Over the last 50 years, the city of Miami has grown from a relatively quiet, boring southern city to become one of America’s more exciting metropolises. Coinciding with the growth of Miami has been the rapid growth of the Caribbean-American community.
In 1970, although there was a close Bahamian community in the Coconut Grove area, there wasn’t a distinctive English-speaking Caribbean community in Miami, in particular, and South Florida, in general.
The city’s migration population began to grow significantly in the early 1960s as middle-class residents left Cuba to settle in Miami fearing Cuba’s new President Fidel Castro and his communist regime. In 1965, over 100,000 Cubans arrived in Miami. Most of these Cubans settled in the Riverside neighborhood of eastern Miami which became known as Little Havana. Rapidly this neighborhood spread west to include Coral Gables and Southern Miami. Wasting no time, the new Cuban immigrants quickly established thriving retail and real estate businesses in Miami.
In the late 1960s and early 70s, Miami was an enticing shopping center for Jamaicans coming from Jamaica, rather than an alternative home. Several of these shoppers were “informal commercial traders” who bought items like ladies’ shoes, clothing, and jewelry at low prices from the Cuban-operated stores, to resell in Jamaica.
Then the situation changed drastically around the mid-1970s, as like their Cuban neighbors, the Jamaican middle class became weary of the Democratic Socialist policies of then Prime Minister Michael Manley and his People National Party administration.
It’s believed Manley helped lay the foundation for the growth of an English-speaking Caribbean community in Miami. Audaciously reacting to criticism of his socialist policies, Manley in a fiery speech in Kingston in 1974, advised Jamaicans who didn’t like his policies, “to take one of five (Air Jamaica) daily flights to Miami”. It didn’t take long for members of the middle class to sell their residential properties and businesses and fly to Miami. The wave that began in 1974/75 grew persistently as the political atmosphere in Jamaica turned violent in the latter part of the 1970s and early 1980s.
The new arrival of Jamaicans took advantage of the residential housing boom being undertaken by the industrious Cuban immigrant community in southwest Dade County (now Miami-Dade), and large, thriving Jamaican-American communities flourished in places like Cutler Ridge, Perrine, and West Kendall.
It may be hard to believe Miami’s Caribbean community, consisting mainly of Jamaicans, in the early 1980s didn’t enjoy the benefits of the many shops and restaurants characteristic of today’s Caribbean-American community. In the early 1980s, there were about three Jamaican restaurants/shops in Southwest Miami, and one nightclub featuring Jamaican and other Caribbean music.
In 1980 Miami became more ‘Caribbeanized’. That year Castro released hundreds of prisoners and inmates from mental institutions, encouraging them to leave Cuba with hundreds of other poor residents for Miami. It’s estimated in 1980 some 150,000 poor Cubans arrived in Miami in what was known as the “Mariel Boatlift.” Most of these Cubans settled in Little Havana and surrounding neighborhoods, but some of these immigrants contributed to the new crime wave in Miami. This resulted in some English-Speaking Caribbean immigrants, joining nom-Hispanic white Americans in relocating to Broward County, and further north to Palm Beach County.
The early 1980s also brought a unique economic boom to Miami, spawned by a strong infusion of cocaine into the region from Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru. The drug industry brought billions of dollars into Miami, which were quickly funneled through front organizations into the local economy. Luxury car dealerships, five-star hotels, condominium developments, swanky nightclubs, major commercial developments, and other signs of prosperity emerged across the city. As the money arrived, so did a violent crime wave lasting through the early 1990s motivating movies like Scarface and the popular TV series, Miami Vice.
The English-speaking Caribbean community benefited directly from the economic boom. Many people secured Jobs, and high consumer spending encouraged a new thriving Caribbean small business community consisting of various professionals, restaurants, and shops, spreading throughout Miami-Dade to Broward County.
The economic boom encouraged waves of Caribbean immigrants not only from Jamaica but from other nations, including Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and Barbados.
In 1992, the devastating Hurricane Andrew, passed directly through Southwest Miami, destroying the homes and businesses of several members of the Caribbean-American community. In the hurricane’s aftermath, hundreds of Caribbean Americans relocated from Miami and Miami-Dade County giving rise to the thriving striving Caribbean community in Broward County
Today, Broward County accounts for one of the largest Caribbean-American populations in America. It’s a population consisting of several communities from several different nations, making it questionable if calling this population the Caribbean-American community isn’t a misnomer.
