Tú Cinco-Nueve, Yo Doble Dos: Understanding Cubanidad in Gen-Z Little Havana

Camila Tiburcio, CAS '25

Bachelor of Arts: Social & Cultural Analysis

Advised by Professor Ana Dopico and Professor María Josefina Saldaña

Dedico este trabajo primeramente a mi mamá y a mi hermana, que siempre me apoyaron para poder cumplir mis sueños. También se lo dedico a mi abuelo, quien me recordaba todos los días de lo que soy capaz. También está dedicado a Lizbeth y a Sofia porque sin ellas nada de esto sería posible. Finalmente, dedico esta tesis a La Pequeña Habana, mi hogar: la detesto desde cerca pero la extraño cuando estoy lejos de ella. Gracias a todos, sin ustedes no estaría aquí hoy.

*To enhance the experience, please conduct your reading while listening to a playlist I have generated to provide context to the subtitles and headings of the work. Play the first 30 seconds to 1 minute of the songs to get a better understanding of the music. Music is a central part of our experience and without it, this project would not be complete.*

Playlist¹

No Me Da Mi Gana Americana²: Research Proposal

“Ella quiere ir al pum-pum este fin de semana!/ No me da mi gana Americana!/ Ella esta muy equivoca’ si piensa que va a hacer lo que le da la gana!/ No me da mi gana Americana!” The lyrics of Cuban reggaeton group Kola-Loka blasted through the speakers of my mom’s phone. The song describes the dilemma of an overbearing father and his teenage daughter. She seems to be out of control and failing to listen to her father. As he reprimands her and gives her warnings, she replies: “No me da mi gana Americana!”, meaning she does not listen because she has the right not to listen as she believes herself to be an American and can exercise her right to be defiant. Growing up, the lyrics of this song became an ironic comment I heard whenever I would ‘rebel’ against my mom’s wishes, “A Camila no le da su gana Americana³.”

Migrating to Miami, Florida solidified my status as the defiant daughter, the one who “no le daba su gana Americana.” My attitudes differed from the kids who had a typical Cuban upbringing. As I grew up, and reflecting on the question of being young and from Miami, it became clear to me that there seemed to be a divide in the “Americanization” of the Cuban youths growing up in the 2010s in Miami. Our culture, our music, our slang, and our racial and class identities as children of the diaspora are distinct from the older generations who arrived between the 60s-80s in Miami.

Since the 1950s, and with the political Cold War that framed the Cuban Revolution, there has been a growing Cuban presence in the United States. The Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 and its revision in 1995 gave Cubans a direct path to citizenship. This was a privilege that most other migrants to the U.S. were never afforded. With this incentive, many Cubans settled in Florida, specifically, in Miami.

As the years passed, Miami became home to successive generations of Cubans who developed their own shifting Cuban-American culture. The collective sentiment connected to this identity involved disdain for the home island and appreciation for the opportunities that the “land of the free” offered them. These multiple generations, who emerged from either mass migrations (the 1960s, Mariel, the exodus of 1994 and the Special Period) or a steady trickle of exiles from Cuba, created a layered experience of youth in Miami. Migration policy on both sides of the Florida straits have shifted in the last decade. Since 2013 Cuba has shifted its restrictions on migration, allowing Cubans to leave the island legally while retaining their Cuban citizenship (Haq, 2013). This has created new battles over Cuban immigrants' special legal status in the United States. Over 738, 680 Cubans have settled in the US since 2021 (Colomé, 2024), thus children are being raised in the diaspora, and their feelings and experiences on the island are created away from it.

Earlier generations of children brought to the U.S.by their parents as political exiles were raised to mistrust and pity Cuba as a communist state, but had little first-hand experience of the island, because they could not, or would not, return. These partitioned political sentiments guided Cold War Cuban migration to Miami and became a core element of Cuban-American identity for many young people in the diaspora. But newer generations of the Cuban diaspora have never cut ties with the island and have a more practical relationship with the state they have come to know. Once in Miami, many first or second-generation Cuban-Americans centered their Cubanness as a central part of their cultural identity, and let the politics of the Cold War recede into the background. They made their Cubanidad work in a different way within the context of the United States.

Cold War exile Cubans lived in and created the community of Little Havana in the late 1960s. In 2025, Little Havana is now a tourist destination that has not had an organic connection to the Cuban community since the late seventies. The first generation of arrivals moved out and away, with many settling in Southwestern Miami neighborhoods like Westchester or Kendall, where new developments offered affordable starter homes. Little Havana, which was once exiled Miami’s Cuban “main street,” is now a touristic misnomer, since the area has in fact been a working class Central American neighborhood for decades. For over a decade, the area has been turned into a place that sells its Cuban roots to busloads of tourists, even as its residents face rising rents, gentrification, and displacement.

In the sixties and seventies, Little Havana was the entrepreneurial, culinary, and cultural center of Miami’s growing Cuban enclave. Little Havana became part of the legend of the Cuban-American dream. This dream, it should be noted, was primarily available to white Cubans, since Cuban migration was racially stratified and the majority of black Cubans who migrated did not settle in Miami. In 1980, at the cusp of the Mariel Cuban exodus, a Miami-Dade County census report established over 9453 cases of arrivals from white Cubans as opposed to 86 cases for black Cubans (Aja, 2016). The largely white Cuban exiles of the sixties and seventies who built Little Havana benefitted from the special policies that protected Cuban migration for decades. However, in the last ten years, these policies have been waning or have been reversed, leaving newer Cubans facing a more precarious position with regard to their legal status.

Research on the social and personal experiences of the Cuban community in Miami has largely focused on the past generations that arrived in Miami, but very little research has sought to understand the new cultural ideas and norms of Cuban generation Z -those born in 1997-2012- in Miami (Dimock, 2019), and specifically those who arrived and settled in Little Havana neighborhoods that had been abandoned by previous generations.

I arrived in Little Havana in 2014, and my contexts for Miami are very different from that of the scholars who preceded me. My research highlights new meanings of Cubanidad and cosmopolitan Miaminess that Gen-Z Cubans have created. Based on my research, I argue that the new generation of Cubans in Miami, specifically in Little Havana, reflect a historically distinct and important new way of being Cuban, being American, being a woman, and being young. With this claim in mind, I sought to answer the following questions: How are attitudes toward Cuba changing with this new generation? How is Cuban identity understood after decades of diaspora? How are Gen-Z Cubans in Miami developing subcultures that differ from the attitudes exhibited by previous generations? How are Gen-Z Miami women identities influenced by the developing landscapes in the city? How are children of the diaspora making sense of their Cuban identities outside of the island?

For this project, I seek to record the culture of female Cuban youth in Little Havana. My interviews, demographic data, and archival research will focus on what this group now understands to be Cuban in the current political, economic, and social context of both Miami and Cuba and how this generation has expanded the meaning of Cuban identity in the face of the changing context of Miami’s landscape. It is my hope that this project will provide deeper insight into the effects that extended exile and diasporic formation have on the composition of cultural identity for groups as well as an understanding of the effects that changing metropolitan spaces have on ethnic diasporas and their communities.

This project follows the life of three young Cuban-American women who spent their adolescence in Miami from 2014 to 2021: Liz, Sofia (who chose a pseudonym for this project), and myself. These young women are friends, peers, and close interlocutors. Together we have made sense of our lives in Miami. I chose to formally interview Liz and Sofia to create a multi-voiced experience of diaspora, relocation, exile, acculturation, and youth culture. My goal is to center the lives of young women in youth culture, to understand Miami’s transformation into a complex U.S. capital of Latin America, and to reframe the recent history of diaspora and women’s lives. Although approximately 500,000 Cuban youth have left the island since 2021 (Albizu-Campos, 2024), there is surprisingly little work on Generation Z in the Cuban diaspora. Their narratives are often conflated with long-established tropes that Cuban exiles are supposed to embody. I argue that this generation is experiencing something new and that Gen-Z has brought a new meaning to Cuban identity in the Miami diaspora.

A breakdown of my research methodology follows:

To support my demographic research to generate the context for my argument about the Cuban Gen-Z population in Miami, I have conducted historical and social science research through scholarly and secondary sources to explain the history of the Cuban diaspora, Little Havana, and the history of migration and gentrification in Miami.

The primary source of the research has been the oral and life histories of Liz, Sofia, and myself. These histories and testimonies provided biographical, cultural, historical, and interpretive narratives that enrich current literature on Gen-Z Miami. The first-person narrative has been used throughout the project to give additional context to my position. Throughout the project, I will be alternating between discussions held previously and interview material that has been transcribed and edited -for the most part- maintaining the informality of the Miami English that the participants and myself utilize in our everyday speech. My research built on conversations between Liz, Sofia, and myself, is recounted in the sections below.

While thinking about this project, I had to break down the construction of what I understood to be Cuban identity in Miami and how I experienced it. With this in mind, I recognized the need to bring into the conversation participants who allow a conversation about race and diasporic connection to Cuba. While Liz grew up in Miami, her mom is Nicaraguan with some indigenous ancestry and her dad is a white Cuban; however, she has never visited the island and did not grow up with her father, yet she still considers herself Cuban. On the other hand, Sofia was born in Ibiza, Spain, and has visited the island many times throughout her life, yet in Miami and Spain, she does not see herself as Cuban, even though her mom is Afro-Cuban and her dad is a white Spaniard. She moved to Miami when she was nine years old, and grew up in the Cuban enclave. In my case, my mom is a white Cuban and my dad is a white Mexican. We were constantly between the island and Mexico growing up, and upon moving to Miami, Cubanidad became central to my person. The question then becomes, how is Cubanidad a construction for us? To answer this question, I have engaged Liz and Sofia in conversations in which we discuss topics surrounding keywords, such as popular culture, education, cubanitos, gentrification, politics, class, and memory that provided insight into our experience of Cuban Miami and the ways that we ourselves are creating its future. Pairing our life history experiences with data from secondary sources, I have constructed a conscious narrative inventory of female Gen-Z Cubanidad. Additionally, in reviewing this inventory, I want to signal how this study’s three subjects – Camila, Liz, and Sofia – recognized the importance that music played in our formation. Therefore, this study is also grounded in a generational playlist -mostly referred to through the subtitles of the text- that provides significance and guidance around our experiences and the topics being discussed.

Puente: Literature Review⁴

Ricardo Arjona sings “Hay un cubano en la Habana/ Bloqueado a la americana, el enemigo cianuro/ Un cubano en la Habana que no es culpable de nada”⁵ (2010) “Hay un cubano en Miami/ Rencores por tradición/ Un cubano en Miami que no es culpable de nada” (2010)⁶. As he sings about the truth of the divide that the politics of Cuba have created amongst the islanders, he brings up the possibility of building a puente (a bridge) between the island and Florida. He believes this will fix the issues of ideology.

As I focused on Cuban Miami for this project, it was crucial to review the literature on Cuban Miami's position in the political sphere of the United States. Through this, I aim to build a bridge between the different generations of Cubans that have migrated to Miami and highlight the missing areas of ‘construction’ to understand current Gen-Z attitudes of the members of the diaspora. The culture that dominated Miami upon the arrival of the first Cuban exiles, the middle-class white Cubans, who came in the 1960s, was that of the model minority. In Glenn Omatsu’s “The ‘Four Prisons’ and the Model of Liberation: Asian American Activism from the 1960s to the 1990s,” he talks about the creation of neo-conservative Asian Americans and the views they hold regarding politics. Likewise, the political change in Cuba under Fidel Castro led to the same transformation of beliefs, the exiled bourgeois Cubans of the 1960s, like the Asian Americans, “own small business; they oppose communism; they are fiercely pro-defense; they boast strong families; they value freedom; and in their approach to civil rights, they stress opportunities, not government ‘set-asides’” (Omatsu, 2016). They hold themselves to be the “ideal minority,” the perfect mix of Cuban and American, blending el sazón y la rumba (the seasoning and the rumba) with allegiance to the flag and protecting the United States constitution.

However, to some scholars, these Cubans could never fully embrace assimilation in the political sphere of the United States, even by participating in the conservatism that Omatsu discusses. In “Hardliners v. ‘Dialogueros’: Cuban Exile Political Groups and United States-Cuba Policy,” María Cristina García discusses how Cubans in late nineties South Florida retained - an “obsession” with Cuba, which placed them in a political and cultural context in which they were both “Cuban” and “American,” but not a hyphen (1998). This separate identity can be understood from the fact that bourgeois Cubans who fled during the Revolution expected to return to the island; they did not expect the United States to be tolerant of a communist country in such proximity. García argues that the Cubans who arrived in the 1990s also held a similar view that the communist state on the island was on the brink of disruption as the U.S. was merely waiting to attack (1998). Thus, the communities that the exiles developed during the 1960s through the 1990s, created what Jennifer Cearns describes as a sense of “belonging neither to the United States nor wholly to Cuba” (2022). Scholars noted the inability to detach from Cuba among Cubans in Miami; their political trends followed those of a people who wanted their host government to save their patria (homeland).

In contrast, recent scholarship studying Cuban Miami has highlighted the transformations in sentiments among Cuban Americans regarding the island and Miami. Independent scholar Ariana Hernandez-Reguant, writes that many Cuban households in Miami now hold the door open to the island (2022), they no longer await political change to return, rather, they now enjoy the perks of residency in the States, while still traveling back and forth to Cuba. Reguant points out that many Cubans during the Obama era traveled back and forth to the island taking with them their earnings as remittances (2022). Herself immersed in Cuban Miami, specifically in Hialeah, Reguant highlights the shift in Cuban Miami’s attitudes toward Cuba. The conservatism amongst older generations remains, and the values of ‘anti-communism’ and ‘anti-welfare’ remain, however, she emphasizes that individuals under twenty-five were more likely to be affiliated with the Democratic party (2022). This change can be attributed to the changing context of the Cuban community in Miami. The ruling era for the white bourgeoisie who fled the Revolution ended after the fall of the Soviet Union, in which a surge in black Cuban arrivals to Miami Dade occurred (Aja, 2016), with this the Cuban diaspora underwent a demographical and ideological transformation that created a divide between the prior arrivals (Cearns, 2022). The previous construction of Cubanidad, which Dr. Mario Anthony Cubas describes as “culturally-specific ideologies of Cuban identity in Miami” (2007), was disrupted. The changing politics of Cuba and the evolution of the demographics of the diaspora altered the composition of Cuban Miami.

