Mrs. Hazlitt, as a member of the SPCA, was shocked when she learned that a church in her community was conducting such rituals, and with the assistance of like-minded Episcopal, Baptist and Presbyterian women, she tried to put a stop to what she and others termed ‘this savage display more appropriate to the jungle than to a civilized neighborhood.’
In the public debate that followed, two unfortunate statements were made which put the Hazlitts quite at odds with the Cuban community. One of the Santeria worshipers had a son just graduated from law school who saw the vigorous attempts of the Anglo community to outlaw the blood sacrifice as an attack upon freedom of religion. With skill he invoked one law after another in defense of the sacrifices, treating the practices of the Santeria sect with all the high gravity that another might treat a more established religion like Catholicism or Mormonism. This so infuriated the Anglo women that Mrs. Hazlitt told the press: ‘But those are real religions,’ and this roused a storm from many who loudly claimed that Santeria was equally real.
The women then tried to invoke a zoning ordinance, but the young lawyer defeated them. They attempted to outlaw the sacrifices as a menace to health, but again he used the law to hold them off. They tried to call upon what they called a ‘higher law of common sense’ but he produced two professors of religion who proved that every tenet of Santeria, and especially the blood sacrifices, came straight out of the Old Testament.
But the coup de grâce was administered by the young lawyer during an interview on the radio talk station WJNZ: ‘Catholics and Protestants eat the wafer and drink the wine and pretend that these are the sacrificed body and blood of Jesus. They’re doing exactly what we do in Santeria, but we have the courage to really kill our chicken.’ After that, any reasonable debate became impossible, and when the ACLU entered the battle in defense of the new religion, the Hazlitts knew their side could not win.
However, one die-hard Protestant woman—not Mrs. Hazlitt, who knew better—fired a final salvo, and it was savage: ‘If the Santerias start their sacrifice with a pigeon and then a chicken, then a turkey and a goat, how soon do they start killing human beings?’ As a shudder passed through the community at this intemperate and wildly inappropriate assault, the Hazlitts told each other: ‘Sanity has lost. Santeria has triumphed.’
Two weeks ago this fine couple had come to the Calderon residence with doleful news: ‘We’re leaving Miami. Can’t take it anymore.’
‘Please, please!’ Steve had begged. ‘Forget the Santerias. They’re on the other side of town behaving themselves.’
‘We have forgotten them. But we began really to worry last week. The attempt to burn the television station.’
‘You mean the Frei case?’ Steve asked, and he listened to a lava flow of bitter complaint, for this Noriberto Frei, a minor city employee determined to get ahead in a hurry, had finally exceeded the bounds of decency and reason.
He was an engaging young fellow, not among the first Cubans to arrive after Castro but not a Mariel man, either. Announcing himself as the holder of a Harvard degree in business administration (although he had never seen New England) and a world traveler (although he had never been north of South Carolina), he had become involved in one scam after another. His explanations were always both brazen and ingenious: ‘Yes, I used the initials CPA, but I never claimed I’d taken any exams. Yes, I’ve appointed nine of my relatives to high-paying jobs, but they tested out to be the best qualified. Yes, the man who built the condominium on land that had been zoned for single-family residential does allow me to use that big apartment on the twelfth floor, but there are no papers to prove that I actually own it. And now about that ninety-seven thousand dollars the papers claim is missing, I can explain …’
‘It isn’t the devilish things he’s done,’ Norman Hazlitt said. ‘It’s how your Cuban community has defended his performances … made a hero of him. You’re sending a signal and we’re receiving it loud and clear.’
‘It’s been unfortunate,’ Calderon conceded.
Indeed it was. Noriberto Frei had, through his charm and fast talking, built himself a little empire, from which he exercised considerable power. But when he became embroiled in yet another scandal, a local television station presented a skit of Frei’s escapades, with the question at the end: WHAT WILL HE DO NEXT?
