The sharp smells of fresh pasteles (pastry) and café cubano waft from a hundred neighborhood coffee stands. Youngsters are everywhere, downing batidos (exotic fruit milkshakes) at open-air counters or putting away Grandes Macs at the McDonald's eatery on Flagler Street. This is Little Havana, a 5-sq.-mi. Cuban enclave in the middle of Miami.
Hispanics account for more than half of the city's population (207,000 out of 370,000), and the overwhelming majority of them are Cuban. They have given Miami, as Rum Maker Gerardo Abascal observes, "a spontaneity and boisterous flavor that it never had...
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