Eunice Liberty is describing her recent police-assisted move to a nursing home: “They came and picked me up like a piece of lumber and threw me in the van. They tied me up like a young girl. Now do I look like I could run away?” It is not the…

The meeting had been raucous. Tempers flared. Many participants clutched placards. Tears were shed. Activists and residents painted the issues as starkly as possible. One side argued that nothing less than the multi-billion dollar restoration of the Everglades was at risk, along with South Florida’s future water supply. Others asserted…

To get from downtown Miami to the federal detention camp officially known as the Krome Service Processing Center, one must drive west to where the Tamiami Trail meets the Everglades. The road parallels the C-4 canal, where the scaly back of an alligator occasionally pokes through the water or a…

Biting operating losses, the Miami Herald will close its award-winning and much-loved Sunday magazine, Tropic, after 31 years. For the final issue next month, executive editor Tom Shroder chose a simple but classy idea: Commission some of the stars of Tropic-past like Carl Hiaasen, Madeleine Blais, and Gene Weingarten to…

Last month the Cuban American National Foundation filed a libel lawsuit against three men who strongly oppose the hard line on Fidel Castro. One of the defendants is Miami attorney Alfredo Duran, who wrote nothing defamatory but simply belonged to an organization that distributed information authored by others. Now the…

It is a humid fall afternoon when close to 5000 Cuban Americans gather for the 1998 march of patriotic intransigence. Toward the front of the procession is a flatbed truck carrying a bell, a replica of the one Cubans struck 130 years ago on the very same date, October 10,…

The electronic message that flashed across staff computers at the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald on the morning of Tuesday, August 4, created an instant stir throughout the papers’ bayside headquarters. The tersely worded missive announced a meeting for all employees of the Miami Herald Publishing Company, set for…

What’s in a name?” Shakespeare asked. Not a whole hell of a lot, he decided. Today’s twist on the old query: “What’s in a signature?” For two Cuban-American artists — one prominent, the other not so much — the answer is money and reputation. The two are involved in a…

Ernesto Mejia sits in a cramped visitation room at the Krome Service Processing Center, dressed in the orange jumpsuit of a detainee. After almost a year in the custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the 33-year-old is now a more subdued version of the outgoing, energetic young man family…

In the not-so-distant future, swarms of new satellites will join the scores that today float above the globe. The high priests of the communications industry prophesy marvels: laptop computers that connect to the Internet through space rather than phone lines, e-mail by wristwatch, and maybe even celestial advertising. (Picture the…

David Garten could scarcely believe the Treasury Department letter on the table before him. Dated October 17, 1997, it was written to inform the Vermont photographer of a $117,500 fine that had been levied against him for traveling to Cuba. The penalty seemed outrageous — an astronomical sum for twelve…

In an area of open spaces, scampering marsh rabbits, and circling red-shouldered hawks along SW 168th Street, layers of debris-strewn soil fill roadside trenches. Plastic bottles, carpet remnants, and rubber tubing protrude from the brown earth. Michael Black, who lives nearby, points disgustedly at the mess. He’s furious. He knows…

A producer behind the camera flashes a cue and Pedro Sevcec, whose bearded visage is known to television viewers throughout much of the Spanish-speaking world, begins his pitch. “?Que le paso?” he asks. “He betrayed you? She betrayed you?” His voice deepens slightly with the empathy of a trusted confidant…

Issac Delgado and Hugo Cancio may pay a price for success. Delgado, a salsa sensation from Cuba, appeared April 21 at the Miami Beach night club Onyx. Cancio, a local businessman turned promoter, staged the event. In an astonishing first for Dade County’s contentious Cuban exile community, no one disrupted…

Marie Bastien might never have needed help were it not for Hurricane Andrew. After all, the hard-working single mother of three boys managed to buy her own home just five years after immigrating to Miami from Haiti. But in 1992 the lashing wind and rain of the storm damaged the…

It seems an outlandish scenario: A jetliner crashes into the Turkey Point nuclear plant, a horrific explosion follows, and the residents of South Dade run for cover. Or maybe it’s not so crazy. After protests from local activists — and a New Times story (“Place Your Seatbacks in the Upright…

It was a contentious crowd that filed into the Redland Middle School auditorium late in the afternoon of November 13, 1997. By 6:00 p.m. as many as 100 people had arrived for a hearing before Community Council 14. The council is one of fifteen boards created a year and a…

It’s unlikely that on a Sunday afternoon in early March, as David Ettman drove a U-Haul truck full of debris deep into Chapman Field Park, he could have imagined the excursion would land him in jail. Yet little more than a month later, Metro-Dade police officers arrived at his doorstep…

During the six-week breeding season of the endangered Cape Sable seaside sparrow, the male bird stakes out his territory (roughly 120 square yards of Everglades wetlands) and begins chirping a song that he hopes will attract a female while warding off other males. If he’s lucky, a female will drop…

In the fierce struggle to derail a proposed $275 million shopping mall that promises to transform a Coral Gables neighborhood, opponents have tried just about everything. They attacked the developer, the Rouse Company, charging that the upscale mall would have a negative impact on local businesses, traffic, and even the…

On the afternoon of Sunday, March 8, Metro-Dade police responded to a report of illegal dumping at Chapman Field Park, a South Dade haven for softball players and nature lovers. Ofcr. Zane Jones drove his squad car past the baseball diamonds, past two unlocked and open gates, and down a…

Fasten your helmet. Grab a mallet. Arm your pony with breast plates. The polo wars are about to begin: A group of Venezuelan investors led by an Egyptian oil analyst want to build an exclusive polo club and equestrian center on a stretch of Dade County wetlands environmentalists claim are…