‘It was proper castigation of a scoundrel,’ Hazlitt said, and Steve agreed.
But on the same evening, after the skit was broadcast, hundreds of Frei supporters—all Cubans—marched on the offices of the offending station, branding the broadcasters communists, and would have set the place afire had not the police intervened.
‘That was a deplorable action,’ Calderon admitted, but Mrs. Hazlitt added: ‘I sometimes think there must be a secret Cuban Ayatollah that no Anglo is ever allowed to see who orchestrates these scandals,’ and Calderon winced.
But that was not what the Hazlitts had come to complain about. Brandishing a copy of the day’s paper, they pointed to a typical Miami photograph spread across the front page: a jubilant Nariberto Frei brandishing a victory glass of champagne with some two dozen cheering supporters, mostly Hispanic, toasting the fact that he had once again outsmarted the Anglos. ‘Seven times they’ve tried to get me,’ Frei was quoted, ‘but it’s been nothing but a futile vendetta mounted by that damned station. Well, I’ve proved I’m here to stay.’
‘And he is,’ Hazlitt admitted. ‘He and his style of government have won. Victorious, he declares war on people like me. Shut up or get out.’
Then Clara spoke, and as she did she placed her trembling hand on Steve Calderon’s arm: ‘You better than most, Steven, know that Norman and I are not racists.’
‘Heavens, no! Who loaned me the money to get my clinic started?’ He reached over to kiss her on the cheek, but this did not placate her: ‘I do so hate it when I enter a store I’ve patronized for forty years and find that the salesgirls not only can’t speak English but insult me because I use it. I can no longer visit my longtime hairdresser because the new management hires only Cubans who speak no English. Wherever I go, it’s the same.’ Turning to face Steve, she said accusingly: ‘Your people have stolen our city from us.’
When he tried to reassure her that Miami needed the Hazlitts now more than ever, she clenched her fists and said: ‘It’s no longer a matter of words. We’re frightened … terrified. Tell him what happened two nights ago, Norman,’ and the financier related yet another distressing Miami story: ‘Clara and I were driving home on Dixie Highway, obeying the speed limit. An urgent driver behind us, wanting to pass, honked at us angrily, then took a wild chance and whizzed by on the right-hand shoulder, cursing at us as he went. But that put him behind a car even slower than ours, and now his honking displayed real fury. But this time there was no shoulder. Enraged, he rushed up behind the slow car, bumped it three times, then pulled up beside it at a traffic light. Saying nothing, he reached in his glove compartment, whipped out a revolver, and shot the slow driver dead … not eight feet from us.’
Clara added: ‘Before we could do anything, the killer sped through the red light and was gone.’
‘Did you identify the car for the police?’
‘We were afraid to. He might come back and kill us, too.’
‘Was he Hispanic?’
‘He must have been.’ Before Steve could point out what a shameful assumption that was, Hazlitt said: ‘We sold the house this morning … closing out my partnerships as soon as possible.’
‘But where will you go?’ Calderon asked plaintively, and they said: ‘Somewhere fresh and clean north of Palm Beach, where we’ll build a wall around our home and hope to keep it protected during our lifetime, while the rest of south Florida becomes wholly Hispanic.’
When Steve reported this development to his Patrias, several expressed regret at losing such estimable citizens, but some of the realists countered: ‘A classic case of Hispanic Panic. Let ’em go.’ Another said: ‘I’m sick and tired of hearing complaint
s against our use of Spanish. A man can spend a month along Calle Ocho and never need a word of English,’ to which Steve replied: ‘Tell your Cubans they’d better learn, or they’ll be left behind as Miami grows.’
There was, however, a problem of greater threat to the nation, as a political scientist, invited down from the university at Gainesville, explained to the Patrias one evening:
‘I think we must expect at some future time another mass exodus from Cuba and certainly a huge influx from Central America, where the birth rate is simply running wild. So we’re talking about maybe two or three hundred thousand new Hispanics, and they won’t be already educated the way you gentlemen were. They’ll be illiterates, many of them will be black, and they’ll all want to settle in Miami.