This new Cubanidad expanded to adapt to the new diaspora, which confronted a Miami without “wet foot, dry foot,” which saw Afro-Cubans being subjected to racism in the United States despite their “Cuban card,” in this case, Cuban Miami had to involve the “low” classes that the bourgeoisie rejected in Cuba before the Revolution (Aja, 2016). The economic success that the previous generation of exiles enjoyed is no longer the reality for the new Cuban exiles. Thus, the new Cubanidad positions itself in the context of new bridges of exchange existing with the island, while reconciling with the housing crisis in Miami, political polarization of the nation, and generational divides between Gen-Z and the generation of the Revolution.

Older memoirs about Cubanidad in the United States, have focused on the experiences of the generations of the Revolution and of the 1990s. Memoirs like My Time Amongst the Whites by Jennine Capó Crucet, Leaving Little Havana: A Memoir of Miami’s Cuban Ghetto by Cecilia M. Fernandez, and The Prince of Los Cocuyos by Richard Blanco have told stories from the point of view of a middle-class white Cubanidad in Miami. Their narratives reinforce Cuban-Americans' identification with whiteness in Miami, and their disidentification from other ethnic and racialized minorities in the United States. These memoirs largely tell stories of generations that got close to the American Dream by aligning themselves with white Americans. Even as they retained their anti-communist sentiments they retained their Cuban identity. While this literature has served to create the phenomena of Cubanidad in the United States, a new analysis of Cuban identity needs to be produced to understand the new generation of Cubans in Miami and to understand how the evolving context of Cuba and the United States has yielded a new cultural identity for the members of the diaspora.

My research uncovered a scarcity of literature on the construction of young womanhood and queerness in Cuban Miami. While some memoirs, like The Prince of Los Cocuyos and My Time Amongst the Whites, deal with issues regarding sexuality and race, few have sought to contextualize the experience of growing up queer and a woman in the middle of Miami’s Cuban enclave. There seems to be a significant gap in research when it comes to examining Cuban Miami’s queer contributions and developments, Corinna J. Moebius, author of A History of Little Havana: American Heritage, comments that “there is an erasure of contributions of the Afro-Cuban and LGBTQ+ communities in Little Havana,” (Quintanilla, 2021)⁷ Research literature has focused mostly on the political and economic development of past Cuban generations, however, there is a need to develop more research on the intersectionality of Cubans’ identities and understand how it is possible for all identities to coexist. While a variety of literary works and visual arts have worked to address this issue, queer art in particular challenges the Cuban-American exceptionalist ideas of the “perfect minority” that trumps other aspects of the individual’s identity.

A vast majority of research on Cuban Miami has focused on the creation of political ideologies based on Cubans’ previous experiences or their connections to the island. Very few have sought to contextualize the experiences of Cuban political thought in the larger scope of American politics.

Interventions and Contexts: Telling the Story

In my project, I seek to construct an understanding of the female youth subculture of the Cuban enclave in Miami by listening to the life histories of three subjects and creating contexts for those narratives that help us understand how a young woman in Cuban Miami exists as a subject. I hope to add to a larger conversation around youth culture and popular culture within the Cuban diaspora.

The summer before I left for college, Liz and I were driving around Miami. We had spent the day delivering Grubhub orders to help Liz make some extra cash to move out of her house. It was the thick of summer and the Miami humidity had intensified with the rain that had fallen earlier that day. At some point, Liz mentioned that she needed to stop by her grandma’s tombstone to drop off some flowers to commemorate the anniversary of her passing. It was a few days after the July 11th, 2021 protests in Cuba, in which Cubans in Miami and on the island had spilled onto the streets and chanted “Patria y Vida” (Homeland and Life) to counter the revolutionary government of Cuba’s slogan “Patria o Muerte” (Homeland or Death). The demonstrations, which are rare and generally repressed in Cuba, were meant as an outcry in protest of the horrible conditions Cubans were facing in everyday life and the terrible state of hospitals and a lack of aid in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.A new movement of artists and activists called the San Isidro movement, was attracting media attention and Cuban State repression, and for the first time, Cubans in the island and in the diaspora had a new song of protest and solidarity to sing. With Cuba and Miami feeling the consequences of those days, we found ourselves singing along to “Patria y Vida” on the radio. Composed by Yotuel, Gente de Zona, Descemer Bueno, Maykel Osorbo, and El Funky, all leading artists in the diaspora and in the island. Maykel Osorbo and El Funky were arrested by Cuban officials for their participation (Cobo, 2021). The smoothly produced and moving song, calls for action to end the repressive regime in Cuba. According to the artists, it draws parallels between the revolution of ‘59 and the San Isidro movement of 2020, creating a connection between generations of revolution. The song calls for an end to repression and punishment for thinking differently (Yotuel et al., 2021). With the lyrics, “Tú cinco-nueve, yo doble dos,”⁸ the artists call for recognition across generations. When I first heard the song, my mom born in the 70s, labeled it a call to the end of the Cuban regime, she told me that Cuba used to be great, “pero que hoy era una mierda⁹.” When I interpreted the song, however, I could not understand the attack on the regime, I recognized things were bad in the island, but to me, the song represented the moment in Little Havana in which the Cuban people came together and played the anthem, their cars loaded with flags and stickers that said “Patria y Vida,”(Homeland and Life). The song blasted out of people’s cars and Liz and I made our way to the cemetery, we rolled our windows and shouted “Patria y Vida” with the people in the cars next to us. As we arrived at her grandma’s tombstone, I asked Liz if her grandma was patriotic. Liz told me that her grandma loved Cuba, but hated what it had become; I could sense that Liz was upset to be in the presence of her grandma’s tombstone, so in order to make the situation lighter, I pulled out my phone, and told her “Your grandma would have loved this!” as I began playing “Patria y Vida.” We chanted the chorus and laughed, ultimately realizing that her grandmother, who wanted nothing more than to see a Cuba Libre (free Cuba), would now have to listen to two teenage girls sing the anthem of the San Isidro movement without grasping what it means to live on the island. To us, the words “tu cinco-nueve, yo doble dos” represent the historical echoes and the divide in the sentiments that we felt towards the island. We were children of a diaspora, of successive waves of exiles across generations. We were too removed from the source to understand the agony and/or the pride of the revolution, but too close to avoid its lingering presence in our everyday lives.

In the pages that follow, my conversations and recollections with Liz and Sofía will cover terrains of experience and memory. First I begin by introducing our world and ourselves, building on our migration/origin stories, I discuss the process of migration and adaptation that we faced. Then, I delve into an analysis of the education system that we navigated as young women and the subcultures that developed within our high school and the impact that it had in constructing our ideas of what it meant to be Cuban in Little Havana. I continue by examining a new musical genre that Cuban Gen-Z has developed: reparto. I look into the ways that the genre developed in our schools and how it affected our performances of womanhood and Cubanidad in Miami. I conclude my interviews by lingering on the central theme of gender. My work ends by reflecting on our shared experiences coming of age as Gen-Z women in Little Havana and recounting the strengths we found along the way.

Tú Llorando en Miami y Yo Gozando En…¹⁰: Cuban Origin and Migration

Before we moved to Miami, we would travel to Cuba over the summers from Mexico. My mom and her sisters would pitch in and we would rent a house with a pool to spend the evenings in. We would spend the days around each other, catching up on what everybody was up to, eating pan con tomate y aceite.¹¹ I loved swimming around the pool and asking my aunts to count how long I could hold my breath under the water. As we spent time with each other, music always had to be present. My mom always burned a CD of the latest Cuban albums, she especially liked La Charanga Habanera. Her childhood friend Randy Malcom was a singer, and she would always tell us about the time he came to her quinceañera.¹²

In 2011, La Charanga Habanera released their song “Gozando en la Habana” (Rejoicing in La Havana). Through salsa, they talk about the feeling of missing Cuba and specifically contrast the life of a Cuban in Miami to that of a Cuban on the island. They ask, “De que te sirve Mickey Mouse, si te gusta el Pidio Valdes?”¹³ (2011), making the Cubans in Miami miss the life in Cuba, the chisme¹⁴, the food, the people. The chorus of their song goes, “Tú llorando en Miami y yo gozando en la Habana¹⁵.” The song was my favorite, but, in my mind I wondered, “Who is actually crying in Miami? That is the U.S.!” It was not until we moved to Miami, that I understood what the song meant to say.

Miami is built on generations of diaspora. It is an immigrant city built around land beyond the places where the Seminoles were forcibly moved. It is a city that was built by Bahamian agricultural workers and builders, and by Northerners seeking work, home, or speculative profit in sub-tropical climes. In the twentieth century it was a city of Jewish and black diaspora, and a stepping stone for Cubans who traveled there with frequency to experience U.S. culture, business, and education. But the Cuban migrations that transformed Miami began after the Cuban revolution: first with the exile of wealthy Cubans bringing their capital with them ahead of Revolutionary reforms and then with the Freedom Flights and middle class exodus of Cubans in the late sixties and early seventies. A New York Times Article in 1985, titled “Cuban-Americans Move to Power,” established that at that time approximately 650,000 Cubans resided in the Greater Miami Area (Nordheimer, 1985). Like the article’s title solidifies, as the Cuban population grew, their political and economic power expanded. Most Cuban-Americans directly know someone who arrived from Cuba in their family or their circle of friends. The United States Census Bureau identifies over 69.1% of Miami to be of Hispanic or Latino origin as of 2022, and notes that over 54.0% of the population in Miami-Dade County is of foreign-born origin (2024).

To understand what Miami is, you need to understand what it means to be from there. To many outsiders, Miami is a tropical paradise, it is the art-deco style of South Beach, luxurious art galleries, and it is a never-ending summer in which everyone is tan all the time. However, Miamians get an insider sense of the city that foreigners fail to grasp in their four day stays. The viral social media page OnlyInDade refers to the type of situations that only a Miami-Dade citizen can understand; posting out-of-pocket scenarios such as viral videos of women twerking on the top of cars, the best croqueta sandwich spots, and -at the time of writing this- all the news regarding the murder of cubaton singer, El Taiger. OnlyInDade captures the mixture of Miami, the party lifestyle, the Cuban influence, and the constant reproduction of drama. When podcast host Kid Fury was told that he was “from Florida”, he quickly corrected his co-host and said “I’m not. I’m from Miami though…Miami is in a state of its own thing. So don’t ever disrespect me again.” (Kid Fury, 2023). We pride ourselves on the fact that Miami is its own world, separate from the rest of Florida.

The truth is, like in any city, Miami is not what it has been made out to be. Despite depictions of glamour in the city in media like Kourtney and Kim Take Miami, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, Jane the Virgin, Bad Boys, and Miami Vice, the city hosts a diverse range of economic situations that vary widely by zip code. The glamor and never-ending beach days are a lifestyle that not all of Miami is able to afford. Driving into different communities across Miami, you begin to see the reality past the fantasy that is sold. This is the case with Little Havana. The U.S. Census Bureau, published a report in 2024 on Income and Poverty, which established that 21% of people in Little Havana were food stamps recipients, 10.7% of families were living below the poverty level in the last twelve months at the time of the report, and over 14% of single individuals aged 18 and older were living below the poverty line. In Little Havana, one discovers a different side than the Miami that is typically sold.

For Sofia, Liz, and for me, discovering the reality of Little Havana meant learning how we were different from the previous generations of Cuban migrants. We did not come into an economically stable and prosperous U.S., as previous generations did. Our parents have not become homeowners: they are part of a generational divide between homeownership for the Cubans who arrived as part of the “historic exile” and those who have arrived in the last ten years. In our experience, the presence of poverty was everywhere in Little Havana.¹⁶

Looking Into a Mirror: Racial Experiences

When everyone is dealing with Cuban diasporic histories, questions of race are addressed, sometimes they are abounded. In the Cuban diaspora, just like in Cuba, race becomes associated with class and these associations generate specific contexts surrounding diasporic experiences. In the early 1960s, the Cuban exiles were majority white and middle or upper-class, these migrants received abundant support by the American government to rebuild their lives in the States with one billion dollars being allocated to fund flights, job training, housing, recertification, and small business loans among other areas (Benson and Clealand, 2021). By the late 1960s and the “Freedom Flights” from Cuba, a new wave of professional and working class Cubas were leaving Cuba. Many came to the U.S. and some went to Spain. This generation of the diaspora gets associated with the idea of the American Dream; they fled the island and were able to rebuild their lives with the help of U.S. special economic programs. However, black and poor Cubans who arrived in larger numbers during the 1980s Mariel Crisis faced a different and more precarious situation. The discourse surrounding the generation of the Marielitos, those who arrived in rafts in the 1980s, was framed by U.S. political discourse that lumped together struggling immigrants with mentally ill and criminal felons released by Castro during the crisis of Mariel. The language of the state focused on criminal acts and violence, and it practiced deep discrimination as a response to black Cubans (Benson and Clealand, 2021). By the time Mariel happened, the Little Havana neighborhood that had been built by the generation of the late sixties was nearly gone.

In those years and in subsequent decades, as Cuban migrants continued to arrive, the landscape of Little Havana changed and the older generations moved out to more prosperous communities and the Cubans of color and less affluence continued to settle in the ‘black parts’ of Miami such as Allapattah and Liberty City (Benson and Clealand, 2021). Cubans that associated themselves with whiteness were able to climb the social ladder faster, but upon entering the Miami diaspora, Cubans of color faced a choice: identify as white or black. Cubans are explicitly and implicitly forced to pick a side, and those who are able to pass as white, tend to mostly side with the latter. A report published by Pew Hispanic Center found that Cuban migrants are more likely to identify as white than any other Hispanic migrant (Pew Research Center, 2006). Alan A. Aja establishes that despite the increased diversity in the group of Cubans that settle in Miami, there is still a persistent “whitening” of the racial identity of Cubans (2016).

