City in the Sun, City in the Snow: Miami Montreal

By Billy Georgette

AT FIRST GLANCE, THERE MIGHT NOT BE MUCH IN COMMON BETWEEN THESE TWO VERY DIFFERENT NORTH AMERICAN CITIES. AND WHILE THIS IS IN FACT TRUE, THE CASUAL READER MAY BE SURPRISED TO LEARN THAT BOTH LOCATIONS SHARE A STRIKINGLY SIMILIAR BACKGROUND OF EVENTS THAT MAKE THEM SOMEWHAT DIFFERENT THAN THEIR CONTINENTAL NEIGHBOURS. BEST DESCRIBED AS AFFECTIONATE PROFILING THE AUTHOR LEADS US DOWN A PATHWAY INTO A GALLERY OF IMAGES AND FACTS ABOUT THESE TWO, EXTRA EXTRA ORDINARY COMMUNITIES MIAMI AND MONTRAL

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524586997

Billy Georgette

Billy Georgette is a Montreal jazz pianist with a taste for historical matters

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Copyright © 2017 by Billy Georgette.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2017902982

ISBN:      Hardcover             978-1-5245-8697-3

                 Softcover              978-1-5245-8698-0

                 eBook                    978-1-5245-8699-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 02/25/2017

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From the very moment that you enter it’s zone, It hits you: this warm envelopment that takes over your entire body, makes you suddenly feel lightheaded and liberated from your immediate past… like walking through an enchanted door into an entirely new dimension.

And there it is, lush and delicious, all spread out around you, waiting to be devoured, savored, a sensual feast. Perfumed pathways of foliage strewn with bougainvillea lead the way past rhumba dancing palms to water’s edge.

Along the beach, sandpipers, serious as professors, their little legs going lickety-split, run delicately to and fro from the foamy white surf with eager pointy beaks.

Overhead, a flying platoon of pelicans in V formation slide effortlessly across a blue expanse that blends into an azul ocean below. Then, at day’s end, a huge red moon rises slowly out of the sea until it regains luminosity taking it’s place on a velvet carpet of stars.

Yes, It is a place of awesome beauty, this city in the sun.

In the Great White North, time moves inevitably across the seasons, but takes a long deep breath as the days segue into winter, and winter makes itself at home in no uncertain terms. Crystals form on windows and icicles hang off ledges. Boots and tuques appear, the sound of crunchy sidewalks slowing the way to comfy cosy interiors where the warmth of friends and laughter shuts out the frigid air. Strangely, the human mind seems to work well in these circumstances, sending creativity spinning off in all directions while it eagerly awaits the ever so tardy spring to arrive. Yes, winter is long and cold, and very, very white on the city in the snow.

Defined as being ‘known through fable’, Miami is simply fabulous… the Shangri-La of the new world. It evidently has what everyone wants, and it has it in extremes like a raving beauty at a Miss Universe competition. What’s not to like? could easily be the motto of this city as it’s extraordinary popularity has now grabbed the interest of an entire planet, projecting Miami into a class of it’s own, a big ‘Number One’ world destination.

But this sunshine city has a dark and violent past which will hopefully remain buried, hopefully never to return.

Early in 1980, some white racist policemen brutally murdered a respectable black businessman for no evident reason, leaving the city in shock. Brought to justice, a court in Tampa dismissed the charges against the police. A few months later, smoldering resentment burst into flames, sparking the worst race riots in American history. Known as the "McDuffie affair, it brought to light a long pattern of abuse by the police against the city’s negro population, a community with deep historic roots in Miami. With hundreds of people both black and white, dead or injured, it would take decades for the traumatized city to recover from the riots, a process that is still ongoing.

During this same time-period, Fidel Castro, reacting to the question of hi-jacked airplanes and citizens seeking refuge in Havana’s Peruvian Embassy, opened the fishing port of Mariel to dissidents and criminals released from prisons who piled into boats heading for Miami. Suddenly the city had hundreds of thousands of homeless desperate cubans unable to speak english, living in tents under concrete interstate I-95. Known as Marielitos, the majority of these hapless people were eventually able to integrate themselves into the American mainstream, but a large dangerous minority were also turned loose on an unsuspecting population setting the stage for the worst drug and crime epidemic ever seen in an american city.

And then, as if this wasn’t enough, the city had to go through a looming nuclear threat a mere 90 miles off it’s coast.

Hey, that’s a lot for one town…and you thought that things were tough on your turf!

Columbus may have discovered the new world, but it was the Spanish who conquered the Americas, decimating the native peoples and stealing their fortunes of gold. Heirs to the Spanish Inquisition, they visited disease and death upon an innocent native peoples with absolutely no compunction. Morally bankrupt, the descendants of these Conquistadors developed multiple mindsets and attitudes, including a deep-rooted distrust of Anglos, and a strong anti-American orientation. Consequently, relations between the United States with it’s Latino neighbors have often been rife with trouble.

Cuba’s greatest hero, José Marti wrote It is my duty to prevent, through the independence of Cuba, the U.S.A. from spreading over the West Indies and falling with added weight upon other lands of ‘Our America’. All I have done up to now and shall do hereafter is to that end, I know the Monster, because I have lived in it’s lair, and my weapon is only the slingshot of David

Feelings like these must be the bi-product of some long smoldering antagonism, by who knows what, started by who knows whom in history’s tangled past. Could it have been the defeat of the invincible Spanish Armada?

Feelings like these are cigar smokin’ hot on Calle Ocho down in Little Habana where the locals thrive on the legend of the heroes of 2506 Brigade. Temperament meets with the passion of el Exilio at the Martyrs of Playa Giron while the Cuban National anthem plays on…

La Bayamesa

No temais una muerte gloriosa

Do not fear a glorious death. To die for patria is to live

Patria, Conspiracion, Traidora, Venganza, Patrio

Martires de la Lucha… Conspiracy, Allegiance. Struggle, Revolution La Tristeza de Miami… Coléra Apasionado !!!

Let those who desire a secure homeland conquer it. Let those who do not conquer it live under the whip in exile, watched over like wild animals, cast from one country to another, concealing the death of their souls with a beggar’s smile from the scorn of free men … José Marti.

Journalist Joan Didion presents this take on the Miami Cuban’s preconceived notions in her book Miami

Americans, I was frequently told, never touched one another, nor did they argue. Americans did not share the attachment to family which characterized Cuban life. Americans placed undue importance on being on time. Americans were undereducated. Americans, at one and the same time, acted exclusively in their own interests but failed to see their own interests, not only because they were undereducated but also because they were by temperament naive, A people who could live and die without ever understanding those nuances of conspiracy and allegiance on which, in the Cuban view, the world turned. Americans above all, lacked passion, their central failing, and did not share the attachment to ‘patria.’

Of course, generalizations like these tend to exaggerate, which is a tendency not uncommon among Latinos.

Perhaps time does heal all things, or at least it would seem that way in present day Miami where a generation of American born Cubans are doing very well… Gracias! Smart and attractive, they have completely surpassed their Latino neighbors in other states, and have become patriotic U.S. citizens in the process. With a total command of american english and no going back, they are achieving spectacular material success in their newly adopted city, unique in America and a boon for Miami.

So there it is… Miami, an American city able to improvise and recreate herself, perhaps into a unique American Latino World Capital City… that’s really up for the BiG time!

The Lord knows that Montreal is older and wiser than her young ‘M’ friend from the tropics. However, their relationship is legendary when viewed from