‘The great risk these people will pose is that they’ll introduce into Miami life the political corruption that seems to infect all Hispanic government: bribery of officials, fraud in elections, nepotism in political appointments, and invariably putting the interests of one’s family members ahead of the general welfare. These characteristics are already surfacing in Miami, and with a constant influx of new arrivals the problem will worsen.
‘It’s up to you leaders of the Hispanic community to ensure that this doesn’t happen. Florida’s politics must not become Latin-Americanized. The officials you elect to office must live not by traditions of Colombia, where they shoot judges they don’t like, or Bolivia, where everything can be stolen, but by the traditions of reasonable honesty and responsibility on which the United States has relied for the past three centuries.’
As the man spoke, Calderon was thinking of the recent scandals on Wall Street in which Anglos of supposed probity had stolen the investors of the nation blind, and he felt that the young man was overstating his case, but in the heated question period the speaker modified his views somewhat:
‘For the present, Miami is getting horrendous adverse publicity as the crime capital of the nation, the gangsterism associated with cocaine accounting for most of it, and I would look for this to continue through the end of the century. But we must remember that Al Capone made Chicago a similar capital in his day and Chicago didn’t suffer more than three or four decades. Neither will Miami.
‘Turbulence comes with vitality, and Miami has a strong chance of being one of the most vital cities in the Western Hemisphere—playground of the North … capital of the Caribbean … magnet to all the South American nations … blessed with a multiracial society … and don’t forget those hardworking Haitians. Its future is bright indeed.’
Calderon’s plane had now reached a point in Florida north of Palm Beach, and in the final moments of approach he thought exclusively of what lay ahead—a possible meeting with Fidel Castro. He knew that as long as his generation lived in south Florida, hatred for that evil man would never subside. Bay of Pigs veterans like Máximo Quiroz would keep the bitterness alive. But he also knew there was a greater reality—the rest of the United States was willing to let Castro run his course, to keep him isolated, and when he did go, to get on with the job of reconciliation with Cuba.
Then a sardonic thought brought a smile to his face: If Castro vanished tomorrow, I wonder if even Máximo and his henchmen would go back. They know how good they have it here in Miami and they’re not about to give it up. Not more than two in a hundred would go back. Maybe two is a mite few. There is such a thing as homesickness. Then, as the plane swung into its landing pattern: Make it five in a hundred. But of the kids born here and educated in American schools and colleges, make it one in a hundred … at most.
But when he reached home the problem at hand assumed an entirely different coloration, for his wife met him at the door with news that several callers who would not give their names had wanted to speak with him, and even as she said the words the phone jangled, and when he answered, a voice he did not recognize said in a low growl: ‘Don’t you dare go to Cuba.’ Obviously, someone in his Washington meeting that afternoon had warned someone in Miami that contacts were about to be made with Castro and that injurious concessions might result.
‘Who was on the phone?’ Kate asked, and he lied: ‘Someone seeking my help on a zoning variance.’ Then she shifted the conversation: ‘At your meeting in Washington? Cuba?’ He nodded, and she reminded him of the promise he had made yesterday. But he made light of the matter, though in the end he had to confide: ‘Maybe a trip to visit your sister in Havana,’ and she kissed him: ‘Now that I could tolerate … if we keep politics out of it,’ and he agreed.
Then the phone rang again, and a much different voice, still unrecognizable, said darkly: ‘We’re warning you, Calderon. Don’t go to Cuba.’
This time when he replaced the receiver his hands were shaking, and he shifted his body to prevent his wife from seeing. He was frightened, and he had a right to be, for ten years ago, in 1978, one of the finest doctors in his clinic, Fermin Sanchez, had organized a group of seventy-five exiles, who then flew to Havana to see Castro and discuss the possibility of normalizing relations between Cuba and the United States. Word of their meeting exploded through the refugee community, and shortly after the committee’s return to Miami, two members were murdered, another had both legs blown off, six had their businesses dynamited, and all were threatened by savage but anonymous phone calls: ‘Traitor, you too will die.’
