I was south of the US cultural border the first time I lived in the great state of Florida. That is to say, I was south of the county line running between Miami-Dade and Broward during the height of Miami’s Cuban(-American) era.
If you weren’t there, it is hard to imagine what it was like. This wasn’t the height of an ethnic enclave; it was an entire US city where everything from business to local politics to education operated more in line with Latin American customs than US ones.
When I arrived fresh in January 2001, Spanish was the default language in most of the county, and kids my age were fascinated with me being “a real American.” English-only speakers found themselves regularly on the backfoot throughout the course of daily life, whether at the post office, in the grocery line, or at their jobs.
If you thought about it as a Pan-American place (instead of a US place), you could surf on top of a bit of the city’s chaos and enjoy its cultural fluidity.
Because my appearance is Southern European, I was assumed constantly to be a native Spanish-speaker. Daily, strangers struck up conversations with me in Spanish that fizzled quickly into awkward exchanges across language barriers.
Sometimes the conversation just died right there. Other times, the other person would switch to English and continue the conversation.
They’d go on with whatever small talk was on their mind - the parking situation, the weather, the oddity of someone who just passed by. Other times, whatever they had wanted to talk about originally was replaced with curiosity about where I was from.
(“Where are you from?” being the local core assessment question on par with the US Northeastern’s “What do you do?”)
Still other times, people dove into stories from their life or would launch into giving me their advice. They’d say I should quit smoking then tell me how they lost a child to cancer… or they’d advise me to wear more makeup if I were ever to attract a man… or they’d tell me I should get pregnant now in my early 20s for safety’s sake.
They’d tell me what they thought about 9/11, the Iraq War, their politics, or how they arrived at those politics because of what happened in the old country.
This is how I learned about the Bay of Pigs and how the CIA abandoned the on-ground resistors without a word of warning, which led to their slaughter. And how I learned about US interference in El Salvador, Chile, Mexico, Haiti, Panama…
On Miami sidewalks from strangers toggling English and Spanish who lived through the events, neighbored them, or survived the fallout from them.
There is a difference, they would say with a stern look in their eyes, between people and their governments.
I realize today that I was a recipient of such stories for that very reason.
That, as an American (United Statesian), I was not the US establishment interfering with a democratically elected government or the CIA abandoning their partners in a moment of life and death.
Now, aged finely over twenty years and bottled in this letter, I give this story to you.
As a reminder that people are not their governments…
… or their political parties… or their ideologies…
Inside the United States during this fragile time, what this means is that it would be helpful for liberals, progressives and leftists to know that there are evangelicals worried about the rise in white supremacist organizations.
And there are Floridians with Trump gear and DeSantis stickers who stop the barreling traffic on four-lane highways to get a turtle, precariously crossing the street, to the other side.
And that it would be helpful for right-wingers, conservatives and evangelicals to know that there are liberal Coasters with their inclusion flags who just want a cold beer after too long of a day for too little pay.
And there are leftists with their Bernie pins who whisper a call to a higher power for help figuring out how to pay this month’s bills.
If all of us reading this now were barreling down the same wild, Floridian highway, we-
-the ones with our inclusion flags and DeSantis stickers, our Bernie pins and Trump gear, likely alongside some dude who spray-painted his car to look like a gator-
we all would hit the brakes and stop the four-lanes of traffic to get the turtle to the other side.