Miami is the third most Hispanic-dominant metropolitan area in the country -- after New York and Los Angeles -- and the cultural impact is felt in every aspect of life in South Florida.
The Cuban influence in Miami is unmistakable -- from cool guayabera shirts to simmering salsa music, from breakfasts of tostada and café con leche, to the infamous Mojito with its fresh mint and rum.
In parts of Miami, particularly one known fondly as Little Havana, the signs and billboards are in Spanish as are most of the conversations. In Miami-Dade County, more than 67 percent of the population speaks another language, usually Spanish, at home.
Even the architecture often reflects the city's Hispanic influence. Flying into Miami International Airport, you look out on a sea of the barrel-tile roofs favored in Spanish architecture.
Southwest Eighth Street in Miami, better known as Calle Ocho, is the heart of Little Havana. The street is lined with Cuban restaurants, cigar shops and galleries that spotlight Hispanic artists. At Maximo Gomez Park, the older generation of Cubans still meet in the heat every day to play fast moving games of dominos. Each March, Calle Ocho is also the name of and the site of the country's biggest street party -- attended by more than 1 million people. A conga line at Calle Ocho in 1988 set a world record that still stands in the Guiness Book of World Records -- 119,000 people.
In 1960, Hispanics constituted only 5 percent of Miami's population. According to the last available U.S. census information in 2000, Miami-Dade County's population was 57.3 percent Hispanic. Estimates since then are that the percentage could now be as high as 62 percent.
The Hispanic population is representative of many South and Central American countries, but the overall flavor of the city is clearly Cuban.
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