   #copyright

History of Miami, Florida

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: North American History

   Miami Avenue in 1896
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   Miami Avenue in 1896

   The area in which the city of Miami, Florida would later be founded by
   Europeans was inhabited for more than a thousand years by the Tequesta
   Indians. Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and his men first visited and claimed
   the area around Miami for Spain in 1566. A Spanish mission was
   established one year later. Fort Dallas was built in the mid-1800s and
   subsequently was a site of fighting during the Second Seminole War.

   The Miami area was better known as “Biscayne Bay Country” in the early
   years of its growth. The few published accounts from that period
   describe the area as a wilderness that held much promise. The area was
   also characterized as “one of the finest building sites in Florida.”
   However, the Great Freeze of 1894 changed all that, and the crops of
   the Miami area were the only ones in Florida that survived. Julia
   Tuttle, a local citrus grower, convinced Henry Flagler, a railroad
   tycoon, to expand his Florida East Coast Railroad to Miami. On July 28,
   1896, Miami was officially incorporated as a city with a population of
   just over 300.

   Miami prospered during the 1920s but weakened after the collapse of the
   Florida land boom of the 1920's, the 1926 Miami Hurricane and the Great
   Depression in the 1930s. When World War II began, Miami, well-situated
   due to its location on the southern coast of Florida, played an
   important role in the battle against German submarines. The war helped
   to expand Miami's population to almost half a million. After Fidel
   Castro rose to power in 1959, many Cubans emigrated to Miami, further
   increasing the population. In the 1980s and 1990s, various crises
   struck South Florida, among them the Arthur McDuffie beating and the
   subsequent riot, drug wars, Hurricane Andrew, and the Elián González
   uproar. Miami remains a major international financial and cultural
   centre.

Early settlement

   The earliest evidence of Native American settlement in the Miami region
   came from about 10,000 years ago. The region was filled with pine and
   hardwood forests and was home to plenty of deer, bear and wild fowl.
   The first inhabitants settled on the banks of the Miami River. The main
   villages were on the northern banks of the river. The early Native
   Americans created a variety of weapons and tools from shells.

   The inhabitants of the Miami area when the first Europeans visited were
   the Tequesta people, who controlled an area covering much of
   southeastern Florida, including what is now Miami-Dade County, Broward
   County, and the southern parts of Palm Beach County. The Tequesta
   Indians fished, hunted, and gathered the fruit and roots of plants for
   food, but did not practice any form of agriculture. They buried the
   small bones of the deceased, but put the larger bones in a box for the
   village people to see. The Tequesta are credited with making the Miami
   Circle.

Early Spanish settlement

   Ponce de Leon was the first European to sight the Miami Florida area.
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   Ponce de Leon was the first European to sight the Miami Florida area.

   In 1513, Juan Ponce de León was the first European man to see the Miami
   area by sailing into Biscayne Bay. He wrote in his journal that he
   reached Chequescha, which was Miami's first recorded name. It is
   unknown whether or not he came ashore and made contact with the
   Indians. Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and his men made the first recorded
   landing when they visited the Tequesta settlement in 1566 while looking
   for Avilés' missing son, who was shipwrecked a year earlier. Spanish
   soldiers led by Father Francisco Villiareal built a Jesuit mission at
   the mouth of the Miami River a year later but it was short-lived. By
   1570, the Jesuits decided to look for more willing subjects outside of
   Florida. After the Spaniards left, the Tequesta Indians were left to
   fend themselves from European introduced diseases like smallpox. Wars
   with other tribes greatly weakened their population, and they were
   easily defeated by the Creek Indians in battles. By 1711, the Tequesta
   sent a couple of local chiefs to Havana, Cuba to ask if they could
   migrate there. The Cubans sent two ships to help them, but Spanish
   illnesses struck and most of the Indians died. The Spaniards sent
   another mission to Biscayne Bay in 1743, where they built a fort and
   church. The missionary priests proposed a permanent settlement, where
   the Spanish settlers would raise food for the soldiers and American
   Indians. However, the proposal was rejected as impractical and the
   mission was withdrawn before the end of the year.

Early non-Spanish settlement

   Samuel Touchett received a land grant from the British government of
   20,000  acres (80,940,000 m^2) in the Miami area in 1766. The grant was
   surveyed by Bernard Romans in 1772. A condition for making the grant
   permanent was that at least one white settler had to live on the grant
   for every 100 acres (404,700 m^2) of land. While Touchett wanted to
   place a plantation on the grant, he was having financial problems and
   never was able to develop it.
   the Cape Florida lighthouse
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   the Cape Florida lighthouse

   The first permanent white settlers in the Miami area arrived in the
   early 1800s. Pedro Fornells, a Minorcan survivor of the New Smyrna
   colony, moved to Key Biscayne to meet the terms of his Royal Grant for
   the island. Although he returned with his family to St. Augustine after
   six months, he left a caretaker behind on the island. On a trip to the
   island in 1803, Fornells had noted the presence of squatters on the
   mainland across Biscayne Bay from the island. In 1825 U.S. Marshal
   Waters Smith visited the Cape Florida Settlement (which was on the
   mainland) and conferred with squatters who wanted to obtain title to
   the land they were occupying.

