cinco de mayo: THE TABLES ARE TURNED

CUBAN-AMERICANS REACH AND SURPASSED THE STATUS QUO

I ASKED MY EX-WIFE “WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE”

We went to a Christmas party given by my ex-wife’s cousin who was married to a prominent Cuban doctor. Their house was lovely, located right on the Intra-coastal with more than 300 feet of waterfront. The party’s main theme was that we would all sit and watch the yearly Fort Lauderdale boat parade. They also had paid entertainers; one violinist that was in the front playing as the guests were coming in, and they had to arrive within a certain hour because the bridges would go up and if they didn’t get over to the beach side they would not be able to cross until the boat parade was over.

They also had two young men for valet parking as it was clear that they could only fit 10 cars in their motor court. (who has a house big enough to have a motor court that can fit 10 cars?) The affair was catered and the buffet was exquisite. They also had waiters and waitresses going around offering appetizers and bringing you drinks.

But within a half hour I noticed something very peculiar: everyone there was speaking Spanish. Then I started to look around and could not see one single person that even remotely resembled anyone Anglo and that included my ex-wife whose hair was flaming red at the time.

I did notice however that the people serving, those waiters and the valets were all gringos and to me it was an anomaly. So I asked my ex-wife “look around, tell me what you see, what is wrong with this picture?’ She did and could not tell me anything. She said that she was giving up, for me to tell her what it was that I saw that could be strange. Then I told her: “You see the waiters and waitresses? How about the man behind the buffet? And look at the bartender, what do you see?”

She still didn’t get it. I said: “Everyone here is Latin, mostly Cubans and they are not…the people serving us are Anglo. Don’t you think that is unusual?” We have, at least I have waited on enough tables and cleaned enough floors in this country to tell you that the tables have turned. In any case, this happened over 20 years ago and now we even have a black President. Could some of those waiters and waitresses be the same people who last August went to Town Hall meetings and cried “they are taking away my America?”

I can only speak from my own experience. I paid my dues, I worked hard all my life. I put myself through college without any financial aid or scholarships or even any help from my parents. I took the jobs nobody in their right mind would take like cleaning bed pans at Breckenridge Hospital in Austin, I served many tables and cleaned many floors, I even picked up dead bodies for a funeral home. And you know what? As long as I was cleaning floors and waiting on tables nobody had a beef with me being Hispanic. The minute I got that college degree and joined the workforce I met all kinds of glass ceilings.

There is a portion of America that loathes diversity, that finds minorities are threatening their lofty place in society. The hysteria that this causes, particularly among uneducated and Evangelicals reaches the point of paranoia. But as I have always said: We have to celebrate diversity because it is what has made America great. With the infusion of new ideas, each new wave of immigrants has contributed positively to make that melting pot a bit more tasty and rich…America belongs to all of us and it is not theirs alone, if anything it belongs to the original inhabitants of this land.