Fig 1. Source: Lizbeth Pavon. “Selfie outside Night Owl Cookies.” 12 July, 2023.¹⁷

Outside of Miami, my friends and I come across phenotypically as racially indeterminate. While this is part of how Cubans and Latinos are perceived in the United States, we fit into the demographics of Cuban Miami’s racial identity, which is phenotypically white. Our racial backgrounds vary. Liz’s mom presents indigenous heritage and her dad is white. Her skin tone is tanned, but in Miami, she ultimately presents as white. Sofia’s mom is mixed but presents as an Afro-Cuban and her dad is white. Her skin tone is olive but in Miami she ultimately presents as white. In my case, my mom is tanned with curly hair, but falls in the category of white, and my dad is white. Therefore, I ultimatetly present as white. Our Miami whiteness, however, no longer pushes us towards economic and social progress. As Aja reports, white Cubans in Miami are now revealing a “mixed bag of economic integration given the presence of multiple waves of arrival, some more privileged than others, further complicated by chosen racial identities incongruent to their daily economic experiences” (2008). In this sense, being a white Cuban in Miami is no longer a direct path to progress, rather the growth of the diversity diaspora has “diminished” the power that “whiteness” held in the view of social and economic advantage.

En Mi Renta No Hay Perdón¹⁸: Miami’s Rent Survival Story

“You are playing Gangsta in English?” I told Liz as we rode around Calle Ocho (eight street) after skipping our AP Macroeconomics class. “Yes, it is the best version.” she said. “Nah, you are wrong, bro. The Spanish version is the one that hits the most!” I said.

Kat Dahlia’s “Gangsta en Español” tells the story of a young woman in Miami. She talks about the economic struggles that her family faced to make ends meet in the city, she talks about having to be independent and carry herself forward, as her and her family’s livelihood depended on it. She says “en mi renta no hay perdón,”¹⁹ as she alludes to the fact that she can not let herself feel sad or broken-hearted, as she has to keep going. She says that she has to fight on her own, that no one will save her. This song represents our Miami survival mindset.

Fig. 2 Source: Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau. “Map of Little Havana.” N.A.

Camila

I came to Miami when I was eleven years old in 2014. I vividly remember sitting in the immigration room and watching the news cycle for what felt like an entire day. The TV screen kept playing the same story “Joan Rivers dead.” I had no idea who that lady was, nor did I understand why the news kept talking about her. All I knew was that after a six-hour flight from Mexico City, the last thing that I wanted to do was to sit in the middle of a cold room with a bunch of strangers. I wanted to go back home; I regretted telling my mom “yes” when she asked my sister and me if we wanted to move to Miami. I should have said no, everything in me wanted to say no. But I do not believe I ever truly had a say in the matter, the tickets were bought, the car was sold, the clothes were gone, and we were on our way to Miami.

After what felt like an eternity, but was only six hours, my mom, sister, and I walked through the doors of Miami International Airport and were picked up by my aunt’s ex-boyfriend Chichi, who had remained a close family friend. He was dressed in the tightest white cargo shorts I have ever seen, his shirt was black and hugged his beer belly in a way that I did not know clothes could do. He welcomed us, told my mom she looked good, and put our bags in the trunk of his beat-up white Ford Crown Victoria. We began to drive to his house, and as I looked around the city that was now my home, I turned to my sister and in the most accented English, told her “This is where I belong.” Our first night in Miami: we spent it sleeping on Chichi’s floor.

Our apartment was not yet ready to move into, and we had to wait an extra day. We were going to be moving in with my other aunt’s ex-husband, Pedro, and my mom’s friend Dazy. This first apartment was a two-bedroom located in the thick of Little Havana, two blocks away from Calle Ocho. We lived in 2003 SW 10th Street, apartment 3; the “pop-corn” yellow building stands out with its deterioration amongst the residential buildings around it. Yet, the building felt oddly Cuban to me. It reminded me of the houses around my grandmother’s house in La Habana. Our sleeping arrangements were as follows: Pedro in one room, Dazy in the living room, and my mom, my sister, and I in the other bedroom. It was a tough adjustment to make as we had left behind our house in the suburbs of Mexico, in which we each had our own room, to now co-exist in a room and live with people whom we had lost touch with since our last visit to Cuba in 2011. Eventually, Dazy left our apartment, and my aunt Amparo and my cousin Rocio moved into our apartment. They had arrived from Spain after my mom convinced my aunt to leave her toxic marriage and follow my mom’s quest for independence for herself and her daughters. Our living arrangements quickly became three people in each room in the house. The first year of our stay, our rent for a two-bedroom apartment was $900.

During this time my mom began studying to become a medical assistant. Without proper guidance on financial aid and federal loans, she began to sign loans to achieve an education that would be interrupted by her duty to pay rent multiple times. She struggled to find a job for the first two months of us being there, and she eventually began working in a restaurant in Calle Ocho called “El Exquisito.” Her salary was dependent on tips and her hourly rate started at $3/hr.

In the summer before seventh-grade year, we moved to an apartment in the West Flagler neighborhood. We separated from my aunt and cousin because some sisters are better apart. This apartment represented a lot of what seventh grade was for me: empty. The apartment had two bedrooms and a family of mice that liked to crawl out during the night. My three-year-old chihuahua, Jade, would hunt them and keep them away from our bed. In this apartment, my fourteen-year-old sister sobbed endlessly as we learned about Zayn Malik’s decision to leave the boyband One Direction. It was also the apartment in which we saw less of our mom. Her hours at work and school made her a shadow in our minds. By the time we woke up, she was gone, and by the time she came back, we were asleep. However, occasionally she would ensure we knew she was thinking of us when we would open the fridge and find a completa - a container of food that is composed of a protein and two side dishes- from her restaurant to enjoy for dinner. The mice problem never went away, despite the super coming to “fix” the hole. I arrived at school sporting a mouse-nibbled shirt one day. At this apartment, our rent was $950.

During the summer of my seventh-grade year, we moved to our first house in this country. We lived in the North West area of Miami. It was my aunt who told my mom about the house. I remember begging my mom to ask the landlord to lower the rent to $1000 from his original asking price of $1150. My mom always has a way to persuade people, she knows how to talk to others. The landlord agreed to lower the rent, but he kept it at $1000. I rejoiced that day because the new house had two and a half bedrooms. In my mind, I was tiny enough to fit a bed in half a room and finally get my independence from my sister. I was wrong. We lived in this house for two months. My mom was unable to afford the rent on her own and soon enough, we found ourselves living in Lot K #8 at the Calle Ocho Trailer Park, right next to the Caballero Rivero Woodlawn North cemeteries and the corner of “Sentir Cubano” (Feeling Cuban). Lucky for us, it was only a couple of blocks away from Versailles Cuban restaurant. We could never afford to eat there on my mom’s salary, but it meant we would never miss any of the protests of the Cuban people in Miami.

In 2014, during my first year of school in Miami, my Cuban classmates upon learning about my Mexican heritage, began to mock the Mexican accent and act out exaggerated representations. “Orale wey” was a phrase I heard often. My uncle referred to Mexicans and my father as an “indio,” utilizing indigeneity as an insult. I realized that to be mixed was to stand out, I needed to pick: Cuban or Mexican. In 2015, Republican candidate Donald J. Trump called Mexicans “rapists.” Sitting in my seventh grade ethics course, I watched as my mostly Cuban class repeated his words. At that moment, I knew if I wanted to survive in Miami, I had to be Cuban.

Sofia

Born in Spain to a Cuban mom and a Spanish dad, Sofia moved to Miami at nine years old. She emigrated after her grandpa had a heart attack and his deteriorating health made it evident that she and her mom needed to come to Miami sooner than expected.

Sofia tells me, “It was very hard, leaving my entire family behind, but also to me. I had left a lot of my culture behind, because, having grown up in Spain, the side of my culture that I was closer to, and that I knew more about was the Spanish side of my culture, not the Cuban side. So it was like a very rough cultural transition.” She tells me that it was difficult to adapt to not only the requirement of speaking English but also to being surrounded by Cuban immigrants in her English as a Second Language classes. She lived in Hialeah when she first arrived, now known as the place where the Cuban enclave moved after the gentrifiers took Calle Ocho. Hialeah, or “La Ciudad que progresa” (the city that progresses), has a population that is 94% of Hispanic origin, with over 44.8% of the population being of white Hispanic origin (City of Hialeah, n.a., Jorgensen, n.a.). Living in a low-income area, Sofia and her mom first settled into a trailer home and eventually in eighth grade, she made the move to Little Havana.

“Where did you live by?” I asked her. A Cuban English version of “Where do you live?” and a transliteration of the Spanish, “¿por dónde vives?”

“The part where the tourists are, like where all the Cuban tourist traps are with, like, the roosters [that] decorated the Domino Park. All that stuff.” She mentions that she had her own room, her mom and her stepdad found a place that had three bedrooms, and she was comfortable. However, after her mom and her stepdad split, during her sophomore year of high school, she moved into a “make-shift” home in the back of a house that was already constructed and remained there until the end of her time in high school.

I asked Sofia about her family dynamics once she moved, and she told me:

“If I’m being honest, it was pretty similar [to back in Spain]” she goes on, “When we had just moved here, at first, I saw her more than I did in Spain, because we did not come into the border, and she did not declare her intention to stay when we moved here. She entered the U.S. as a Spanish national and then waited the requisite year and one day to request legal status under the Cuban Adjustment Act.²⁰ So she did not have a work permit, so she did not work the 1st year.” Sofia’s mom made an effort to align her work schedule to allow her to pick up and drop off Sofia at school. Despite having her grandfather to help them out, Sofia’s mom made it a priority to spend those extra hours of the day with her. This schedule allowed Sofia to see her mom and have her present after she got back from school.

As Sofia continued to navigate life as a Spanish-Cuban child in the heart of Little Havana, the issue of identity haunted her. Constantly denied her Spanish heritage because she was growing up in Miami’s Cuban enclave, she told me, “It’s a lot harder to define yourself when you come at such a pivotal age. And it’s like, well, where am I from?” For Sofía, living within Miami’s Cuban enclave yielded more questions than answers.

Liz

Liz was born in Miami to a Cuban father and a Nicaraguan mom. Born at Miami Jackson Hospital, she was raised in Little Havana. She tells me that her parents met as her mom found community in the Cuban enclave. As a Nicaraguan immigrant who arrived in Miami in the 90s, her mom found it difficult to find Nicaraguans, but Liz says that her mom immersed herself in the Cuban enclave and eventually “picked up the Cuban accent.” She spent her first years in a building by Calle Ocho, in which she recalls all of her neighbors being Cuban. She tells me about the instances in which the neighbors would ask to borrow things or offer food to each other. “From what I understand, and from what my dad has always told me like, that is very much a Cuban thing. You do not see that [neighborly attitude] in the United States: people usually keep to themselves.” She goes on, “Growing up, that culture was very embedded here, and so, that is why I feel like I can identify a little bit as a Cuban.”

Liz lived in East Little Havana, a neighborhood that she describes as unsafe; she mentions that there was a bar that had “constant police around, hookers, drugs, alcohol.” “East Little Havana” is known as an area to avoid if you wear a gold chain. Precisely because of this, rents are cheaper over there, that area is recognized in travel websites as an area of increased violence. Liz describes living in the “Miami-special”: the efficiency: a one room studio with a small kitchenette. Like many new immigrants to Miami, she lived in an “illegal” efficiency, as most landlords failed to acquire the proper permits for the construction of micro-studio apartments in the back, side, or the garages of family homes (Plasencia, 2022).

“Growing up, I realized that efficiencies are actually more of a Miami thing. So it is just kind of like a house. A part of a house is kind of broken off into a living space. And so when you walked into this garage turned efficiency…It was my mom’s bed as soon as you walk in… You took a step further, and next to my mom’s bed was actually our kitchen table, and then in front of that kitchen table was my bed to the right, and then it was the bathroom and the kitchen… The space was really small.” As her mom struggled to find a job, Liz would see her mom briefly in the morning and not again until 8 or 9 pm; for the most part, she was alone. She spent her time between tutoring or visiting her dad, who lived with her stepmom a couple of blocks away from her high school. Her parents' relationship had ended when she was eight years old, and for a while she was raised only by her mom. “It was easier for me to interact as a Cuban… I just grew up in a very… Cuban environment. I did not really know much about my Nica[raguan] side up until like 7 years old. So everything was very much Cubanized.”

Our experiences demonstrated that a blended identity has emerged from the extended years of the Cuban diaspora. In La Pequeña Habana (Little Havana), there are people like us, who have mixed ethnicities, but ultimately, the legacy of Cuba lingers over the heads of the residents of the neighborhood. Whether you actually were Cuban or not, once you stepped within the confines of Little Havana, Cuba became the default. At the same time, our generation experienced differences in the way in which our parents adapted to the American Dream. In fact for most of us living in poverty is not uncommon. We did not judge each other for living in efficiencies, we viewed it as normal. The reality was that, in Little Havana if our parents wanted us to prosper, sacrifices had to be made to be able to pay the rising Miami rents. It was either to be present or to be evicted. Because our parents were absent a lot, school became our second home in which we learned a lot about what the world had to offer to us… or so we thought.

¡Aquí se habla Español!: Education, Linguistic Segregation, Cubanitos, and Conservatism

Tienen que traspasar los límites de Hialeah²¹

It was the summer before I left to New York University for my first year of college, I was sitting with Sofia, Liz, and my one-year old American bully, Candela²² underneath the palm trees that decorate Kennedy Park or as we call it el parque de los perros. Located in Coconut Grove, “the dog park” became a recurring spot for us that summer as we enjoyed the isolation and the tranquility that this wealthier neighborhood brought to its park. The park did not have the loud Cubans of Calle Ocho, over here you could relax.

