Customer Reviews

Miami (Classics of Reportage)

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I've got a bone to pick with Joan Didion, but first let me say that "Miami" is a simply brilliant piece of noir journalism that, in every paragraph, reflects a different aspect of "the Capital of Latin America." Odd that 1987 saw three major non-fiction Miami treatments, all differently motivated: David Rieff's "Going to Miami: Exiles, Tourists and Refugees in the New America," T.D. Allman's "Miami: City of the Future," and Didion's book. Yeah, yeah, at the time, Miami was hot hot hot, Crockett and Tubbs were in the middle of their run, but...Iran-Contragate was also playing itself out, and Miami was an epicenter of Reagan-era, better-dead-than-Red, Contra War intrigue. Didion captures the period beautifully in suitably ominous, conspiratorial tones. She introduces us to a cast of chilling characters--no, wait: she means for us to UNDERSTAND her characters as the driven, chilling, formidable products of "el exilio" and "la lucha"--and leaves no doubt that these are serious men, men who "get things done," men capable of, well, anything.

And my bone? Didion is a wonderful writer who cannot, however, resist long, convoluted, patience-trying Germanic sentences, frontloaded with the universe, embellishing adjective after adjective, wending their way down the page, forestalling all gratification, clarity, or meaning, until finally hitting us between the eyes with the final word-punchline, which invariably leads our eyes to course back up the page in an effort to reconstruct, to rediscover "just where were we going with this." Small price to pay for so delicious a book.

The story of the Cuban exiles in Miami deserves to be told with drama and passion because that is what it has been. In this page-turner, Joan Didion captures the rejection and racism that the Cuban exiles first encountered in Miami when they emigrated from Cuba after Castro assumed power. She shows how some of the Cubans became successful businesspersons, political powerbrokers, shapers of local culture, renowned humanitarians and philanthropists, expert propagandists, able diplomats, drug runners, muggers, and internationally renowned terrorists.

We see the close relationship the Cuban exiles formed with the USA government, especially its clandestine agencies. We learn that in the 1960s Miami essentially became a CIA recruiting and operational-staging center. Didion tells us that the CIA had as much as 120,000 "regular agents" (full and part-time) stationed in south Florida. It had a flotilla of small boats (often used for terrorist raids on Cuba), making it the third largest navy in the western hemisphere at the time. It owned airline companies in the Miami area and holding companies that lent itself loans for covert operations. "There were [also] hundreds of pieces of Miami real estate, residential bungalows maintained as safe houses, waterfront properties maintained as safe harbors" as well as "fifty five other front businesses" and "CIA boat shops," "guns shops," real-estate, travel and detective agencies (pp. 90-91).

Yet the relationship between the Cuban Americans and the USA has been a troubled one. Although the Cuban Americans find themselves dependent on the USA for maintaining their struggle against Castro, they also don't trust the government, blaming it for their loss at the Bay of Pigs and for adopting policies soft on Castro. Likewise, the USA finds some Cuban Americans helpful in its secret foreign adventures (Chile, Nicaragua, Angola, etc.) as well as a nuisance when these terrorist elements assassinate foreign diplomats, blow up airplanes and banks, and murder USA citizens.

Particularly poignant is Didion's description of the Cuban Americans' personal and often internecine struggle over understanding themselves as immigrants or exiles. These struggles have resulted in broken friendships, shunning, public ridicule, financial loss, bodily harm and death.

The book only covers Miami until 1987. I wish Didion would update the book, although it might be dangerous for her to do so.

This is a great read and well worth the purchase.

I read this book so many years ago, but I just now realized I had never shared my opnions about it. I had lived in Miami for about eight years, and I think I was in my 5th year or so when I finally heard about "Miami" by Joan Didion. It was only after I had finally moved to the Beach that I happened upon it, at Kafka's. At any rate, it is an excellent book. I think about it every time I hear on the news about the bumbling CIA or news of Castro makes the NYTimes. Incidentally, 1987 also saw the publication of "The Corpse Had a Familiar Face," by Edna Buchanan, another equally excellent non-fiction book about this city. I also highly recommend "A Book of Common Prayer" by Ms. Didion.

Being a Cuban-American means growing up with politics as a big part of life. Being a Cuban-American in Miami means having a strong sense of Cuban identity based on "la lucha", or the struggle against the tyranny enveloping the island nation 90 miles away. Joan Didion provides a vivid account of the tumultuous and controversial world of Miami exile politics, as well as the often explosive issues of racial and ethnic conflict, where hispanic meets white, meets black, in this multi-ethnic, multi-racial kaleidoscope that is Miami.

