Photo Essay: Little Havana, Miami

After lunch at Versailles, we spent an hour walking through Little Havana in Miami, avoiding chickens and enjoying ice cream.

Little Havana Miami Photo Essay

Little Havana is a vibrant Miami neighborhood of Cuban exiles (and more recently, other migrants from Central and South America). Despite our morning arrival, I booked an evening flight in part so that my son Augustine and I could check out this part of town. It was a first visit for both of us.

You really do feel like you are in another place. The language spoken is Spanish, at least primarily, and there is patriotism and pride in pre-communist Cuba and also in the United States. And that’s no surprise considering how the US took in many Cuban refugees after revolutions in both 1933 and 1959.

If you’re visiting Miami, spend an hour or two walking around this area. Enjoy some Cuban food and coffee, perhaps a cigar or a mojito.

Watch out for the chickens – they can be aggressive. You’ll find that the neighborhood is teeming with roosters and hens…sometimes very loud ones.

Take a moment to reflect on the Bay of Pigs monument, commemorating the botched CIA invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles in 1961. The goal was to overthrow Fidel Castro and establish a non-communist government friendly to the United States. Last I checked, it’s 2024 and the communists are still in charge…

But 90 miles away in Miami, Cuban-Americans dream of a day when communism finally falls and they can return to their homeland.