Blog Post # 2: Tracing the Soul of a City

Last Tuesday, the team and I presented our midterm project for our public speaking class: a deep dive into the history of Hialeah, Florida, from 1925 to 2005. Each of us covered a different era of the city’s evolution—its people, culture, challenges, and growth. Hialeah is not by any means an “old city,” especially when compared to others in the United States, but it still has a story to tell. One that’s often been overlooked, even as it’s right in front of us. So that's what my team and I set out to do in our midterm project, for our public speaking class.

We started in the 1920s with the founding of Hialeah and how aviation pioneer James Bright and cattleman Glenn Curtis built a city on prairie land, giving it a name from the Muskogee language. From there, we walked through the decades: hurricanes, the Great Depression, post-war expansion, and the rise of Hialeah Park as a glamorous racetrack. We all did our little research. We each brought our respective time periods to life with rich visuals, historic photos, and stories I hadn’t heard before, like the origins of Seminola Park or Winston Churchill’s visit to the racetrack.

My section covered the years 1980 to 1994. It sounds relatively recent, but those years were packed with events that completely reshaped Hialeah and, really, South Florida as a whole. I tried to cover as much as I could during the presentation, but we just didn’t have enough time to unpack everything. So here’s what I wish I could’ve gone deeper into—not necessarily just about Hialeah, but about the immigration events that shaped those years.

The Mariel Boatlift

In 1980, the Port of Mariel in Cuba became the unlikely launch site for one of the most dramatic refugee movements in U.S. history.  After a few messy attempts by Cubans to gain access to embassies and request political asylum, Fidel Castro declared that everyone that wanted to leave, could do so. As shrewd as he was, Fidel could be sort of naive sometimes; he certainly didn't envision what happened next: Over 125,000 Cubans left everything behind and made the dangerous journey to Florida, many in tiny, overcrowded leisure boats from Florida relatives and friends. It was a shock for everyone involved.

The Mariel Boatlift wasn’t a neat or organized emigration. It was chaotic, dangerous, and emotional. Families were separated. Some people drowned. Others arrived traumatized. And yet, Hialeah opened its doors to thousands of these new arrivals. They resettled in neighborhoods, found work in local factories, and helped turn Hialeah into the Cuban-American stronghold it is today.

Not everyone welcomed them with open arms at first. There were stereotypes and fears, especially since some of the Marielitos had criminal records or came from psychiatric institutions in Cuba—a parting “gift” from Castro to the United States, sent along with the regular folks who were simply tired of the island communist regime. But over time, they built lives here. They became business owners, parents, voters, neighbors.

The Balsero Crisis

Then came the 1994 balsero crisis. Once again, Cuba was in turmoil, this time due to extreme economic hardship after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Tens of thousands of desperate Cubans set out across the Florida Straits on makeshift rafts, or balsas, hoping to reach the United States. Many didn’t make it.

This I remember very clearly. I was about 11 or 12 years old when it happened. It wasn’t uncommon to see groups of people carrying makeshift rafts down to the water and paddling away, sometimes in rough weather that made even watching feel heavy. Occasionally, the news would come that someone had been lost at sea. Other times, you’d see the remains of a raft banging against the rocks like a ghost of someone’s hope. I was old enough to feel sad about it. 

Hialeah, already home to earlier waves of Cuban migrants, became the epicenter of the response. Schools, shelters, and public services were overwhelmed but somehow adapted. Churches and local families stepped up. It was a moment of collective resilience that says a lot about the character of the city. You could see how a community with a shared background—often tied together by language, loss, and hope—rallied to help the next wave of survivors.

It was powerful to think about while preparing my section. These weren’t just political headlines or numbers on a chart. They were human stories filled with risk, pain, and ultimately, rebuilding. Hialeah became the landing ground, the safety net, the place where these stories could continue.

What I Took Away

Thinking about now, this presentation went beyond a regular school assignment. It helped me see Hialeah with new eyes. The timeline we covered: from prairies to racetracks, hurricanes to waves of immigration, told the story of a city shaped again and again by its people, reinvention, and grit.

What surprised me most was how much I didn’t know. I live in Hialeah. I’ve driven through it, eaten in its restaurants, spent years here, and occasionally get frustrated about its traffic, politics, and stripped down industrial aestethic. But I had never thought much about how it came to be what it is today. The way each era built on the last. The way immigrants kept arriving and shaping the city’s identity. The way community institutions—from the first hospital to the first nightclub—reflected that evolution.

And I was especially impressed when another group mentioned the City of Hialeah 2050 Master Plan. After digging into the past, it was inspiring to see how the city is thinking about the future: sustainability, transportation, green spaces, and community development. It feels like Hialeah isn’t just resting on its legacy. It’s using it as a blueprint for what comes next.

Final Thoughts

So yes, I’m glad we got to do this project. I learned from it, connecting the dots between history and present-day Hialeah, and to think about how cities grow, not just physically, but emotionally and culturally.

To my team: thank you for making this such a collaborative and thoughtful experience. And to our professor: thank you for assigning something that actually made us care.

Raul Rodriguez