The police practice of blowing away suspects is under heightened scrutiny in the city where cronies often rule and the dead sometimes vote. Two weeks ago the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Guy Lewis, announced that federal investigators have begun a lengthy review of the Miami Police…
Inspired by an eleventh-hour defection from the enemy camp, Miami city commissioners have turned their lengthy police action against outlaw billboard companies into an all-out offensive. It appears to be a last-ditch effort to roll back one of the most stubborn insurgencies of recent consumerism. But so bold are the…
Wars on drugs, terrorism, and press freedoms aside, the U.S. government is also committed to ensuring the rights of all Americans to peaceably party, particularly when the celebrants are tens of thousands of young blacks. Over the past two decades super-fetes attended by large numbers of college-age black kids have…
Anyone who wants to try to understand the looming battle over this county’s law prohibiting discrimination against gays and lesbians must first become familiar with two definitions. They come from the mind of 45-year-old Eladio José Armesto, communications director of Take Back Miami-Dade, the organization that is waging an assault…
The ending sounded like a beginning: “We will do it again, and we will not cease.” That was the way Antonio Zamora closed the Miami premiere of a production titled “The Time Is Now to Reassess U.S. Policy Toward Cuba.” It was a lengthy title for a one-day conference that…
The melodrama surrounding one of the world’s most famous photographs does not a pretty picture make. “Heroic Guerrilla,” the 1960 shot that portrays a 32-year-old, beret-topped, long-haired Ernesto “Che” Guevara gazing sternly into the distance, has served the Cuban Revolution’s image-makers like no other. It has helped to keep a…
Seven members of the University of Miami’s faculty senate are investigating the controversial cheating case of a star football player whose penalty was later altered in a way that will allow him to play this fall, as the Hurricanes defend their national championship. “I have asked the athletics committee [of…
The University of Miami’s superstar wide receiver Andre Johnson, a big factor in this year’s Rose Bowl win, was hammered February 19 by a post-season gang tackle. A group of his fellow students, sitting as the Undergraduate Honor Council, voted to suspend him for two semesters beginning this fall. That…
When is the sobering ritual of burying war dead an act of treason? Virtually never, unless you happen to be a member of the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association, also known as Brigade 2506. But that extraordinary situation isn’t stopping a small group of brigade veterans from taking care of…
It was a night in October, and across the island of Cuba, John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s antiwar anthem, “Give Peace a Chance,” crackled out of the nation’s television sets. It was the music bed for a video montage: United States military jets taking off, a ground-to-air missile blasting skyward,…
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into a Coconut Grove parking garage, some developer tries to gouge you. Under City of Miami law, a person is supposed to be able to park a vehicle in the garage at the 22-story Mutiny Park condominium (just a block…
If you live in Miami, your city remains under siege by one of the most tenacious insurgencies of the modern era: the billboard industry. So far your troops on the frontlines — the city’s zoning enforcers, attorneys, and commissioners — have been unable, unwilling, or just plain frightened to mount…
‘Tis time once again to think about settling our holiday debts, and as usual some of us have rung up quite a tab. The payments will be daunting, but of course we’ll scrimp and save and eventually claw our way back to solvency. But imagine a world in which the…
Ideologically entrenched Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits have been calling one another “terrorists” since the term flared up into our modern-day lexicon three decades ago. But after the September 11 jetliner attacks, hard-liners here and on the island have taken the opportunity to inflame their long-running war…
The five Cuban spies convicted by a federal jury in Miami this past June have insinuated themselves among the local prison population, according to two of the agents’ mothers. Among the operatives’ revolutionary work: helping semiliterate inmates write letters to their girlfriends. “The other prisoners seek them out for all…
“Lord, thank you for Angel. Thank you for this family that stood beside him every moment and suffered so much, Lord. The will of God has manifested itself in the face of so many immoral things that have occurred. Let us say blessed is the Lord.” Thus spoke Rev. Guillermo…
The name Otto Reich has popped up in the press again over the past several months. But who is this controversial former Miamian who still enjoys strong ties to South Florida? You should know, if only as a way to assess the health of our humble geopolitical region’s clout in…
Exactly how does one become mayor of Miami these days? To find out New Times recently polled some well-known political junkies. The consensus seems to be that unless your name is Maurice Ferré, Joe Carollo, or Manny Diaz, you may as well forget about claiming that bay-view office on Dinner…
Close to HomeThey met at Victory Hospital back in August 1962. My mother had just given birth to me, but owing to problems during the delivery, she needed to be hospitalized for more than a week after I was born. One of her roommates was Rita Grady, who was expecting…
By late Saturday evening it was clear Hurricane Hip-Hop had been downgraded to a tropical depression at best. While the Miami Beach and county police departments had been on high alert — with war rooms set up and riot control in place — the huge, mostly black invasion, still fresh…
In the quasi cold war that sputters back and forth across the Florida Straits (and occasionally explodes), there is often a wide gulf between words and deeds. Such is the case with the arrest in Panama nine months ago of 73-year-old Luis Posada Carriles and three Miami-Dade residents who have…
Anonymous sources have informed New Times that a new book titled Elián, recently published by educator Demetrio Perez, Jr., may actually be the work of Cuban government agents trying to discredit him. The colorful eight-by-twelve-inch, 116-page “album” is ostensibly a supplement of Libre, Perez’s weekly chronicle of Cuban-exile society and…