Once Steve took a call intended for Dr. Sanchez: ‘Oh, Dr. Calderon! Tell Dr. Sanchez I’d like to keep seeing him, but I’m afraid they’ll bomb your office while I’m there.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘They telephoned.’
In time the wrath diminished, but Steve knew that even he was held in suspicion because he employed Sanchez. Considerable pressure had been applied to make him fire the doctor, but he had refused and eventually the raging fires had subsided.
If ever two cities were destined to be interlocked, each complementing the other, they were Miami, perched at the tip of a great continent, striving to retain its Anglo-Saxon character, and Havana, located on the edge of a glorious island and determined to protect its Spanish heritage. Only two hundred and thirty-five miles apart, a distance which could be covered in less than forty minutes by a moderately fast plane, they should have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship of mutual reward, with the residents of Miami flying south not only for recreation but also for instruction in Caribbean life and Spanish ways, and the Cubans flying north for shopping, medical help and advanced education. But the Castro revolution dislocated arrangements and made intercourse between the two natural neighbors impossible, to the grave detriment of each.
In the summer of 1988, when normal travel between the two cities was forbidden, there were three ways by which an American could get to Cuba: he could fly to Mexico, quietly arrange a visa there, and hop a speedy flight to Havana; or he could fly to Montreal for the same kind of transaction; or in difficult and somewhat secret circumstances, he could report quietly to the Miami airport at midnight, with a U.S. Treasury Department clearance, for a charter flight that left each night of the week to transfer those passengers and goods which each nation recognized had to be exchanged. Scant public notice was taken of these flights, for each nation knew they were necessary.
For the flight of Dr. Calderon and his wife to Havana, the State Department had decided that secrecy could best be preserved by using the Canadian route. Fortunately, in late August a large medical meeting involving Canadian and American doctors was scheduled in Toronto, and it was arranged that a formal invitation would be issued to Calderon, and news of this was circulated among other Miami-area doctors who had also been invited. The Calderons would appear at the convention early, meet the maximum numbers of Floridians, attend sessions during the first two days, then quietly disappear, ostensibly for a motor trip through Nova Scotia.
But before the Calderons could put this plan into operation, Steve was visited at his banking headquarters by a man he really did not care to see but who was not entirely unexpected. He was a Cuban in his
late forties, of medium size and very rugged, with dark black hair combed forward over his forehead and a pinched countenance fixed into a permanent scowl. He was Máximo Quiroz.
He was a principal adversary to the conciliatory Dos Patrias group that Calderon had organized to provide sober guidance to Miami’s Cuban community, for Quiroz wanted to go the confrontational route in all affairs pertaining to Hispanics. He dreamed not only of invading Cuba but also of ousting all the Anglos from Miami: ‘I’ll be glad when the last of them head north and leave the running of this city to those of us who know what’s needed.’ Men like Calderon were fed up with Quiroz, seeing him as an irresponsible agitator indifferent to the turbulent consequences his acts might have.
Dr. Calderon tried to be understanding and patient: ‘Well, Máximo, old friend, what’s new these days?’
‘All bad. Russia moving in tons of weapons to the island, not even unpacking them, then straight off to Nicaragua.’ He complained that mixed signals from the American Congress meant that the contras, whom he supported passionately, were left bewildered.
‘What did you find when you went to Honduras last month?’ Calderon asked, and his question was not mere courteous conversation, for he too was an ardent supporter of the contras.
‘Noble determination to regain their country. Confusion as to where the supplies were going to come from.’ He added that if Calderon was really interested, he, Máximo, could arrange meetings with the contra leadership, all of whom were living in Miami, but although Steve supported the contras emotionally and with cash contributions, he did not care to become too deeply involved.