“Well, we were in the same school, but I had never seen you before,” I told Sofia.

“Yes, she used to hang out with the cubanitos during lunchtime,” Liz said looking at me, the emphasis on my cubanita past made me feel embarrassed, I did not want Sofia, whom I was meeting for the first time as she was also attending NYU, to think of me as someone loud and obnoxious, nor did I want her to associate me with the cubanitos of Miami Senior High School.

A Brief History of Miami High

Established in 1903, Miami High is part of the historical patrimony of Miami and of its segregated school system. Up until the 1950s, the majority of students were of Jewish descent. In 1959 South Miami schools were called to integrate (Moore, 1996, Jones and Draper, 2022 ), but the battles were still going on as the first large waves of Cuban immigrants arrived in the late 1960s. By the 1970s, the majority of the school’s population had Cuban-origins. Thus the demographics of Miami High School were evolving in the late 1960s and early 1970s and ultimately the High School became a Cuban school. As battles over bussing, integration, and assimilation brewed and subsided, Cubans effectively “whitened” Miami High. In 1984, the student’s newspaper established Spanglish as the official language of the school (De Aguero, 1984), a nod to the growing presence of Cuban and Hispanic immigrants in the school. A report by U.S News and World Report “Best High Schools” establishes the demographic of the school as made up of 98.4% minority students, within that percentage 95.1% of students were of Hispanic origin, 2.9% were African American, and 1.6% were white. At the same time, the report found that 69% of the students are low-income (U.S. News and World Report, n.a.), the conditions in the school allowed it to be the perfect space for Cuban and other migrants to thrive, as the years passed and the community of Little Havana expanded so did the incorporation of Cuban attitudes into the landscape of the school.

Fig 3. Source: Sharon Hahn Darlin, “Miami High School.” 6 Dec. 2021.

Las Cubanitas de Miami High

In Miami High, the label of being a cubanito or cubanita meant that you were different from the rest. With this label, it was understood that a cubanita/o did not speak English, that they skipped classes, vaped in the bathrooms, and walked around the school blasting El Chulo through their Dollar Tree speaker. It meant that the principal would visit their table looking for dress code offenses first, and they were friends with Assistant Principal, Mr. Arscott because of how often they were given detentions. It also meant they were destined to attend Miami-Dade College for two semesters until they eventually dropped out. It meant the school and the non-cubanitos had given up on their success before the cubanitos even had a chance to prove themselves.

I differentiated myself from the cubanitos because I had made it. I was on my way to NYU in the fall, I was going to leave Little Havana behind and leave my cubanita self behind. “I used to, but not anymore. Now I am… normal Sofia, I promise.” I reassured Sofia, who laughed and nodded her head.

In between the 1960s to the 1980s, Cubans were amongst the most educated Latinos in the United States. A research study published in 2021 by Pew Research Study established that 30% of Cubans aged 25 and older have bachelor's degrees as compared to 20% of other Hispanics in the U.S., however, this educational trend has been decreasing since the 1990s with reports of only 13% of foreign-born Cubans pursuing bachelors degrees (Moslimani et al., 2023). This correlation between the cubanitos and a decreasing educational level seemed part of daily life in Little Havana, where the inability, or the refusal, to master English became synonymous with being incapable of breaking out of the Cuban mold, and a sign that you were incapable of assimilation.

Ashamed at my past, I adjusted my grip on Candela’s leash and turned to look at the waterfront that laid behind the bushes of Kennedy Park. “But, Liz and I were in physics together and we used to do well. I had no idea what Mr. Rivera was doing half of the time between his jokes about Cuba, his three-legged drawings of himself, and his constant proclamations of love for his wife after making gay jokes.” I turned to Sofia and waited for her to tell me about her experiences as well.

“I learned AP Physics with a Cuban accent!” Sofia joked.

“Truth be told, I know Geometry in Spanish because Mr. Rodriguez would spend the entire class switching back and forth with his Spanish. I felt bad for the non-Spanish speakers, but it made the class better for me.” I told them.

“I mean, there was never a second in which we were not surrounded by Spanish. Even if we were in our Honors and AP classes,” said Liz.

Cubans in Miami, alongside Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, and other Latin American immigrants, had created such a strong linguistic presence in the city that new arrivals began to dispense with the urgencies of learning English. Schools and modes of education no longer followed linguistic models of assimilation as in other parts of the U.S.The instruction when I was going to school was no longer predominantly in English.

This is different from the Miami that Richard Blanco describes in his memoir The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood. In describing his experiences growing up in Miami in the 70s, Blanco establishes the educational environment that older members of the diaspora entered which imposed a mandatory linguistic assimilation into the English world (2015). The government of Florida, recognizing the need for assimilation, instituted actions to help the Cubans arriving during the 1960s by creating the Cuban Refugee Program. Through this program, Miami-Dade County schools received federal funding to spearhead English-language classes (UM Libraries). The goal of the program was to help accelerate the assimilation process for Cubans. In this way Cubans could embrace American life and values, and become examples that advanced U.S. anti-communism. However, as the Cuban enclave in Miami expanded, the majority culture became that of the Cuban-Americans. As exiles and their children gained positions of power, Cuban Miami became a cultural mixture, a mosaic. The exiled Cubans were able to develop communities that were a cultural admixture. Thus, Sofia, Liz, and I received a Cuban education with the standards of the U.S. curriculums. Paradoxically, the settled and older exiles in Miami were the same ones to set the systems in place that would deny the cubanitos academic advancement due to their lack of English.

Sofia and I were having our daily debriefs on the floor of our NYU Seventh Street dorm in which we would discuss our experiences in school. Looking out at the bare tree that represented the passing New York winter, I told her, “Well, Sofia, I think about my sister a lot. We both came together to Miami and despite the fact that we learned some English before our arrival, I got out of English as a Second Language (ESOL) classes and she did not. I frankly think that had a huge impact on our educational trajectory.”

“Oh absolutely, I remember the students in Ms. Morales’s class, they were so neglected. They frankly seemed bored.” She replied. “I remember walking in with her daughter, Ms. Perez, and just being amazed at the fact that it was April and they were still learning the verb-to-be.” She turned to me and said, “I was an ESOL student in elementary too. I got out because I was thrown into “gifted,” which was a blessing in disguise because I got comments on how I pronounced words and whatnot but it forced me to speak and write English 24/7 so by the time I got to middle school, I felt like a native speaker.” She said, “Although, my ESOL status did affect my willingness to talk and express myself because I could not do that well in English.”

“You know, I always think about Fernando. Truly, when I think about the impact of the lack of engagement with the cubanitos, I think about him.” I told her. “He came from Cuba with amazing math skills, I mean estaba escapao’²³, he was like a human calculator. During the first couple of weeks of my junior year of high school, that kid would sit down and help me with Precalculus. I told him he should speak with our class advisor, see if he too could get out of Algebra 2 and join the advanced class.” Sofia nodded, “and well, he spoke to the counselor and they told him no because he was an ESOL student. I could see him get frustrated with that. He genuinely became disengaged, the coursework was not challenging, yet the instruction kept him behind over a presumed language barrier; numbers were not enough a language, and the formulas were not easy to translate I guess,” I told her. The act of holding back students because of their language barriers has been a practice utilized to preserve the segregation of the immigrants who are perceived as ‘less likely’ to assimilate. Florida International University sociolinguistic professor, Philip Carter, finds that amongst Miami’s predominantly immigrant populations, the usage of English tends to be favored and aligned with positive associations (Nicoletti, 2024). Despite our school being led by non-native English speakers, linguistic segregation was still dominant in our classrooms.

Upon spending a couple of months in Miami, the kids we called the cubanitos got frustrated and bored, became disillusioned with the prospect of the American Dream. They could not advance academically, their skills were doubted, and they became the representation of the worst that Cuba sent over to the States.

“Liz, you remember Mr. Ortiz, right?” I asked her, “Do you remember what he used to always tell us?”

“Hmm…I am not sure. I never had him, but you have mentioned it to me before. Was it the Hialeah thing?” she replied.

“Yes! In our Italian class, he used to tell us, ‘You need to trespass the limits of Hialeah!’” I told her.

She jumped in, “He always said that he said not a lot of us ever would shop outside of Ño, Qué Barato!²⁴”

“Yeah, what was that? Was he not supposed to encourage us? It was kinda disheartening that he told us that not a lot of us would make it. Why did he do that?” I said.

Sofia jumped in and said “Well, it is because he knew. He had seen it before, teachers get disillusioned too.”

“Frankly, he was one of those teachers I just did not want to have. He seemed scary to me.” Liz declared.

“Well, I had him for Italian, and my class was filled with the sophomore cubanitos. He used to get so mad at our class and then whenever one of them would be disruptive, he would tell us the Hialeah thing. I do not know why he spoke about his travels and his life almost as if to remind us about the fact that not all of us in that room would be successful.” I told them.

“I think he was just bored at his job and had to brag to others.” Said Liz

When looking back at interactions like this throughout our school, it was evident that there was a limit on the success that teachers like Mr. Ortiz believed the students in Miami Senior High School could achieve. He was not the only teacher who gave up on us before we even had a chance to prove ourselves. It was clear that in our school system, those who showed promise early on were dotted on, while the others who struggled were mostly kept afloat but never really pushed. Mr. Ortiz’s commentary limited us to the working class neighborhoods, like Hialeah and Little Havana.

Our neighborhood limited us. Older and more affluent Cubans seemed to associate our Little Havana home as a sign of our low-income status. Our generation settled along these communities because we did not have the government programs or employment opportunities that previous Cuban exiles enjoyed. In fact, a 2023 article by Migration Policy determined that in 2021 sixteen percent of Cubans lived in poverty (“defined as having an income of $27,000 for a family of four with two children in 2021), this percent is slightly higher in comparison to all immigrants in the U.S. and U.S. born individuals (Wei et al.).

The economic opportunities available to our parents limited the access to quality education that we received. As our schools rely on neighborhood taxes to operate, resources were allocated to the students who showed promise and withheld from those who needed more attention. Ultimately, our school generated an environment that pushed a ‘survival of the fittest’ narrative, in which success was acquired solely through an individual’s drive. This dynamic created a space in which conservative/capitalist ideologies of ‘pulling yourself through the bootstraps’ succeeded. For some cubanitos, a lack of personal discipline meant failure in the United States.

Fig 4. Source: Camila Tiburcio. “Miami High 2019 Pep Rally.” 18 Oct. 2019

¿Pioneros por el comunismo?... ¡adiós Ché!²⁵: Politics and Miami Cuban Gen-Z

It is important to mention anecdotally that a lot of the Cuban immigrants we grew up with performed right-leaning political attitudes. Although there is an understanding that Gen-Z is generally a ‘progressive generation,’ as established by a 2021 report by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, many Gen-Z Cubans find themselves politically aligned with the older generations; they demonstrate the stereotypical Cuban-American conservatism. These attitudes are crucial to the understanding of Gen-Z Miami. They reflect an important shift away from the Democrat Party affiliations and electoral victories that once separated Miami from the rest of Florida.

In our conversations that followed after the 2024 elections, we found ourselves amazed at the fact that Miami-Dade for the first time in years turned red. A city that is known for its pride parades, immigrant communities, and overall diversity, voted for a candidate that had promised to attack every single community mentioned above. How could that be?

“Yo no puedo (I can’t), I had to unfollow them,” I told Liz. “It is ridiculous, they do not even know what they are talking about.”

“Well this kid, he was posting anti-LGBTQ+ content, and I just unfollowed him, for real, I do not even care anymore,” said Liz.

“I am not surprised. At all,” said Sofia. “You guys remember high school, why are we acting like they [right-leaning people] were never there?”

When Sofia said that, I found myself looking back and had to step outside of my bubble. The truth is, I recall the specific moment in which many of my classmates in high school, mostly the Cuban ones, found themselves on July 11, 2021, in front of Versailles Restaurant holding signs, taking photos with Proud Boys leader, Enrique Tarrio, and asking Donald J. Trump to save Cuba. The Republican Party is aware of the conservatism that Cubans and other people displaced by communism tend to embody; for many, the rhetoric on the end of communism allows people who had to leave their homes behind to feel avenged by those politicians who claim to be tough on the ‘commies.’ At the same time, a poll conducted in 2024, by Florida International University, recorded that 17% of Cubans over the age of 18-39 were ‘extremely conservative,’ with those who emigrated between 1995-2019 being 30% ‘extremely conservative’ and 25% of those who emigrated between 2020-2024 being ‘extremely conservative’ as well. These rhetorics echo in new spaces that Gen-Z Cubans have unlimited access to; the rise of the conservative Cuban influencers has shaped the media and political content that Cubans on the internet consume.

