Charity in the Immigrant ...Cityfocuses on the intersection of religion and civic engagement among Miami's immigrant and minority groups. The contributors examine the role of religious organizations in developing social relationships and how these relationships affect the broader civic world. Essays, for example, consider the role of leadership in the promotion and creation of "civic social capital" in a Haitian Catholic church, transnational ties between Cuban Catholics in Miami and Havana, and several African American congregations that serve as key comparisons of civic engagement among minorities.
This book is important not only for its theoretical contributions to the sociology of religion, but also because it gives us a unique glimpse into immigrants' civic and religious lives in urban America.
Six-year-old Manuel Diaz and his mother first arrived at Miami's airport in 1961 with little more than a dime for a phone call to their relatives in the Little Havana neighborhood. Forty years after ...his flight from Castro's Cuba, attorney Manny Diaz became mayor of the City of Miami. Toward the end of the twentieth century, the one-time citrus and tourism hub was more closely associated with vice than sunshine. When Diaz took office in 2001, the city was paralyzed by a notoriously corrupt police department, unresponsive government, a dying business district, and heated ethnic and racial divisions. During Diaz's two terms as mayor, Miami was transformed into a vibrant, progressive, and economically resurgent world-class metropolis.
InMiami Transformed: Rebuilding America One Neighborhood, One City at a Time, award-winning former mayor Manny Diaz shares lessons learned from governing one of the most diverse and dynamic urban communities in the United States. This firsthand account begins with Diaz's memories as an immigrant child in a foreign land, his education, and his political development as part of a new generation of Cuban Americans. Diaz also discusses his role in the controversial Elián González case. Later he details how he managed two successful mayoral campaigns, navigated the maze of municipal politics, oversaw the revitalization of downtown Miami, and rooted out police corruption to regain the trust of businesses and Miami citizens.
Part memoir, part political primer,Miami Transformedoffers a straightforward look at Diaz's brand of holistic, pragmatic urban leadership that combines public investment in education and infrastructure with private sector partnerships. The story of Manny Diaz's efforts to renew Miami will interest anyone seeking to foster safer, greener, and more prosperous cities.
Long associated with the pejorative cliches of the drug-trafficking trade and political violence, contemporary Colombia has been unfairly stigmatized. In this pioneering study of the Miami music ...industry and Miami's growing Colombian community, Maria Elena Cepeda boldly asserts that popular music provides an alternative common space for imagining and enacting Colombian identity. Using an interdisciplinary analysis of popular media, music, and music video, Cepeda teases out issues of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and transnational identity in the Latino/a music industry and among its most renowned rock en espanol, pop, and vallenato stars.Musical ImagiNation provides an overview of the ongoing Colombian political and economic crisis and the dynamics of Colombian immigration to metropolitan Miami. More notably, placed in this context, the book discusses the creative work and media personas of talented Colombian artists Shakira, Andrea Echeverri of Aterciopelados, and Carlos Vives. In her examination of the transnational figures and music that illuminate the recent shifts in the meanings attached to Colombian identity both in the United States and Latin America, Cepeda argues that music is a powerful arbitrator of memory and transnational identity.
This book explores the civil rights activism of the Miami Times between 1948 and 1958 by highlighting its effort to help abolish the "Monday-only" policy that restricted black golfers to a single day ...of access to the Miami Springs Municipal Golf Course.
For many in Miami's Cuban exile community, hating Fidel Castro is as natural as loving one's children. This hatred, Miguel De La Torre suggests, has in fact taken on religious significance. InLa ...Lucha for Cuba,De La Torre shows how Exilic Cubans, a once marginalized group, have risen to power and privilege-distinguishing themselves from other Hispanic communities in the United States-and how religion has figured in their ascension. Through the lens of religion and culture, his work also unmasks and explores intra-Hispanic structures of oppression operating among Cubans in Miami. Miami Cubans use a religious expression,la lucha,or "the struggle," to justify the power and privilege they have achieved. Within the context ofla lucha,De La Torre explores the religious dichotomy created between the "children of light" (Exilic Cubans) and the "children of darkness" (Resident Cubans). Examining the recent saga of the Elián González custody battle, he shows how the cultural construction ofla luchahas become a distinctly Miami-style spirituality that makesel exilio(exile) the basis for religious reflection, understanding, and practice-and that conflates political mobilization with spiritual meaning in an ongoing confrontation with evil.
