Florida aid key to Haiti, our Caribbean neighbor

The other day, as I was having a dockside lunch near the Port of Palm Beach, I watched a seemingly endless parade of workers in hard hats and life vests from the Great Lakes region on their way to catch a boat to Haiti. I saw two aircraft, hooked in a refueling connection, flying south just off the coast. I marveled at the Haitian rescue effort taking place in the air and in seaports all up and down the Florida coast.

This got me thinking about something I read by James Michener in the forward to his novel Caribbean roughly 20 years ago. He ventured the opinion that world historians typically overlook the importance of events in the Caribbean.

Michener’s Caribbean begins in the prehistoric time of the Caribe and Arawak Indians and culminates with a tale of two modern refugees returning to Cuba. The book details personal and sociological trials of real and fictitious characters, as well as how the English, Spanish, French, Dutch, German and, later, American nations were lead into conflict and transformed by Caribbean events.

Florida history and culture also is closely linked in much the same way to other nations in this hemisphere. Since the first Cuban refugee children joined my elementary grade classes, my world has been steeped in Cuban culture.

I remember when Miami was just another unexceptional southern American city. In those days, the only route to the Keys for our summer vacation was down U.S. 1. We never drove through Miami without my father complaining about what a dump it was. Today Miami is an international jewel. It is, without a doubt, the crossroads for Pan American and Caribbean business and culture.

Florida’s international culture comes with sobering responsibilities though. My cartoon from September 1994 about the mass invasion of Cuban rafters is a good example of the recurring challenges we often face. At the time, my wife and I strolled the beach in Jupiter looking at dozens of makeshift rafts that had washed ashore. We were amazed at the innovation in their construction and appalled that anyone would be so desperate as to risk the open sea in them.


If America is a beacon of commerce, hope and freedom for the rest of the world, then Florida is the tip of the flame for the Caribbean basin. We did not attain this status by setting ourselves apart, or because of some exclusive American principles. Instead, it is because we have been accepting and inclusive — reveling in the diversity of culture.

The scope of the Haitian disaster is daunting. But as Floridians, and as vital citizens of this region, we owe them our greatest resolve.