Nearly five years ago, on February 7, 1986, after President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier fled the country, I found myself wandering through the crumbling streets of Port-au-Prince, gazing at thousands of Haitians who, for the first time in a generation, appeared to be genuinely happy. They seemed as though they would explode…
Mack Bennett poured his fifth cup of coffee and lit another Marlboro Light. The window shades were up, but no shadows were cast; it was high noon. Time to get to work, Mack Bennett thought to himself. He was alone in the cramped office, and he held at arm’s length…
The chairman of CBS was not happy. Delegates to the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami Beach were preparing to name Richard Nixon their candidate for president, and William Paley, relaxing in the Bahamas, wanted news. From his vacation home, Paley could pick up CBS affiliate WTVJ, Channel 4 in…
“They dragged them out of a little house there and chained ’em to a light pole on the dock. There was two of them. Everyone was running around grabbing tires, kids and women rolling tires up the dock and dumping ’em around the pole. Me and Monkey Betts was coming…
The Reagan Administration engaged in a massive effort to supply arms and military supplies to the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war, a three-month investigation has revealed. Some of those efforts appear not only to have violated federal law but also the terms of a U.S. government…
If Carl Raschke is right, America is going straight to Hell. And Raschke’s right. Just ask him. He has no doubt that the creeping terror of Satanism is a threat to this country, and he’s equally certain that critics of his research are wrong. Dead wrong. As proof, Raschke offers…
Sexual harassment is not the normal healthy interactions which have been taking place between men and women for as long as there have been men and women. Introduction to Dade County Affirmative Action’s sexual harassment training handbook Sexual harassment legislation, long a murky area in the law, has begun to…
It is a scene Carmen Dieguez has witnessed again and again, always the same circumstance, the man and the woman standing next to the Xerox machine, casually eyeing one another, waiting for copies. Each time as Dieguez watches, the man asks the woman to join him for lunch. Each time,…
Alert! Alert! Look well at the rainbow. The fish will rise very soon. Chico is in the house. Visit him…. The fish is red. Radio Swan, a clandestine CIA radio station, broadcasting to Cuba on April 17, 1961, the day of the Bay of Pigs invasion Doctor Diego Medina knew…
Often confused with “pirate” radio stations, which are usually music oriented, clandestine broadcasts differ considerably, both in content and purpose. In Clandestine Radio Broadcasting, published in 1987 and considered by students and hobbyists to be the Bible of the business, authors Lawrence Soley and John Nichols define clandestine radio as…
“You can’t put this in your story,” says Ed Davidson, hunched over a tiny sewing machine in his shop at Biscayne National Park, repairing a piece of diving gear. “Wouldn’t fit the image.” The image that presents itself, in odd counterpoint to the sewing session, is this: a diminutive Hemingway…
Military Bright Ideas have a way of ending disastrously and have been doing so at least since the Great War. Paul Fussell, Wartime (1988) “Them ops was clusterfucks, more screwed up than a whore’s dream. And all the medals in the Pentagon ain’t gonna change that. Ain’t gonna change nothin’…
Before you know it, the holiday season will shift into high hype, and booze makers, the free-spending advertisers they generally are, willing to pitch big bucks at whoever is willing to catch them, will supplement the editorial sections of publications of all types with eggnog recipes, careful-consumption caveats, and other…
Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo came back to Miami last year in a plain, gray casket with a crucifix on the lid. When he arrived, his 179-pound body underwent an autopsy – its second – during which Dade County medical examiners noted the sixteen bullet holes in the head, face, and…
The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any one place is always replete with new improvisations. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities On the red-brick sidewalks of Flagler Street, that downtown paradise of low-cost plunder, shoppers -…
The county commissioner’s corruption was petty, stupid, and – as far as the state attorney’s office was concerned – perfectly legal: Charging the county $176.35 for two nights in a hotel room he never used: legal. Charging the county $310 for round-trip airfare to a destination he used only as…
The first South African head of state to set foot in the White House in 45 years, F. W. de Klerk has made enough network TV appearances recently to rival recovery addict Kitty “Stop me before I swill Drano” Dukakis. President de Klerk has been hailed by many as a…
All summer long the ghost of South African anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela has haunted Miami as surely as a bearded wraith named Fidel Castro has deviled the city for three decades. Like Cuban Miami’s absentee archvillain, black Miami’s imported superhero is now a touchstone and tuning fork for local reality,…
Now I’m back to let you knowI can really shake ’em downDo you love meNow that I can dance? the Contours, 1962 The second show inside the main building at the sprawling Fort Lauderdale Swap Shop is about to begin and the place is packed. A scintillating, electrical energy hums…
There’s a ghost in the machine, says engineer Ali AbuTaha, a fatal flaw in the design and the launch procedure of the space shuttle. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) thinks it has exorcised the demon, putting ten successful shuttle missions under its belt since the Challenger disaster of…
Editor’s note: Several months ago we published a letter from a reader who was annoyed about an item that appeared in our March 27 “Best of Miami” special issue. “You said that Channel 7’s Rick Sanchez should go to Channel 4 to learn some things,” wrote C. Fernandez of Hialeah…
Monday, May 13 was the day Bill Carpenter made several choices that would affect him, and those closest to him, for the rest of his life – and then some. That was the day Carpenter drove from his home in southwest Dade to a particular location in Coral Gables. And…
