Talk:Homestead, Florida/Comments

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I grew up in Homestead, Florida and I cannot understand why the demographics section says nothing about the Mexican-American community. Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans (mainly from Texas) are the largest Hispanic group by far. They originally came for migrant farm work (agriculture being a major industry). There are many local businesses with Mexican goods, crafts, musical instruments and restaurants that are landmarks like El Toro Taco and La Casita Tejas which have been around for decades. On Friday nights and Saturdays you can see Mariachi bands walking on Krome or Washington Avenues, frequenting the restaurants and playing for tips. When I was a kid all of the birthdays, weddings, and quinceañeras had Tejano (Tex-Mex) music and Piñatas. The first time I went to a dance club (at the Homestead Air Force Base) they played 60% "American top 40" pop music with 30% Tejano and 10% Salsa music thrown in to keep everyone happy & dancing. [[El Nachito Restaurant]http://www.gofish.com/player.gfp?gfid=30-1186515] [[Interview with local business owner Soila Gallegos]http://library.thinkquest.org/C008371/Lydia%20Reyna.htm]

There are many cultures in Homestead; White and Black Americans came to farm South Florida land in what would later be called "the Nation's Breadbasket". African-Americans from the South were the first main group of migrant workers (followed by Mexicans), Puerto Ricans came too and had their own slice of town (where you could hear Salsa music instead of Tejano music), there were a sprinkling of Bahamians and Jamaicans and the U.S. economy of the 1970's brought mixed groups of north easterners and mid-westerners to settle in new projects of affordable housing. This invigorated the small Jewish community [[Temple Hatikvah]http://www.thhjc.org/]. The Cuban populace grew after the Mariel Boat-lifts (1979-1980) when these immigrants were settled by U.S. Immigration, however much of this group relocated to larger Cuban communities in Miami. Central Americans were the new migrant workers after the Mexican community's youth chose college over farm work (like the African-Americans before them). The Haitian community is the latest ethnic group increasing since the 1990's. Post-Hurricane-Andrew saw yet another affordable housing migration of mixed peoples. Still Mexican-Americans are one of Homestead's largest ethnic groups Zonjezile (talk) 16:16, 29 March 2008 (UTC)