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If Cuba's middle class was transplanted largely intact to Miami, so were the island's language and culture. Today the city has four radio stations and a television station that broadcast in Spanish, as well as a score of Spanish-language newspapers and magazines. Well-to-do Cubans gather daily at the Big Five Club (initiation fee per family: $2,000), a country club made up of members of five of pre-Castro Havana's most prestigious clubs. Bowntown at the American Club, members of the Cuban-American business establishment meet for lunch and a friendly game of cubilete (dice). A once famous Havana restaurant, Centre Vasco, has been resurrected on Miami's Southwest Eighth Street; its walls are adorned with jai alai baskets and its tables laden with steaming arroz con pollo and chilled sangria. The streets of La Saguesera bustle with fruit and vegetable stands, stores displaying religious artifacts, and cafes that serve jet-black Cuban coffee; at dusk the air is filled with the nostalgic beat of Latin music and the aroma of sofrita, the distinctive Cuban seasoning. Even the craft of Cuban cigar making is flourishing in Florida; the leaves come from Nicaragua but are grown from Cuban seeds.
Two Sets of Values. At least 50,000 of Bade County's Cuban-Americans were born in the U.S., and are proving remarkably adept at absorbing American culture. Teen-agers in La Saguesera may delight in the café con leche and mediasnoches (Cuban sandwiches) of the garish, mirrored Versailles coffeehouse, but they are equally at home in more anglo surroundings; fútbol (soccer) is popular, but so are béisbol and fútbol americano. "Being a Cuban-American is having two sets of values," explains Raimundo Sacre, 16, who was brought to the U.S. at the age of three. "At school we live the American life; at home we try to live as Cubans."
The contest between two Cuban-American candidates for the Republican nomination to a congressional seat last week provided an apt reflection of the prevailing spirit of La Saguesera's people. Miguel Carricarte charged that his rival, Evelio Estrella, could not speak English very well; Estrella charged om turn that Carricarte's Spanish was pretty feeble. Carricarte won easily. He is not expected to defeat veteran Democratic Congressman Claude Pepper in November's general election, but by 1976 or 1978, as increasing numbers of Sagueseranos become eligible to vote, it may be a different story.