To the south, south, south

Florida is almost a different country. You nearly forget you are in the States. The truth is that this southern region has the same characteristics than the rest of the country: you depend mainly on cars as transportation system, there are shopping centers in every corner, you also have that strange lane in the middle of the street to turn left or right, pedestrians are overwhelmingly ignored… Yes, in the outside Florida is just the same that the rest of USA, but inside, the content, is a completely different thing.

Today I went to the church, I wanted to see how was the mass in Spanish here. The St. Isaac Jogue is a huge church, and it was completely crowded; people was even standing to be able to listen to the mass. I was just thinking how amazing this country is that a Spanish church is this crowded and this… Well, Hispanic, when the first lecture began: “You shall not molest or oppress an alien” that means that you shouldn’t bullying foreign people. And tt is a big deal to say that in a building full of foreigners. And it seems like people in Florida heard this before and took it as their own thing. The cultures mixed is so impressive, and it is such a decisive factor in the daily life here that a few days ago I was walking in a mall and some girl in a store started talking to me in Spanish and then changed to English and then Spanish again. I asked her where she was from, because she spoke such a good Spanish, and she told me she was from Israel. I asked her how she learned Spanish and she just told me: “well, I work here”, like if Spanish was the official language of this country!

In any store, market, pharmacy, there is at least one Hispanic person. You can listen to latin music while you are driving and they have Hispanic channels in the TV, you can even request your country’s national channels –good thing considering that in Venezuela we have a lot of banned channels- In Walmart, the most famous American supermarket, they sell of kind of Hispanic food, not only the famous tortillas or tacos, no… They sell harina pan, venezuelan chocolates… Everything.

This little piece of land is a culture swirl: today the priest wanted to tell some story with a bus and he had to use all the Hispanic words for bus, depending on the country: bus, buseta, guagua, camion, camioneta… so everybody could understand what he meant. This corner in USA, where americans come make some tourism, really belongs to the tourists, to the outsiders, the foreigners, the newcomers, the illegals to the immigrants. Here, where Trump has some of his most expensive hotels, is the entrance to a better life for millions of people, people that don’t speak English, that have never taken a flights, that probably never left their countries before, and maybe for that they take their country with them and make a small model here, in Florida streets.

Chinese came to NY, Italians too and most European people, and somehow they passed their refinement and mysticism to this city, making of it what It is today. In the same way, Hispanic people took over Florida. The difference is that they –we- are not just in a couple of blocks, Hispanic people is everywhere; as I told you, in every shop, in every street, in every school… here American culture and Hispanic culture –Puerto Rican, Venezuelan, Cuban, Mexican, Colombian... are blurred, mixed, just one incredible thing. Un arroz con mango, as we would say in Venezuela.

This American southern border is exposed, because of its location, to hurricanes, tropical storms, tornados… and even with this clear danger, the city is full of tourist the whole year, even in hurricane season. But is it really tourists? Maybe you could think that if you don’t ask the migratory status of your neighbor. Migratory status. That is the third language of this land, the migratory, legal speaking. Everybody here knows what is an asylum, a refugee or an illegal. Everybody knows that is the difference between citizenship, residence, refuge… everybody knows what you need to get a job, depending on your status. And this is not just for Hispanics, Americans, born and grown here, also know this stuff, because they probably have friends, a boyfriend or girlfriend, in that situation.

Americans, I have to say it, have a lot of defects and do a lot of bad things, but they have allowed their country to be a shelter for many. This could change, they say they want to change it. But I believe that deep down they know that their industry, economy and even culture depends on a great measure on Hispanics, legals and illegals. Someone once told me that latin American women were beautiful because of the mix of races we come from… this may be a lie, but every reasoning has some right in it and it is undeniable that mixing makes races stronger. Orlando –and we haven’t even talked about Miami- is a prosper, thriving, pretty city… and It is also a blank canvas, where everybody has left a brushstroke. And the piece is not done yet.

Source

Photo gallery