The name Alexander Otaola, known by his website name ‘holaotaola,’ is a recognizable name for Cubans who utilize TikTok. Undoubtedly, the influencer holds a strong position when it comes to influencing his viewers politically. Presenting himself as an “anti-Castro,” “anti-Cuba,” and “anti-communism” thinker, he utilizes his page to advocate for Republican campaigns and even had a short stint as a candidate for mayor of Miami-Dade. Even though there is no communism in Miami, and no pro-communist policy or candidates, this anti-communism stance against a straw man helps Otaola identify with white U.S. conservative Republican politics. Otaola uses his anti-communism as a populist law and order platform, with the exception of libertarian views on marijuana. If you visit his page today, you can see the first core promise of his campaign was to make Miami-Dade a “communist-free zone,” followed by restoring law and order, safeguarding our schools, reducing traffic, boosting businesses, and (most popular with Gen-Z) legalizing recreational use of marijuana (OtaolaForMayor). His account has over 266k followers and the numbers keep growing. The combination of social media to share his message, allowed Otaola’s rhetoric to reach young TikTok users. Additionally, his influence was not the only one that was growing. A study published by the Pew Research Center in November of 2024, establishes that more ‘news’ influencers are identifying as right-leaning (Stocking et al., 2024). The growing threat of misinformation expands with this new wave of right-wing influencers; meanwhile the content that is generated and presented in young people’s timelines based on their social media use opens a pipeline into right-wing content that influences the beliefs of an individual. For Gen-Z Cubans, the shifting use of social media and a desire to avoid the life they, or their parents, were forced to leave behind pushes them to vote in favor of candidates adopting an “anti-communist” label. This strong move to deter communism from infiltrating Miami is an appeal to the fear of the past for Cuban and Venezuelan exiles, specifically because there is no actual threat of a Communist Party in Miami. In this way as Professor Ana Dopico comments, “the “anti-communism” of Gen-Z Cubans is paradoxical: It allows them to assimilate to a growing right wing order and align with previous Cuban generations in the U.S., and on the other hand it keeps them in an ideological enclave where only one political issue, however artificial in the U.S. context, dominates and obscures all the others” (2025).

“Yeah, you remember Natalie, she used to be in our Women’s Rights and Human Rights class and now she is a Trump supporter.” said Liz. “She now makes pro-Trump TikToks.”

“Sin palabras…(I’m speechless…)” I told her.

These conservative and homophobic ideologies were demonstrated not just by our male counterparts, but also by women and LGBTQ+ individuals. Many Cubans in Miami express far-right ideologies despite their status as minorities in this country. The Cuban enclave in Miami, creates the illusion that discrimination is a phenomenon of the media, therefore, many Cubans find themselves feeling excluded from these anti-immigrant narratives and develop these ideologies that make them feel power over the communities in Miami. Cubans want to remain the majority because they find themselves to be the ‘right minority.’ These views infiltrated our parents who blamed non-Cuban immigrants for the disgraces of the Miami economy and eventually made their way to our classrooms and social media. Thus, for Cuban Gen-Z, far-right ideologies impacted the way in which our generation understood what it meant to perform their identities in Cuban Miami, specifically womanhood and sexuality.

Reparteras en la Calle Ocho²⁶: Gen-Z Musical Subculture and Womanhood

“Un palo como tú me lo hecha cualquiera, ¡por eso te bote, coge carretera!

Que tu va’ a ser la misma repartera-a-a…” ²⁷

The vulgar lyrics resound through the Black Nissan Sentra that Liz bought during our senior year of high school. She was the first -and the only one so far- of our group to buy a car and cruise the streets of Miami with her independence; for us, the definition of a night out meant cruising around Miami, buying Cono Pizza, and stopping to have hour-long talks about our lives and the meaning of the world in the warehouse by el perimetro.

“Sofia, come on, you know you want to sing it.” I tease her.

“Wait, here comes the best part,” Liz raises the volume of the song and begins to speed, barely meeting the yellow light.

In unison, the three of us shout: “¡Cada vez que cojo un toto lo parto!²⁸”

Our routine was not complete if we did not hear the words of El Chulo, El Kamel, El Bacoco, and Tititico. At one point, this disgusting song about having sex with a woman and discarding her, transformed into our anthem of empowerment. The song would play any time any of us were together. It became a ritual to listen to el reparto to cruise around Miami.

Between my freshman and junior year of high school (2018-2020), I found myself believing that the performance of these songs would approximate me to belong amongst the Cubans of Miami High. I wanted to be part of their groups and live out the storylines that I heard about on the sidelines, their dramatic break-ups, the fights over girls, the brotherhood and loyalty that existed amongst them was very appealing to me; they never seemed to struggle to figure out who they were or with who they belonged. I found them to be the epitome of “cool.” The ideology of being a repartera became ingrained in my mind and quickly I sought to be like them. However, when I actually made it through to them, I realized it was not for me.

¡Yo soy del reparto!²⁹

Amidst a changing racial demographic in Miami’s Cuban diaspora, the sounds of the Cuban enclave have changed. Cuban music has witnessed the development of a new style of music after Cuba’s Special Period, a period of extreme scarcity from the mid-nineties to around 2010. Reparto, which means neighborhood, and repartera (a neighborhood girl or woman) are words from a song, and reparto music is also the name of a subgenre of Cuban reggaeton. Ethnomusicologist Mike Levine calls reparto music “el reguetón de los pobres,” [reggaeton of the poor] (2021). Levine explains that this genre of music developed in the solares of Cuba, the neighborhoods of the poor and marginalized of the island. Levine describes the composition of the genre as a blend of the trademarks of reggaeton (dem bow, rapped lyrics, and Pan-Latin expression), with a touch of idioms and rhythms of rumba and guaguancó (which were born among the poor Afro-neighborhoods of Cuba) (2021). The creation of this reparto music, like reggaeton itself, has generated extensive backlash from the Cuban state and amongst the white diaspora abroad (Levine, 2021). Reparto is a form of black musical culture of Cuba, according to Cuban reporter, Brenda Gonzaléz Betancourt, the sounds emerge from the marginalization that black communities faced during and after the economic crisis of the Special Period in the 1990s (2024). The music is a testament to survival, and the vulgar and shocking lyrics give a voice to the communities often ignored by the island’s government and the white diaspora abroad.

In recent years, the production of reparto music has escaped the island and has found refuge in Little Havana. In 2018, the Cuban state -seeking to preserve its image of tropical bliss and pure music- passed Decreto 349 or Decree 349, which required musicians to be registered as professionals before being permitted to perform publicly (Levine, 2021). With this, reparteros, who did not have access to funds to finance licenses in Cuba’s cultural economy, found it difficult to perform openly. Their music, their audiences, and their performances were forced underground. At the same time, young people raised on the music of the pioneers of cubaton (the parent category of reparterismo and other genres of Cuban music) - such as Osmani “La Voz” Garcia, El Micha, Jacob Forever, and Gente de Zona - were entering the space of musical production both on the island and abroad. The production of repartero music truly began with Gen-Z musicians and audiences, with the combination of auto-tune and Latin trap, sampling the tracks of artists such as Wiz Khalifa, Daddy Yankee, and Snoop Dogg. But the lyrics and final sounds add a distinct rhythmic touch, prompting the audience to shake their legs and say “¡po-po-por eso!³⁰”

Camila

I was first introduced to the world of reparto when I moved to this country. At the time, I was unaware that the sixth-grade ESOL classroom in Little Havana would serve as the breeding ground for the reparteros I would come to write about. Despite meeting the future reparteros in sixth grade, it was not until eighth grade that I began to live and breathe reparto music. I became friends with a girl from my flamenco class, and I was surprised to be shown the world of reparto by her. On paper, she was everything that countered a repartero identity: she was fluent in English, she had good grades, and had not been back to Cuba since she left. However, her affinity with the music of Chocolate MC and El Chulo made her the repartera on the school honor roll.

She showed me the songs of artists such as El Chulo and very quickly I knew all the words to “El Hacha.” As we entered Miami High our proximity to the reparteros quickly made us stand out in the honor and Advanced Placement courses. The students in these classes singled out our presence as part of the reparteros, we became the reparteras in the honor roll. The reparteros were not a welcoming group, at least not during our high school years. You had to somehow prove your worth to sit at the table with them. If you were a girl, you were accepted into the table for a couple of reasons: 1) you were pretty, 2) you were funny, 3) you were a recently arrived Cuban, and 4) you knew someone that they wanted to know. Truth is, trying to follow the standards of the reparteros was difficult, since at a very young age, the girls that stood out in those groups were sexual but untouchable. This was simply never me, my association with the reparteros came from my proximity to my friend and my sister.

Entering high school, I became acquainted with a lot of the reparteros because my sister was dating one of the main reparteros of the school. Her boyfriend had formed a duo with another one of the students and they were on their way to stardom in the genre of reparterismo. The popularity that my sister and her boyfriend enjoyed came from the fact that he was producing and writing his songs. For reparteros, music is a point of connection, creation, and celebrity.

During my junior year of high school, it was not uncommon for the reparteros to take over the tables in the cubanito area (where all the non-English speaking Cubans ate). They would begin rap battles with each other that followed the flow of artists of the repartero genre. The battles would take place during lunchtime and after school, some would be recorded and eventually uploaded to YouTube. In these battles, the reparteros would throw friendly jabs and eventual disses about taking someone’s jeva (girlfriend). The reparteras became the points of contention in the battles and many often ended in full-length diss tracks or physical fights after school in the Burger King parking lot next to Miami High.

Reparteros communicate with music. The sexual innuendos and the descriptive words create a language in which the Cuban youth in Miami is not repressed by language. Their lyrics can describe the desire, the anguish, the happiness, or any emotion that they do not know how to otherwise express. For the reparteros in Little Havana, the music became the substitute for words.

In my junior year of high school, I discovered this affinity with music that reparteros have, when I entered my first real “romance.” The romance fell short when the other person told me that he would not be interested in pursuing a romantic relationship with me, but mostly the romance and whatever was left of my dignity left when -in front of all the reparteros and my friend- said guy proceeded to play El Chulo’s song, “Te Estoy Explicando.” He pointed at me and sang along with the song, “Lo de nosotros solo son descargas. Jamás y nunca me instalo contigo.”(Our thing is just making out. Never ever will I settle with you.) (2018). The situation was pretty embarrassing for me, but I understood that was the way they communicated. After that, I realized a repartero was not in the cards for me.

In my experience, the reparto brought its own set of attributes. A reparto song needs to have a moment in which reparteros can lightly shake their leg -similar to the stanky leg- to the beat when the song goes “po-po-por eso.” The reparteros have created their own dance style that differs from that of perreo,³¹ their movements focus on the shaking or pressing of one body part, and they intertwine salsa steps to follow the rhythm of their auto-tuned songs. The dances can go from imitating simple hand movements that imitate the description of the chorus or can go into intricate choreographies. Miami nightlife has even learned to cater to the reparteros.

The first time I ever entered a nightclub, I was freshly eighteen. Liz joined me and another friend from high school. Before we entered the club, we joked about the reparteros standing in line to enter, and were amazed at how many of them knew the bouncer and were able to skip the line. My sister had used her contacts to get us in touch with a repartero promoter so we could go in for free. The environment widely differed from the clubs I have visited today; the music was all reparto, the people at the private tables of the VIP area did not speak English, and reparto artists such as Wampi, Chocolate MC, and El Taiger were playing repeatedly.

My repartera phase brought with it a time of questionable outfit choices. As women in el reparto, you need to have a nice body, like the one that reparteros sing about, curvaceous, but no stomach, thick thighs, full breasts, and a big butt, all without being overweight. These expectations evoked the stereotypical image of a young female black body (Hernandez, 2020). But, in my case, if you could not have any of those, then you had to at least create the illusion and look pretty somehow. The khaki uniform pants that I used to wear my freshman year, quickly got replaced as I became closer to the repartero circle by a ripped denim skirt that I wore almost every day as a school uniform. The polo uniform shirts were swapped for form-fitting long-sleeve shirts that mirrored the gold or blue color of the uniform. I quickly understood that in order to be desirable or to divert attention from what I did not have, I had to emphasize what little I did have.

The repartero experience in Miami brings with it a mix of a Cuban high school in the United States. The older student affairs supervisor would play “Guachineo” by Chocolate MC and show us her steps as she guachinea’³² to the words of MC. The music became understood by our teachers, in one of the high school’s fashion shows, they featured my sister’s boyfriend who had released a song with a friend days prior. I still do not understand how it was possible to allow this song, which described some sexual innuendos, to be performed for a student event, but that shows the impact of the reparto amongst the youth. To understand us, some of the officials in the school sought to step their leg to el “po-po-por eso³³.”

The impact of reparto in Miami struck me when my sister first took me to Cono Pizza. Located at 1200 SW 67th Ave, this pizzeria was originally named “La Pizzeria de la Farándula.” La Farándula in Cuban slang refers to a group of artists and their groupies. It was clear from the moment you walked in that it was the haven of reparteros. The wall was fully decorated with photos of artists who visited the shop, El Chulo, El Taiger, El Kamel, Osmani “La Voz” Garcia, Chocolate MC, and many more. I liked looking at the bright red walls with the photos and attempting to identify people on the wall; one day, from having been there so often my sister and I got our picture taken. She described being featured on Cono Pizza’s page as the “triumphs of the reparteros.”

Some time later, I started working with Liz at the more upscale Cuban restaurant, Havana Harry’s, which is located on the edge of Coral Gables. There, I began to meet more English-speaking reparteros. Co-workers who spoke English, but who were hijos del reparto (children of el reparto), behaved the same way that the non-English speaking reparteros did back in high school. They threw the reparto step and used the slang featured in the songs such as “tiza³⁴,” “cosa gorda³⁵,” and “bajanda³⁶,” (a deeper glossary provided in the index) the reparto songs became the vessels for the spread of slang between the island and the diaspora in Miami.

Reparto was a way for me to perform Cubanidad. Being half-Mexican and half-Cuban, I constantly felt split between my identities, but being a repartera allowed me to establish my Cuban identity: I fit in with recently arrived young Cubans because we both discovered the songs and the dances at the same time. We exchanged conversations using repartero slang and our family members or friends were at the center of new productions of reparto, we were slowly transforming it into a cultural staple of Cubans. We listened to music and some -like my sister’s boyfriend- created new anthems that solidified the genre as an incoming phenomena.

