Miami Transformed. Manny Diaz
Midtown Miami is another example. What was an abandoned 56 acre railyard full of prostitutes and crack dealers when I took office became a multi-billion-dollar project housing one of the fastest growing residential neighborhoods in the city. Its success has spilled over into other once neglected neighborhoods, Wynwood and the Design District. This time a New York developer, Joe Cayre, would serve as the pioneer in an area of the city where district commissioner Johnny Winton and I had failed to convince any local developer to invest. Prior to going “hard” (that is, nonrefundable) on his purchase deposit, Joe also tested our commitment. Once convinced that we would deliver on our promises to expedite the project and invest in its infrastructure, he looked me in the eye, shook my hand, and the rest is history.
This would repeat itself throughout the entire city, including the story of investor Lev Leviev and the Africa Israel investment group, whose land assemblage will one day become a multi-billion-dollar project known as the Miami World Center, to be developed by Art Falcone, Nitin Motwani, and their investment group. Why? Government invested in these areas. We cleaned them up, built new roads and infrastructure, and made them safe. Private investment then followed. For every dollar the city put in, we got and continue to receive exponential returns.
GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO go back to the principles of making targeted investment in the people and things that will yield results. When you invest in people—through education, job training, the arts, health, public safety—you develop a citizenry that is educated and prepared to compete with the best and brightest in the world. They may even grow up to become mayor of a major metropolitan city.
When you invest in place—through better infrastructure that includes bridges, roads, ports, and technology—you create the kind of communities where private investment follows, and that people are proud to call home. As a country, we need to set aside differences and instead have a conversation about our shared priorities. Where do we as Americans need to invest in order to get the best possible results? The answer: in our cities. Let us agree on our priorities, fund them, invest in our people and places, then get out of the way and let America’s entrepreneurial spirit take over.
This is the lesson you learn as a mayor—when one minute you are meeting with a Fortune 500 CEO and the next minute you have a lady in your office who has a pothole in her street. Every person matters. Every problem is important to the person who faces that problem. Government’s role is to create the climate where both the CEO and the lady are confident that government is reactive and responsive to their needs, where government has made an investment for their success. It is a lesson that worked for Miami, one that can work for our nation as well.
Chapter 1 July 21, 1961
IT BEGAN AS a fairly typical morning for me—a typical morning for any six-year-old child in Cuba. I awoke to the beautiful sunny skies of Havana, “La Habana,” and sat down for a breakfast of “café con leche”—coffee with milk—and bread. At the table sat my mother, Elisa, and maternal grandparents, Benigno and Hortensia Galnares, as the traditional Cuban home very often included several generations under the same roof.
But this was not to be a typical morning.
My father, Manolo, would start his day as a political prisoner in possibly the worst Cuban prison of its time: “La Cabaña.” Several of his friends had been executed at the “Paredón,” a massive wall covered in the blood of those killed, and my father’s fate was yet to be decided. That day we were joined by my paternal grandparents, Manolo, Sr., and Lucía, who also dropped in for breakfast. My grandfather would not stop crying and I had no idea why. It would be the last time I ever saw him. It would also be my last day on Cuban soil. Mom told me that because Dad was in prison, it was probably best if I spent the summer vacationing in Miami with aunt Aida, uncle Benigno, and cousins Lena, Julio, and Alex Galnares. So, after breakfast, we drove to José Martí Airport for my first plane ride, a late morning Pan Am flight to Miami.
At the airport, my mother was approached by one of Fidel Castro’s militia members, a miliciano, and was told that my seat on the flight had been sold for $500 to another passenger. My mother now believed we would never be allowed to leave Cuba. The miliciano ordered us to wait in a glass-enclosed area of the airport known as “La Pecera,” the Fishbowl. While I sat there, I could see my grandparents on the other side of the glass, crying. They cried, my mom cried, I cried. Finally, the miliciano returned to tell my mom that we could board the plane, but I would have to sit on her lap during the flight. We were the last to board.
When our plane finally took off, my mother started to cry again. She cried the entire flight. She would never again set foot in her country of birth. I can only now imagine the worries she felt, separated from her husband and family, wondering if she would ever see them again. And what fears, starting a new life with her six-year-old son in a foreign country, only a dime in her pocket (so she could phone my uncle when we landed), and enough clothes to last a few days.
We landed in Miami in mid-afternoon. My uncle met us at the airport and drove us to his small apartment in Little Havana. (Forty years later, I would open the headquarters for my mayoral campaign just two blocks from my first home in America.) We all had some more café con leche and bread—now called Cuban bread in Miami—and the eight of us went to sleep, not knowing the fate that awaited us all.
It was indeed a typical day that July 21, 1961: a day I will never forget. It changed the course of my family. Like other Cuban families in exile, we were bound by the hope that one day soon, we would return to celebrate true freedom and independence for our homeland. Every single year since, my mom calls me on July 21 to remind me that this is the day we left Cuba to start our new lives in our new country. It would be a year and a half before I saw my father again.
MY FATHER’S FAMILY was very poor.
Fulgencio Batista, Castro’s predecessor, is credited with investing a tremendous amount of money in infrastructure and education. In the late 1930s, Batista built vocational boarding schools for poor children throughout Cuba. For the inaugural class, the government chose 250 of the poorest students on the island to attend. My dad was one of them. After graduating from the vocational school, he worked as a physical education instructor at a school where the administrator’s daughter taught first grade. That’s how my mom and dad met.
I was born in Havana a year later in a clinic. Cuba had the precursor of what we now know as Health Maintenance Organizations, or HMOs. My parents would pay a flat rate of approximately $2.50 a month for services, from the delivery of a child to brain surgery.
In 1959 our lives changed dramatically when Fidel Castro came down from the hills and ousted Batista. My mom and dad were not political—although, in a way, every Cuban is political. They love to talk about politics and are very passionate about it, but they were not active in any political party or cause.
My dad, however, quickly ended up in prison as an enemy of the state. After Castro nationalized the electric utility, my dad, an employee of the utility and a member of the electrical workers union, formed part of a group that organized and conducted a strike, refusing to work for Castro. He also secretly helped several friends find safe haven in foreign embassies, facilitating their escape from Cuba. For these activities, he was thrown in jail as a political prisoner.
His prison term was served in “La Cabaña,” within the Morro Castle, and possibly the worst prison of its time in Cuba. My dad was lucky: after nearly two years, a friend “paid” the authorities to release him. Most of his union colleagues were not so lucky—they were executed at the Paredón.
Mom would regularly take dad food. On her way to see him, the guards would purposely escort her through the Paredón, where she would be forced to walk over the fresh blood of those who had recently been executed. Often, as she walked past the Paredón, the guards would carry out a mock execution, shooting blanks at the men lined up against the wall. In an effort to further humiliate her, they would randomly strip-search