As a 23 year resident in Miami (from NYC) I was astonished at Didion's eloquent articulation of what I haven't been able to describe but have pondered over these many years--the cultural and cognitive disconnect between native Americans and disgruntled Cuban exiles. They talk about LA, but Miami really is Never-Never Land with impossibly obdurant and involuntary immigrants who have no clue or stake in the American values of reasoned discourse, free speech, and fair play and no desire to abandon the cultural attributes that have allowed them to suffer under one form of tyranny or another for a long long time. This books explains what they are thinking--the Cubans--and why they behave the way they do. Well-researched, accurate, and beautifully crafted prose.

I am one of those who absolutely love Didion's style. Her long meandering sentences, laden with subordinate clauses that wind down a long trail of adjectives and phrasings, remind me of Hunter Thompson on Sherry instead of meth, until reaching a conclusion that is at once obvious and profound. Ah, where was I?

Oh yes, I was captured by Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking" after losing a loved one, and found her book to be the only one that came close to capturing the sorrow and ennui of that period of my life. I love her ideosyncratic style, and it served "Miami" well. She serves up the threats unveiled and the danger open and unguarded as she talks political assassination and murder in the same breath as Cuban literature and culture. This book captures the mundane face of the patriot in exile who will stop at nothing to regain his homeland, even when that homeland no longer effectively exists. Miami has truly become America's Casablanca, and she looks it in the eye without flinching. A political and social study that is more timely than many current tomes.

This is a complex and detailed history chiefly of Cuban exiles in South Florida and the influence they have been able to wield regionally and internationally with and without the help of various U.S. administrations. In that sense, it is the story of two cities - Miami and Washington - and two peoples - Americans and Cubans.

I have an objection, though, with the stone-hard style in which this volume is so meticulously, even gorgeously at times, written. Didion strives to be so achingly academic that there is little real heart to this book and, worse, the result is a cold, humorless, colorless story that is at times an unappealing example of ideological abstractions and alphabet soup.

The author, in her conspicuously clean and parenthetical prose, apparently is so charged by the subject of her research that she has forgotten there are people on the other end - readers. It is, in that sense, a boring little disaster of a book.

Didion produces a masterful detailing of Miami history through Cuban immigration and their rise to power in the city. Highly recommended.

I was surprised I have not read it earlier,not The usual Anti-Exile/ProCastro slanted work such as Bardach's so-called ' "Confidential" work and other so-called "Experts" even though there is one quoted in this book Marifeli Stable-Perez From Acieto who in Exile circles is at best An Apologist for the regime and a Spy at Worst,yet her and other ProCastroites especially NonCubans write "History" about the island, The book is okay,written eloquently and even handed yet there is some subtle jabs here and there,perhaps a condescending tone if you will.And the author of course gives her jabs at Reagan(This book is 1987 and has not been Outdated)but she is equal in taking to task The so-called Kennedy Historians and shattering their Camelot myth with the "Disposal" problem and The Biggest Betrayal ever,there is also some interesting people interviewed for the book: one of Former President Carlos Prios Socarras Daugthers is in there who sadly is a Democrat and her then Husband Duran(ProDialogo Apologist) as well Dialogo/apologetic Bernado Benes. Sprinkle in the 1980 Riots(perhaps some sympathy for victim hood) some words such as the proletariat(always careful when you see such words they hint at the leanings)and Throwing lavish parties as if throwing a party should be a sin makes the book at times confusing,what is the approach and what was the author's conclusion? it seems more about Exiles yet titled Miami? perhaps an updated and better explanation would be in due order,Most of the Cubans Arriving now(I can say this I am Cuban) are not very productive more apologetic towards the regime downright appeasers and have made Miami Worst than even 1987 could have been,throw in the jungle elements arriving from third world countries and well you can imagine the Cuban Miami is now Worst,the intolerants who left should see it now(Anglo intolerance is pointed out as well as ignorance or apathy of the cause,yet the author should know the word A Mariel does not make sense but Marielito or If female Marielita,short on research.)A book that is worth a read,however brief and at times flawed nonetheless telling of the times and the Passion and the lack of passion for those who rather Appease than Fight.

Exiled Cubans in Miami up to 1987. This is real old stuff. I wonder why this book is still being published. Felt like a collection of shorter magazine--newspaper articles compiled to look like a real book. Many long, disjointed sentences. Could use an updating. There must be better books out there about this topic.