Eventually, one day came in which reparto simply became part of my life, even outside of the reparteros. The phrases and the sayings became part of the attitudes I displayed when I would get frustrated at work or when I would need to hype myself up to complete a difficult task. At the end of a long day, it was nice to listen to a song that used so many metaphors to say a really simple thing: “Don’t mess with me.” During the pandemic, I became disconnected from the reparteros from my school and I began to view reparto as a secondary attitude to my identity. I felt I was different from them. Reparto became associated with my sister and her friends, and since I had left behind that group, I no longer considered myself to have ever been hija del reparto (a child of el reparto). Yet, every once in a while, my camera roll will remind me of how I would dress and how I would talk. I can not escape my reparto past and all of its sexualizing attitudes towards women. To be a repartera was to make myself desirable to the reparteros. It meant becoming the ideal side-kick to their show, a girlfriend who was desired by others, but was not a slut. It meant being an idea, someone who stood behind her man and supported his music or his fights, it sounds reductive of reparteras to say this, however, the space for female autonomy in this subculture is very limited. The lyrics sexualize and vilify women, even when it is a love song, they emphasize the women’s physical attributes before even commenting on her attitudes and most of the time, the attitudes refer to the way that the woman caters to the man. While I was a repartera, I struggled to feel seen unless it was for my beauty, I learned how to pose and how to post to draw in the reparteros, despite achieving my goal, I always felt alone.

But my repartera days were important. The reparto music and slang provided me with a transitional musical and linguistic subculture that equipped me with a fluency in the Gen-Z Cuban youth culture that helped me navigate belonging in Miami.

Fig 5. Source: Camila Tiburcio. “17th birthday in Brickell City Center.” 14 July, 2020.

Sofia

“The music reminds me of Miami,” she said.

Sofia recalls that during her middle school era in Miami Springs, a more affluent neighborhood of Miami, she found herself surrounded by white and middle-class Cubans. She mentions that during this time she did not hear a lot of repartero music and it was not until she entered Miami Senior High and found herself surrounded by a more diverse Cuban enclave, that the sounds of reparterismo reached her ears.

She recalls a time during her sophomore year when she was at a pep rally. She mentioned that the school was playing either the national anthem or the pledge of allegiance, and after the honoring of the United States ended, a student from each grade was selected to come down to the gym floor and guachinear³⁷ - a form of dancing that came from the reparto song “El Guachineo” by Chocolate MC. The Cubans who had arrived from the island or who continued to preserve their Cuban identity with limited to no assimilation to Miami or U.S. culture were often labeled the reparteros or the balseros; Sofia mentions that the terms were used interchangeably for that group of Cubans who failed to assimilate to their host land.

The music, according to Sofia, makes her feel split on whether to support it or not. To Sofia, these lyrics make her turn away from the genre, making her feel objectified as a woman: “They tend to be pretty objectifying or degrading towards women in general. So, I don’t know, it is like a mix [of feelings]. And then also sometimes it is like how many times can I hear you rap about drugs, money, and women? But then on the other hand it is fun, so I don't know, it is like a mix.”

Sofia finds the music to be a production of Gen-Z Cubans. She mentions the similarities between other forms of musical subcultures such as the creation of underground trap as a subculture of Hip-Hop. She says “Millennials and earlier generations like Gente de Zona, El Chacal, are more like … reggaeton pop.” After comparing it to the underground subcultures of rap, she establishes repartero music as the “Cuban version of that.”

Liz

Liz started listening to reparto music in middle school. She mentions first listening to “Mi Palon Divino,” by Chocolate MC. She describes the beat of the song as one that caught her attention, the rhythms made her cousin dance, and she found the song to be fun. However, she mentions being taken aback by the explicitness of the lyrics. The song’s chorus says “Soy negro, soy feo, pero soy tu asesino. No es la cara ni el cuerpo má’ es mi palón divino.” (I am black, I am ugly, but I am your killer. It is not my face nor my body ma’ it is my divine stick.) (2017). She continues by establishing that to her, the genre seemed comical. The artists have names such as El Chulo, and the catchy comical auto-tune songs make it an enjoyable experience to listen to on a day-to-day basis. Liz began listening to more reparto once she entered high school and became familiar with El Chulo, a 34-year-old reparto singer. With hits such as “Te Estoy Explicando,”“Un Favor,”“Cambia Tú,” and “Tú Puedes Tener Mil Dos,” El Chulo quickly rose to be one of the leading artists of the moment. As Liz’s affinity for reparto music grew, so did Miami’s self-proclaimed “Cubaton y más,” radio station, La Nueva I95.7. The station seemed to be playing a near constant loop of El Chulo’s song and his presence was inescapable. La Nueva went from being ad-free at the time of its founding in 2016, to being the advertising outlet for jewelry stores, plastic surgery, parole, and immigration services. All along it increasingly featured the voices of reparteros.

Liz’s initial introduction to reparto music began with her cousin Randy. She described him as “your typical repartero.” When asked what this meant, she replied, “to me they have a certain look… they have like their eyebrows are always done, they are usually always thin for ‘guys.’ They wear fishing shorts…low fade kinda cut, but then sometimes he [Randy] had very harsh lines, but that is like the style. He had like spiky hair.” She emphasized that Randy, her model of what a repartero is “Wore compression shirts and his shoes were flat… slip-on shoes.” The construction of the repartero identity requires a very unique style, it is this fashion that identifies the members of its subculture. The repartero makes himself known, the streets of Miami are theirs, their fashion choices make the onlooker be drawn to the body of the wearer, the combination of ‘spiky’ hair, tight shirts, and shorts announce their arrival anywhere they set foot in. Their fashion makes them seen. Liz provides a key difference between the reparteros and the recent Cuban arrivals, she suggests this combination of U.S. hip-hop fashion with that of Cubans. She says, “They have similar hairstyles [as those of the Cubans]. They’ll probably have like similar shoes, but then they’ll sag their pants instead of wearing like really tight jeans or they’ll wear really tight jeans but they will sag them.” Her description suggests that it is the Miami reparteros who exist in the Cuban enclave that have merged aspects of hip-hop culture such as the saggy pants style with Cuban fashion of wearing tight clothing. This separates the Gen-Z Miami Cubans as they adopt the styles that are mainstream by artists in the music industry in the United States. Like with the mixture of musical genres, Gen-Z reparteros blend the styles of different youth subcultures, a blur that reflects the different points of media, such as social media, that influences their fashion choices.

Liz described the attitude of the reparteros as being rude. She mentions that they try to be funny by their comments but more often than not they end up being rude. She uses the word, ‘chusma’ to describe them. The spanish dictionary, Diccionario de la lengua española, defines ‘chusma’ as a person of improper manners and vulgar attitudes (n.a.). In Cuban slang, a ‘chusma’ is a person who is vulgar and problematic, who is loud, and who is unpleasant to be around. Liz described feeling intimidated by the 'chusmería' of the reparteros in high school. She recounts that she felt insecure about being in the circle of reparteros as they made nicknames or joke about people’s insecurities. She had interactions with them in passing, but would actively avoid being in the vicinity of the reparteros to avoid being ridiculed. She told the story of being at the table when the reparteros made fun of me. Liz remembered how, we had all been sitting together and one of them commented on my body (for accuracy, he said I had no boobs). Upon hearing the joke, she thought to herself “Oh, okay,” and as I tried to defend myself to the jokester, she felt extremely uncomfortable by the comment. This kind of brutal “jokes” were not something that she was used to, specially when it comes to women’s bodies. The fact that no one stepped in and I was placed at the center of the joke demonstrated the power imbalance at the table: men were able to create a woman, when they wanted her to shine, they would shower her in compliments, but very easily if they wanted to, they could flip a switch and ridicule her utilizing her appearance as a weapon to bring her down. Liz explains that the reason why these reparteros joked about physical attributes was because it was the easiest target, rather than getting to know you, they try to connect with you by insulting you. As a woman if you wanted to be part of the repartero table, it was something you had to deal with whether you liked it or not, your body was a topic of discussion by the men and your treatment depended on whether they liked it or not. For Liz, having limited interactions with the reparteros, it generated anxiety to be placed under investigation by their eyes.

Even though she had first-hand accounts of sharing space with reparteros, Liz does not consider herself a carrier of the label. She marks a difference between herself and them, and says that “they do not meet their match when they meet me.” She says that despite being half-Cuban, she is not confianzuda (too forward), and she does not how “to be Cuban back” to them. She would not know how to respond if they were to insult or approach her because she does not feel as though her Cubanidad is at the same level as theirs. The way that the reparteros embody their Cubanidad is through their outspokenness and their confidence; in contrast, Liz describes herself as being more reserved and shy. She does not carry herself with the guaperia (outspoken attitude) of the Cubans, she does not embody the confidence of the reparteros and this difference in their character made her feel disconnected from the reparteros in Miami High. To us, the attitudes that many Cubans describe as ‘normal’ back in the island, were not compatible with our personalities. It is evident that being a woman in Gen-Z Miami amongst the reparteros required women to be outspoken, to be sexual, and to be witty, you had to be ready with comebacks after hearing a comment about yourself, otherwise, they would eat you alive. This ‘roasting’³⁸ culture aligned with Gen-Z as we grew up with the internet and the ability to say whatever we think without real repercussions combining that with the natural honesty of Cubans makes Gen-Z Cubans harsh-truth bombers, with the victims being mostly women.

Overall, reparto for us is deeply intertwined with our connection to or disconnection from Cuba. For Sofia, reparto was a distant reminder of the ever-growing Cuban enclave in Miami. It represented her disconnect from her Cuban identity, while also solidifying her presence in the Miami Cuban enclave, like the music, her Cuban identity was inescapable in Miami. For Liz, reparto was her reminder of a side of Cuban culture that she does not quite connect with, although she tries. For me, reparto represents a time in my life in which I tried to connect more deeply with my Cuban side; it was a way to perform a Cuban identity without having to learn my Cubanness from the island itself.

Una Vuelta por Miami: Las Jovencitas de la Pequeña Habana³⁹

We used to wait for the night time to drive down Calle Ocho and blast El Chulo. At almost every stop light, we turn to find a car that will join us in singing. Liz and I teased Sofia, asking her to join us in the chorus as we rolled down the windows. On our way to El Perimetro⁴⁰ Road to watch the planes leave Miami International Airport as we eat ColdStone ice cream and talk about anything and everything. We laugh at the song, but we regain our composure to shout once more: “Cada vez que cojo un toto, lo parto.”⁴¹

Liz’s black 2010 Nissan Sentra carried us in our adventures, and as we drove around the city with nothing but music and our thoughts, we would share our experiences at work and at school. We would often discuss incidents that made us uncomfortable, we joked about the creepy men that hit on us, and caught up on the latest gossip on our love lives. In those drives, we would essentially dissect what it meant to be a woman in Little Havana, addressing our sexualities and the performances that we thought would solidify our womanhood.

The performance of womanhood in Little Havana exceeded just the repa’ culture. Coming of age as young women in a Latin American and Caribbean hub, like Miami, came with its own expectations.

Liz

When recounting her experience with sexualization in Little Havana growing up, Liz says: “Going through puberty. You also start developing in different ways, physically. And so Caribbean women are usually seen as very curvy.” she says, “And I have like that gene, and so that was a little challenging for me, just because sometimes Cubans could be -especially Cuban teenagers- can be a little out there, I suppose?” Developing a curvaceous body made you an object of desire of the male population in Little Havana. The everpresent stereotype that Latinas are curvaceous and sexual, colonizes Cuban diasporic life as though it were a cultural truth, leading to the sexualization of girls from a very early age. A study by Susan McCullough establishes that Latinas are “victims of sexualization, and need protection, but individual girls are also expected to have and demonstrate sexual agency.” (2020). The myth that your ethnic background provides you with “sexual” attitudes that other women lack, becomes part of everyday life for the young girls of Little Havana, creating a pressure to perform and embody a hypersexual identity.

In our conversation, Liz looked back on growing up in this culture of sexual expectations and harassment in Miami. “Apparently, I was walking by like a group of boys and they were all like ‘She has a fat ass, blah’ and were just kind of being kind of gross…and they were like ‘Oh yeah, she’s Cuban, that’s why she has like those curves.” Liz adds, “The thing is a lot of Caribbeans live in Miami and a lot of that means having a big butt or big boobs or juicier lips. Maybe long hair, things like that, and I feel like that is even carried to today. A lot of women probably are not naturally like that. So sometimes in Miami, it is kind of like, ‘oh yeah, Miami is like the center of BBLs and lip injections,’ but, I feel like that sort of comes from back in the day like because of these women just naturally being this way.” Jillian Hernandez in her chapter, “Sexual-Aesthetic Excess Or, How Chonga Girls Make the World Burn,” establishes that the black diasporic origin of the aesthetics of the ‘chonga,’or the ‘feminized, gossipy Latinx figure of the chusma, or the chusma-as-teenager”, are displayed but unnamed (2020). In this sense, young Latinas in Miami, specifically in Little Havana, are expected to embody the attributes of bodies associated with hypersexualized blackness and the fetishization of black bodies. Their Latinidad, their mixed racial identities, and their Caribbean identities creates a space of racial ambiguity that places them in an in-between in which their bodies possess the “Caribbean” traits identified with over-policed and stigmatized by black women. Still, their racial ambiguity allows their performance and their display to remain aligned and in proximity to whiteness.

Sofia

In Sofia’s reflections she discussed her thoughts on race, class, and the sexism that she faced growing up in the city. “There is a pretty clear standard of like, you know, find a boyfriend that can provide for you, and then there is also like a lot of racist and racialized remarks,like, ‘ find someone who is just as white or whiter than you, so that your children will look a certain way.’” She goes on, “and then very quickly realizing that, that’s just not going to be my life. My life isn’t gonna look like that, even if I were to find a wife who is in that tax bracket and who looks similar or like, is not the same shade range of what they would want for me. The fact that it is not a man absolutely it does not matter if everything else meets the quote-unquote standards.”

