In March 2000, after a yearlong investigation, the United States Federal Election Commission (FEC) made public an eighteen-page report on its audit of the Lincoln Diaz-Balart Campaign for Congress. The audit — only the fifth in three years to target a member of Congress — covers the 1997-98 election cycle,…

In May 1999 the Miami-Dade County Commission unanimously approved a “living wage” ordinance. Laws like it are not common around the nation, and for workers in South Florida, where many businesses thrive on the backs of abysmally paid immigrants, it is truly significant. The ordinance fixes the minimum wage for…

One afternoon a little more than a year ago, Ginette walked into a women’s bathroom at the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service’s Krome Service Processing Center in western Miami-Dade County. There in front of her, sitting on a toilet but fully clothed, was a leering, uniformed detention officer. For…

The April 14 party to launch Alix Desulme’s campaign for a seat on the North Miami City Council had a small-town, familiar feeling, not unlike most political events in this municipality of almost 60,000. Desulme’s kickoff, just three weeks before the May 8 election, took place at the Jaycees headquarters…

In the summer of 1997, a Cuban government agent instructed one of his contacts in Miami to exploit a nascent division between two influential segments of the exile community: the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) and the new directors of Radio and TV Martí, the U.S. government stations beamed at…

Victor was arrested this past February for buying twelve dollars’ worth of crack cocaine from undercover Miami police officers. It was his second arrest in three months for the same crime. He was taken to jail — the Metro-West Detention Center — and because he’d violated the conditions of his…

By late fall of last year, Michelle was becoming suicidal. Depressed and desperate to kick her alcohol addiction of many years, the Orlando resident picked up the Yellow Pages hoping to find a rehab program that would work this time. One of the first listings was something called “Aaron Alcohol…

Lucinda and I reached the Santiago bus terminal at about six o’clock Sunday morning, December 17, San Lazaro’s Day. The predawn darkness was moist and warm. We had walked the few miles from Lucinda’s half-brother’s house, wending our way downhill through narrow streets. At that still hour some store windows,…

Late last year Miami-Dade County administrators announced that Miami International Airport workers would pay five dollars per month more for parking privileges, effective this February 1. No one seemed too concerned about the increase since it wasn’t too steep, and, in any case, most companies doing business at the airport…

From time to time the employees at Aljoma Lumber, Inc., watch nonchalantly as José Lamas descends in his helicopter, touching down in the middle of the Aljoma compound in Medley. After the rotund white-haired Lamas steps unsteadily to the ground, and the chopper has risen overhead again, a haze of…

Kreyol-language AM radio is the most important medium of communication within South Florida’s Haitian community and its most immediate link with the larger society. Which is a sobering thought, considering what’s currently on the air. A small but influential collection of brokers buy and sell Kreyol-language airtime on a few…

Havana’s Kid Chocolate auditorium, a spacious wood-floored gymnasium named after the great Cuban boxing champion of the Thirties, seemed the perfect place, in 1991, to debut a new sport. There in the central Havana auditorium, on the second floor of a building across the street from the historic ornate capitol…

During the three years since Mohamed Ibrahim’s first appearance in the pages of New Times (“Loads of Dirty Laundry,” November 20, 1997), the man has been busy. In addition to running his Little Haiti laundromat and strip mall, Ibrahim last year opened a Montessori school and a second coin laundry…

After midnight, on an oppressively steamy Saturday in August, the Miami Karnival 2000 “band launching” was just beginning to heat up. A few thousand people had squeezed through the Mahi Temple entrance turnstiles and filed into a cavernous auditorium, where two columns of tents and booths clustered along the west…

For about five months, complaints have ricocheted around Miami and Washington, D.C., concerning the peculiar news judgment exercised this past April by Radio Martí director Roberto Rodriguez-Tejera. Radio Martí, the official voice of the United States government to the people of Cuba, ignored for almost four hours the dramatic April…

The sixth fight on the boxing card at Miccosukee Indian Gaming this past August 12 was a four-rounder pitting lightweights Luis Ernesto Delis of Cuba against Rudolfo “Rude Boy” Lunsford of St. Petersburg. By the time the match got under way around midnight, at least half the audience had either…

Only a few months ago, Miami-Dade County had pretty much lost its already tenuous grip on reason. The place was in a blind frenzy over Elian Gonzalez, and it seemed that no one escaped the mass contagion. Just across the Florida Straits, in the other Cuba, arose equally zealous public…

A few months ago, soon after the ironworkers union began signing up employees at RC Aluminum Industries, about a half-dozen burly bouncer types appeared at three of the company’s five Northwest Miami-Dade plants. These men were security guards, but they didn’t wear uniforms or badges; they didn’t have to. The…

Johnny Torres and a bunch of his relatives have put up a boxing ring in the middle of the spacious Club Fantasy Show, a nightclub in Little Havana. By ten o’clock on this Tuesday night the card is well under way, and a thin haze of cigarette smoke hovers tenuously…

Not many of the professional boxers pounding the punching bags at Gerrits Leprechaun gym in Wynwood have seriously considered the concept of a boxers union — an organization like the ones that represent athletes in other professional sports. At Gerrits: “I think I’ve heard about that,” says Carmelo Ramos, taking…

Just a year ago the Allapattah Mini Park was so trashed that some of its neighbors didn’t even know it was a park. The 18,000-square-foot property did boast a passable basketball court, but the rest of it was a treacherous, overgrown jungle, bristling with shards of glass and metal, syringes,…

Alberto Turienzo raps his fist on the hardback cover of El Padrino, a Spanish translation of The Godfather, that venerable Mario Puzo novel about the Italian Mafia. “This book,” explains Turienzo in a husky voice, pausing dramatically, “has taught me a lot about what has been going on in my…