As Sofia commented on her experience, she brought up an important point about queerness in our coming of age. She mentions utilizing her queerness as a weapon to stir away unwanted sexualization and predatory behavior by grown men. In Miami, social conservatism pushed for LGBTQ+ ideals to be pushed to the back burner of a person’s identity as long as they were Cuban. In the 1980s, the queer landscape of Miami acquired more openly gay Cuban migrants from the Marielitos crisis after Fidel Castro opened the border and pushed out social misfits (Cápo Jr., 2010) as queer Cubans grew, older Cuban generations sought to separate themselves from the ‘barbarity’ that came in the Marielitos boat rafts. Richard Blanco in his memoir The Prince of Los Cocuyos writes “Cubans who had been in Miami since the sixties didn’t typically socialize with refugees from El Mariel. Miami Cubans had adopted a “we were here first” attitude towards the Marielitos, whom they generally regarded as bumpkins and riffraff tainted by exposure to Castro’s socialist regime.” (2015). The divide between the Cubans of the 60s and the new Cubans continues to be ever-present in the landscape of Miami. There are the proper Cubans, those who associate behavior and appearance with whiteness, and those who exist in Miami as the ‘other.’

“Being in Miami is much more conservative… It’s Hispanics and Cubans are a lot more socially conservative.” Sofia expresses, “We didn’t have the same political beliefs, or the same political backgrounds. We have different family structures and everything was kind of like I did not really find anywhere to fit in.” Despite being made to feel like an outcast, Sofia attributes her queerness and status of otherness as a savior from being preyed upon by adult men as a coming-of-age girl. “I just started dressing like, with very baggy clothes, just kind of trying to hide my figure, I guess. And at some point, I cut my hair. I dyed it all these other things. So I think just because I wasn’t living to that archetype of femininity like the traditional Latina… I did not get a lot of that [predatory] attention.” The understanding that to avoid grown men’s attention young girls need to cover themselves up and regulate their behaviors is an indication that amongst young women, especially Latinas in Miami, the predatory behavior by grown men is unstigmatized and normalized. For queer women growing up in Miami, queerness can work as a shield from this attention.

Camila

Growing up in Little Havana, I quickly understood that my body was a center of discussion. When I arrived in this country, I was quickly presented with the idea of the Latina body. Having grown up between Mexico and Cuba at that point, I was sheltered by the modesty politics that my suburban neighborhood in Mexico had; to think of talking about my body or even accentuating it through my uniform would have sent my teachers into cardiac arrest. But, quickly, I realized que en Miami la cosa es diferente.⁴²

When I was in seventh grade, my mom and I were coming back from Sedanos supermarket in Flager, carrying bags of groceries to get us through the week. We walked to the supermarket as we lived right next to it. As we neared the entrance of the apartment building a man who was old enough to be my great-grandpa stopped me and started talking to me because I was walking a couple of feet ahead of my mom. My mom quickly ran up and yelled at him: “¡¿Tú no ves que ella es una niña?!”⁴³ That was the last time I walked to the Sedanos until we moved from that area. When I was in eighth-grade, I wanted nothing more than to get a Brazilian butt lift, also known as a BBL. My body had not finished developing. I do not even think I had fully started puberty, but the girls around me had the ideal hourglass figure, they got all the boys' attention, and I felt that I would live my life like the “40-year-old virgin” if I did not act soon. Truth is, growing up in a time in which the “Latina Instagram baddie” was taking over, deeply affected my self-confidence and placed me in a space of vulnerability.

When I was sixteen years old, I was coming into myself. Oddly enough, the pandemic gave me an opportunity to abandon old self-restraints and find myself more “free.” I was working my first job at Havana Harry’s. I had started back in December of 2019, but it was in mid-May - in the thick of the Covid pandemic, that I was able to enjoy my “liberty” through a governmental downplaying of the severity of the pandemic as Florida continued to keep its business open. As I was growing more comfortable with myself, the older men at my job began to approach me with extremely uncomfortable language, telling me things such as “tu mamá y tu papá están escapaos⁴⁴,’” saying that if I was not a minor they would date me. I would step into the kitchen to pick up a take-out order for a customer and the comments and stares felt as though I was entering a meat market as the product. It was disturbing, frankly, I could never understand who to trust. One time, I went to pick up a dessert from the restaurant on my day off with my coworker and friend, and one of the employees, whom I had seen as a sort of father/elder figure, saw us wearing our shorts (as is custom in the Miami weather) and told us: “I see why the Muslims make their women cover up!” I never went again to pick up food on my day off, and that was the last time I talked to him.

The idea of young girls dating older men was never too far removed from Little Havana. My freshman year, a fifteen-year-old classmate of mine had a live-in boyfriend who was twenty-four years old. My sister had a friend, who upon hearing that I was seventeen years old and a virgin, told me the story of losing her virginity at fourteen to her brother’s twenty-six year old best friend back in Cuba; her story made me feel like I was an outsider for not having had sex yet, she was not the only story I had heard of young girls having sex with older men. The overpowering aura of dominant male sexuality has a chokehold in Miami culture; you were a weirdo for being a ‘late bloomer.’ Not only as a Latina, but as a Cuban you were supposed to be ‘out there,’ suelta. Even if you were not in the immediate circle of the cubanitos and the reparteros, existing in the Cuban enclave required you to perform to some extent as the girl in the reggaeton, salsa, or hip-hop songs. As a woman, it was our duty to fulfill those fantasies if we wanted to be embraced by male attention.

But entre nosotras⁴⁵, we found strength and support in each other’s arms.

En Fin…¡Qué Va!⁴⁶⁴⁷

In our final interview, Liz helped me understand ultimately what this project aimed to do: “You’re from Mexico, right? And the fact that we are half Cuban like creates a bridge for us to relate.” While trying to decide how to narrow down all the topics we had touched upon during our time together, I found myself struggling to see the “good” in what we were discussing. We told stories of sexual harassment, discouraging professors, and low-income living with a smile, we laughed as we recalled the struggles of walking down Calle Ocho as a developing girl and having old men stop you, and as insane as the stories sounded they rolled off our tongues with ease. We understood the severity of what we had to say, but we did not project it like it was a true crime documentary. For us, that was simply Miami.

But, that is not to say that every experience that came out of our time in Little Havana was a negative one. Liz says that she found our Cuban identity as a way for us to connect through our struggles. While we each performed our identities differently based on our split nationalities, we ultimately found common ground when highlighting our Cuban side. However, she makes an interesting comment: “I saw a TikTok the other day where the lady, she’s from, like Ohio or something. She had a very thick Southern accent… and she was saying how her husband is from Jersey, and her little kid is growing up here in Miami, and so she was like, ‘I have a specific accent, and my husband has a specific accent, and I am so excited for my baby to grow up and be like, no, literally.’” She ultimately highlights that “at the end of the day, even if you are not Cuban, you still find yourself immersed in that culture, living in Miami.” The Cuban enclave in Miami, specifically in Little Havana, has advanced to merge itself into the core of Miami culture, a Miami accent is a blend of the Cuban accent. The student office in our high school served pastelitos de guayaba, and coladas,⁴⁸ and played a little bit of Polo Montañez in the background.

The culture and our generation's experiences allowed for the formation of a subculture that is a mixture of different nationalities with Cuban culture. The leading culture ends up being that of Cuba, but many of our generation end up being mixtures, as Sofia establishes, “A lot of us are Cuban-American. But a lot of people are mixed with something else, I had a lot of friends growing up, it was like Cuban and Colombian, Cuban and Venezuelan, Cuban-Spanish, and other stuff. So I think, like, just getting to experience what being Cuba is outside of Cuba.” These mixed children are the representation of the prolonged diasporic communities of Cuba. This study, ultimately, highlights how the dynamics of the Cuban enclave in Miami have evolved in recent years. Facing the changing demographic of the Cubans who migrate, the discrimination in education policy towards Cubans who fail to assimilate into the expected educational and language progress, the rising cost of living in Miami, as well as the lack of parental presence due to the need for labor to survive; it was through the stories of Sofia, Liz, and me that this study aims to capture what a Gen-Z teenager’s life used to be in Little Havana.

Life in Little Havana is no longer what it used to be, with many Cubans migrating away from the area, as well as other migrants, due to the growing threat of gentrification and luxury rentals pushing out members of the community. The construction of Downtown Miami and the Brickell area has incentivized real estate agents to move towards Calle Ocho and bring the immigrant community to “modernity” with the building and promotion of new innovative and luxury shops, homes, and streets. On one of my visits back home during college, we drove past the Burger King where my sister fed me with whatever spare money she could steal from her piggy bank, and realized that the shops next to it were now high-end Asian fusion cuisines. My sister and I looked at each other and I asked her how long this had been going on and she told me that she did not know, for she was never en Calle Ocho because the traffic towards Brickell made a simple errand feel like you were taking a trip to Orlando.

Regardless of the current changes threatening Little Havana, we look back on our time growing up, and we remember ourselves having fun. In the midst of the uncertainty and the challenges that we faced in our everyday lives, we found ourselves connecting over our mockery of Cuban Miami. Blasting El Chulo, mimicking and taking control over the misogynistic lyrics, we shout down the streets of Miami the words to his song. As we make the trip to Cono Pizza, every single time when I return from college, we reminisce on the times of our lives in which we were trying to make sense of ourselves, something we could not have done without each other. Sofia says, “we had a lot of fun…I really enjoyed being exposed to different versions of Cuban culture,” we each carried with us our own ways of being Cuban, a performance that was influenced by the nationality that we were mixed with. Nonetheless, today Liz and Sofia, find peace with their Cuban identity and shift to recognize it as a product of Miami; recognizing that a Miami identity is influenced primarily by Cuban culture. Chances are if you live in Miami, you will learn about Cubans more than Cubans will learn about you.

Ultimately, each of us is able to recognize the uniqueness of growing up in Little Havana. We faced a lot of challenges, but we agreed that we would not change it because we found each other. We continue to find community with each other, allow our Cuban identities to bind us closer, and lift each other up when we need it. If Miami ever gave us one thing, it was our friendship. A treasure that survives on the repa’ car rides and hosts debriefs over ropa vieja with arroz congri’ and maduros.

Fig 6. Source: Sofia. “Our Miami sunset through Liz’s Car in the Kmart Parking Lot.” 17 Dec. 2024.

References

Aja, A. A. (2008). Miami’s dual stew pot: Revisiting the limits of ethnic solidarity in the Miami Cuban enclave and implications for public policy (Master’s thesis). Milano, The New School for Management and Urban Policy.

Aja, A. A. (2016). Miami’s forgotten Cubans: Race, racialization, and the Miami Afro-Cuban experience. Palgrave Macmillan US.

Albizu-Campos, J. C. (2024, July 15). Cuba. Una rápida mirada a la emigración y la población. Cuba Capacity Building Project. https://horizontecubano.law.columbia.edu/news/cuba-una-rapida-mirada-la-emigracion-y-la-poblacion

Arjona, R. [Metamorfosis Enterprises Inc]. (2010, August 16). Puente [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/1FjioLylS8Q

Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, & Music Television. (2021). MTV/AP-NORC poll: Younger generations stand out on identity, acceptance, and progressive policies (Issue brief, pp. 1–32).

Benson, D., & Clealand, D. (2021). Re-narrating Mariel: Black Cubans, racial exclusion, and building community in Miami. Anthurium, 17(2), 1–17.

Blanco, R. (2015). The prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami childhood. HarperCollins.

Capó Jr., J. (2010). Queering Mariel: Mediating Cold War foreign policy and U.S. citizenship among Cuba’s homosexual exile community, 1978–1994. Journal of American Ethnic History, 29(4), 78–106.

Cearns, J. (2022). Narrating the nation: Heterotopian struggles for self-representation in the Cuban diaspora. Museum Anthropology, 45(2), 124–139.

Charanga Habanera [Planet Records Official]. (2011, January 14). Gozando en la Habana [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/IHL9u3uN65Q

Chocolate MC [Urban Latin Records]. (2015, January 20). Guachineo [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/evdtMZhrsqU

Chocolate MC [Pacheco Entertainment Production Enterprises]. (2017, April 14). Mi palon divino [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/3yZSHJ_f3EM

City of Hialeah. (n.d.). About Hialeah. Hialeah, FL. https://www.hialeahfl.gov/467/About-Hialeah

Cobo, L. (2021, November 11). Cuba’s new ‘Patria y Vida’ revolution: Watch El Funky’s first U.S. interview with Yotuel and Beatriz Luengo. Billboard. https://www.billboard.com/music/latin/patria-y-vida-cuba-el-funky-yotuel-interview-watch-9658683/

Colomé, C. G. (2024, July 23). De 11 millones de habitantes a poco más de 8,5: el saldo real de la crisis migratoria en Cuba. El País.

Crucet, J. C. (2019). My time among the whites: Notes from an unfinished education. Picador.

Cubas, M. A. (2007). Performing cubanidad: Identity & expressive culture in Cuban Miami (Doctoral dissertation). University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Dahlia, K. [Epic Records]. (2013, June 20). Gangsta en Español [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMuhgU_tUcc

Darlin, S. H. (2021, December 6). Miami High School [Photograph].

De Aguero, A. (1984, June 8). Cultures withstand language barriers. Miami High Times, LX(7), 4. https://www.miamiseniorhigh.org/ourpages/auto/2014/9/25/56430053710937555898/06-84.pdf

Dimock, M. (2019, January 17). Defining generations: Where Millennials end and Generation Z begins. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/01/17/where-millennials-end-and-generation-z-begins/

DJ Unico, et al. [ONErmp]. (n.d.). Cambia tú [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/67rRdOQgyy8

Dopico, A. (2025). Personal communication.

El Chulo [AK-47 Records]. (2017, May 24). El hacha [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/pB-AkNdkPTg

El Chulo [AK-47 Records]. (2018, May 13). Te estoy explicando [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/zgQ9THoqLB4

El Chulo, & El Kamel [AK-47 Records]. (2019, May 9). Un favor [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/DctUmNXTkCE

El Chulo, et al. [AK-47 Records]. (2018, January 2). Tu puedes tener mil 2 – Remix [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/SteiPf40Um8

El Chulo, et al. [AK-47 Records]. (2018, January 23). Un palo como tú [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/q9LqjkcINvo

Electronic System for Travel Authorization. (2024, November 16). How safe is Miami, FL? https://usaestaonline.es/how-safe-is-miami

Fernandez, C. M. (2014). Leaving Little Havana: A memoir of Miami’s Cuban ghetto. Beating Windward Press.

García, M. C. (1998). Hardliners v. “Dialogueros”: Cuban exile political groups and United States–Cuba policy. Journal of American Ethnic History, 17(4), 3–28.

González, B. (2024, April 26). El reparto: un fenómeno musical que está “pegao” (I). Cubanet. https://www.cubanet.org/el-reparto-un-fenomeno-musical-que-esta-pegao-i/

Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau. (n.d.). Map of Little Havana [Image].

Grenier, G. J., & Lai, Q. (2024). How Cuban Americans in South Florida view U.S. policies towards Cuba, critical national issues and the upcoming elections. Cuban Research Institute.

Grenier, G. J., & Moebius, C. J. (2015). A history of Little Havana. History Press.

Haq, H. (2013, January 16). Cuba lifts travel restrictions. British Broadcasting Corporation.

Hernandez, J. (2020). Sexual aesthetics or, how chonga girls make class burn. In Aesthetics of excess: The art and politics of Black and Latina embodiment. Duke University Press.

Hernandez-Reguant, A. (2022). Making the Cuban American dream great again. In J. D. Eller (Ed.), The anthropology of Donald Trump: Culture and the exceptional moment (pp. 59–74). Routledge.

Hiebert, D., et al. (2023, September 7). Cuban immigrants in the United States. Migration Policy Institute. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/cuban-immigrants-united-states-2021

Jones, C., & Draper, E. (2022, February 28). Miami Dade’s first integrated school pays homage to the past while moving forward. NBC Miami. https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/miami-dades-first-integrated-school-pays-homage-to-past-while-moving-forward/2701497/

Jorgensen, J. (n.d.). Hialeah, FL. Data USA. https://datausa.io/profile/geo/hialeah-fl/#demographics

KidFury, & Bibleteawithamarie. (2023). Miami is not apart of Florida [Short video]. YouTube. https://youtube.com/shorts/dcyUcfdMfqU?si=OqySww79vYw6FcaR

Levine, M. (2021). Sounding El Paquete. Cuban Studies, 50, 139–160.

Loka, K. [Planet Records Official]. (2009, March 20). No me da mi gana americana [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/zwX0e7rHm5E

Martinez, B. P. (2020). The case of Cubans: Racial inequality in U.S. homeownership and home values. Sociological Forum, 1–25.

McCullough, S. (2020). “You know it’s really hard, right?” Friendships, relational aggression and sexualization of Latina girls in middle school. In Latina students’ experiences in public schools: Educational equity and gender (pp. 36–57). Routledge.

Moore, D. D. (1996). To the golden cities: Pursuing the American Jewish dream in Miami and L.A. Harvard University Press.

Moslimani, M., et al. (2023, August 16). Cuban in the U.S. | Data on Latinos. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-sheet/u-s-hispanics-facts-on-cuban-origin-latinos/#educational-attainment

Nicoletti, A. (2024, January 23). Even among immigrants, English is the preferred language in Miami. FIU News. https://news.fiu.edu/2024/miami-english-and-spanish-bias-preference-study

Nordheimer, J. (1985, November 7). Cuban-Americans in Miami move to threshold of power. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1985/11/07/us/cuban-americans-in-miami-move-to-threshold-of-power.html

Omatsu, G. (2016). The “four prisons” and the movements of liberation: Asian American activism from the 1960s to 1990s. In M. Zhou & C. Lee (Eds.), Contemporary Asian America (3rd ed.): A multidisciplinary reader. New York University Press.

OtaolaforMayor. (n.d.). Alex Otaola for Mayor – Campaign. https://otaolaformayor.com/

Pavon, L. (2023, July 12). Selfie outside Night Owl Cookies [Photograph]. Miami.

Pavon, L. (2024). Personal interview.

Pedroso, O. C. (2020, February 27). Cambia tu baile repartero cubano [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/sQKrQm8mEGc

Pew Research Center. (2006). Cubans in the United States: Fact sheet (pp. 1–16). Pew Hispanic Center.

Plasencia, A. (2022). Proposed ordinance would legalize efficiencies in parts of Miami-Dade. NBC 6 South Florida – Miami Local News. https://www.nbcmiami.com/

Quintanilla, I. (2021, August 9). Two homelands converge for LGBTQ Cuban Americans in Miami’s Little Havana. IGLTA. https://www.iglta.org/blog/post/two-homelands-converge-for-lgbtq-cuban-americans-in-miamis-little-havana/

Rauw y Becky G [NoeAcevedo]. (2023, May 6). #rauwalejandro #beckyg [Short video]. YouTube. https://youtube.com/shorts/-fYdiuDoOlk?si=Tu4jU2LRS4YRD11C

Real Academia Española. (n.d.). Chusma [Definition]. Diccionario de la lengua española. https://dle.rae.es/chusma

Real Academia Española. (2023). Perreo [Definition]. Diccionario de la lengua española.

Rosebud1776. (2017, May 5). Roasting. Urban Dictionary. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Roasting

Sofia. (2024). Personal interview.

Sofia. (2024, December 17). Our Miami sunset through Liz’s car in the Kmart parking lot [Photograph].

Stocking, G., et al. (2024, November 18). Influencers who often post about news, and who sees their content. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2024/11/18/americas-news-influencers/#news-influencers-are-mostly-men-more-explicitly-identify-as-right-leaning-than-left-leaning

Tiburcio, C. (2019, October 18). Miami High 2019 pep rally [Photograph].

Tiburcio, C. (2020, July 14). 17th birthday in Brickell City Center [Photograph].

Tureng Dictionary. (n.d.). Repartera [Definition]. Spanish-English Dictionary.

UM Libraries. (n.d.). In search of freedom: Cuban exiles and the U.S. Cuban refugee program. University of Miami. https://scholar.library.miami.edu/digital/exhibits/show/freedom/services

United States Census Bureau. (2024, July 1). Miami-Dade County, Florida. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/miamidadecountyflorida

Urban Latin. (2015, September 13). Chocolate MC > Guachineo > The Salsation Dance by Alejandro Angulo [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/X8QtW6S_hdc

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. (2025, April 8). Green card for a Cuban native or citizen. https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-eligibility/green-card-for-a-cuban-native-or-citizen

U.S. News & World Report. (n.d.). Miami Senior High School. https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/florida/districts/miami-dade-county-public-schools/miami-senior-high-school-4848

Yotuel, et al. [Chancleta Records]. (2021, February 16). Patria y vida [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP9Bto5lOEQ

Footnotes

¹A printed version of the playlist is included in the index of the thesis.

²No me da mi gana Americana is a Cuban saying that is difficult to translate. Derived from Kola Loka’s song “No me da mi gana Americana.” An English approximation is “I do not want to because I am American,” although not fully accurate, the context provided above should enlighten the concept further.

³“Camila does not want to because she is American.”

⁴Puente translates to bridge. Inspired by Ricardo Arjona’s song “Puente.”

⁵“There is a Cuban in Havana/Blocked in the American way, the poisonous enemy/A Cuban in Havana who is at fault for nothing.”

⁶“There is a Cuban in Miami, who holds grudges by tradition/A Cuban in Miami who is at fault for nothing.”

⁷Works by scholars like Jose Muñoz and Julio Capo exist but they focus on older Cuban generations or the overall presentation of queer people in Miami rather than the presence of queer Cubans in Miami.

⁸“You five-nine (59, as in the year of the Cuban Revolution), me double-two (2020, as in the year of the San Isidro movement).”

⁹“But that today, it was shit.”

¹⁰“You suffering in Miami and me rejoicing in…” taken from Charanga Habanera’s hit song “Gozando en la Habana.”

¹¹Bread with tomato and oil, popular Cuban lunch.

¹²Hispanic tradition which celebrates a woman’s transition into womanhood once she turns fifteen years-old.

¹³“What do you need Mickey Mouse for, if you like El Pidio Valdes?” - making a reference to the cartoon el Pidio Valdes, a Cuban patriot who fights against the Spanish and the Americans in the Cuban War of Independence.

¹⁴“gossip”

¹⁵See footnote 10.

¹⁶Brandon P. Martinez, Research associate at the Institute for State & Local Governance at the City University of New York, reveals in his 2020 study The Case of Cubans, that he found a significant decrease in the homeownership rate of recent Cuban migrants, in comparison to their older counterparts; taking into account the changing racial demographic of Cuban migrants, Martinez demonstrates how racial inequalities are coming into play by deterring the benefits that new Cuban migrants receive, as well as access to the American Dream that their older, white counterparts did not face.

¹⁷Camila to the right, Sofia in the middle, and Liz to the left.

¹⁸“My rent is never overlooked,” an approximate translation of Kat Dahlia’s lyric on her song “Gangsta en Español.”

¹⁹See footnote 18.

²⁰The Cuban Adjustment Act instituted in 1966 allows for Cubans who arrive in the United States after 1959 to receive a green card after living in the country for over a year (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services).

²¹“You need to trespass the limits of Hialeah!”

²²Candela in Cuban lingo refers to a crazy, hot-headed person, or scandalous person. Very fitting for my dog!

²³In Cuban lingo, to say someone “esta escapao’” refers to a person being a genius or overachieving in a subject or area.

²⁴Famous Miami discount shop. Its name more or less translates to the reaction of Cubans at the surprisingly cheap prices: “Fuck, that is cheap!”

²⁵In Cuban schools, “¡pioneros por el comunismo, seremos como el Ché!” (pioneers for communism, we will be like Che!) is their loyalty pledge to the Revolutionary mission. In this sense, Cuban-American Gen-Z is saying “adiós” (goodbye) to Che Guevara by aligning themselves with far-right, capitalist, and conservative thought.

²⁶Repartera is a term that describes women who listen to Reparto music, a genre of music that mixes hip-hop and reggeaton with Cuban sounds. Tureng Dictionary attributes two meanings to the word, colloquially it refers to a rude person and generally it referers to a young hip-hop fan. Locating ourselves in the center of Little Havana, Calle Ocho, I called this section “Reparteras in Eight Street.”

²⁷“Anyone can fuck me like you, that is why we broke up, go fuck off!/ That you will always be the same repartera!” rough translation of lyrics to “Un Palo Como Tu” by El Chulo. The song basically discusses how the ex-partner of the singer is not a good woman, and that the singer is very desired and does not need to put up with her issues, as this woman is a nobody, just another repartera.

²⁸Everytime I fuck a pussy, I break it.” rough translation of El Chulo’s song “Un Palo Como Tu.” ¡Yo soy del reparto! “I am from the reparto!” Is a phrase that self-proclaims belonging into the subculture created by the genre.

²⁹Reparto: A genre of Cuban music that combines elements of hip-hop and reggeton with Cuban sounds, its vulgar lyrics allow it to act as a mode of ‘truth-telling’ for the singers (Betancourt, n.a.).

³⁰“Be-be-because!” rough translation of “¡po-po-por eso!”

³¹Perreo: dance that is generally performed to the rhythm of reggaeton, with erotic hip movements, and in which, when dancing in pairs, the man usually places himself behind the woman with their bodies very close together (Real Academia Española).

³²Guachinea’: When a Cuban guachinea, they are doing the dance to Chocolate MCs’s song “Guachineo,” which asks its listeners to use the point of their feet to step in place and cross to the side.

³³See footnote 30.

³⁴“Tiza,” rough translation, is “someone who is the ‘it’ woman.”

³⁵“Cosa Gorda”, rough translation, is “someone who is attractive (typically a woman).”

³⁶“Bajanda,” rough translation, is “to tell someone to go away or leave forever.”

³⁷See footnote 32.

³⁸Roasting: Roasting someone means that you know how to be tactfully mean (snarky) without being mean-spirited in poking fun at someone, teasing, ruthlessly ridiculing, trash talking, and even mocking them (Urban Dictionary).

³⁹“A trip around Miami: The young ladies of Little Havana”

⁴⁰Perimeter Road is located on North West 22nd Street, it is next to the airport. Popular road amongst our generation to drive down and park on the edge to watch planes take off.

⁴¹See footnote 28.

⁴²“That in Miami, things are different.”

⁴³“Can’t you see she is a little girl?!”

⁴⁴“Your mom and your dad killed it.” This was said in reference to my appearance, meaning my parents did a “good job” making me.

⁴⁵“But together”

⁴⁶In Cuban custom, this phrase is said when a conversation is ended but the matter is not put to rest or the outcome is not satisfactory, similar to saying “it is what it is.”

⁴⁷“In the end, what a drag!” rough translation.

⁴⁸“Guava pastries and a shot of Cuban coffee.”

Index

Playlist: “Tú Cinco-Nueve, Yo Doble Dos: Understanding Cubanidad in Gen-Z Little Havana” by Camila

1. “No Me Da Mi Gana Americana” by Kola Loka
2. “Puente” by Ricardo Arjona
3. “Patria y Vida” by Yotuel, Gente de Zona, Descemer Bueno, Maykel Osorbo, and El Funky
4. “Gozando en la Habana” by David Calzado y su Charanga Habanera
5. “Gangasta en Español” by Kat Dahlia
6. “Un Palo Como Tu” by El Chulo, El Kamel, El Bacoco, and Titico
7. “Guachineo” by Chocolate MC
8. “Mi Palon Divino” by Chocolate MC
9. “Te Estoy Explicando” by El Chulo
10. “Un Favor” by El Chulo and El Kamel
11. “Cambia Tú” by DJ Unico, Wampi, El Chulo, and El Kimiko y Yordy
12. “Tu Puedes Tener Mil 2 - Remix” by El Chulo, El Kamel, Manu Manu
13. “El Hacha” by El Chulo

B.

Repartero Slang Glossary and Translation