   People came from the Bahamas and the Keys to South Florida to hunt for
   treasure from the ships that ran aground on the treacherous Great
   Florida reef. Some accepted Spanish land offers along the Miami River.
   At about the same time, the Seminole Indians arrived along with a group
   of runaway slaves. In 1825, the Cape Florida lighthouse was built on
   nearby Key Biscayne to warn passing ships of the dangerous reefs.

   In the 1830s, Richard Fitzpatrick bought land on the Miami River from
   the Bahamians, becoming one of the first and most successful of the
   permanent white settlers. He operated a successful plantation with
   slave labor where he cultivated sugar cane, bananas, corn, and tropical
   fruit. Fort Dallas was located on Fitzpatrick’s plantation on the north
   bank of the river.

   The area was affected by the Second Seminole War, where Major William
   S. Harney led several raids against the Indians. Most non-Indian
   residents were soldiers stationed at Fort Dallas. It was the most
   devastating Indian war in American history, causing almost a total loss
   of population in the Miami area. The Cape Florida lighthouse was burned
   by Seminoles in 1836 and was not repaired until 1846.

   After the Second Seminole War ended in 1842, Fitzpatrick’s nephew,
   William English, re-established the plantation in Miami. He charted the
   "Village of Miami" on the south bank of the Miami River and sold
   several plots of land. In 1844, Miami became the county seat, and six
   years later a census reported that there were ninety-six residents
   living in the area. The Third Seminole War (1855-1858) was not as
   destructive as the second one. Even so, it slowed down the settlement
   of southeast Florida. At the end of the war, a few of the soldiers
   stayed. Some of the Seminoles remained in the Everglades. However, as
   late as the 1890s, only a handful of families made their homes in
   Miami. Many of the settlers were homesteaders, attracted to the area by
   offers of 160 acres (647,500 m^2) of free land by the US federal
   government. Among the homesteaders was William Brickell, known as the
   Father of Miami, who came from Cleveland, Ohio in 1871. He held a
   trading post and post office at the mouth of the Miami River and bought
   some land there.

Early growth and formation

   Julia Tuttle
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   Julia Tuttle

   In 1891, a wealthy Cleveland woman named Julia Tuttle purchased an
   enormous citrus plantation in the Miami area. Tuttle's husband,
   Frederick Tuttle, had died in 1886, and she decided to move to South
   Florida due to the "delicate health" of her children. She and William
   Brickell tried to get railroad magnate Henry Flagler to expand his rail
   line, the Florida East Coast Railroad, southward to the area, but he
   initially declined.

   However, in the winter of 1894, Florida was struck by bad weather that
   destroyed virtually the entire citrus crop in the northern half of the
   state. A few months later on the night of February 7, 1895, Florida was
   hit by another freeze. That freeze wiped out the remaining crops and
   the new trees. Unlike the rest of the state, Miami was unaffected, and
   Tuttle's citrus became the only citrus on the market that year. Tuttle
   wrote to Flagler again, persuading him to visit the area and to see it
   for himself, and sent him some of the flowers to show that the area
   escaped the frost. Flagler did so, and concluded at the end of his
   first day that the area was ripe for expansion. He made the decision to
   extend his railroad to Miami and build a resort hotel.

   On April 22, 1895, Flagler wrote to Tuttle a long letter recapping her
   offer of land to him in exchange for extending his railroad to Miami,
   laying out a city and building a hotel. The terms provided that Tuttle
   would award Flagler a 100 acre (404,700 m^2) tract of land for the city
   to grow. Flagler wrote a similar letter to Brickell around that time.

   While the railroad's extension to Miami remained unannounced in the
   spring of 1895, rumors of this possibility continued to multiply,
   fueling real estate activity in the Biscayne Bay area. The news of the
   railroad’s extension was officially announced on June 21, 1895. In late
   September, the work on the railroad began and settlers began pouring
   into the promised "freeze proof" lands. On October 24, 1895, the
   contract agreed upon by Flagler and Tuttle was approved.

   With the railroad under construction, activity in Miami began to pick
   up. Men from throughout Florida flocked to Miami to await Flagler's
   call for workers of all qualifications to begin work on the promised
   hotel and city. By late December 1895, seventy-five of them already
   were at work clearing the site for the hotel. They lived mostly in
   tents and huts in the wilderness, which had no streets and few cleared
   paths. These men were primarily victims of the freeze, which had left
   both money and work scarce.

   On February 1, 1896, Tuttle fulfilled the first part of her agreement
   with Flagler by signing two deeds to transfer land for his hotel and
   the 100 acres (404,700 m^2) of land near the hotel site to him. The
   titles to the Brickell and Tuttle properties were based on early
   Spanish land grants and had to be determined to be clear of conflict
   before the marketing of the Miami lots began. On March 3, Flagler hired
   John Sewell from West Palm Beach to begin work on the town, while more
   people came into Miami. On April 7, 1896, the railroad tracks finally
   reached Miami, and the first train arrived on April 13. It was a
   special, unscheduled train, and Flagler was on board. The train
   returned to St. Augustine later that night. The first regularly
   scheduled train arrived on the night of April 15. The first week of
   train service provided only for freight trains, and passenger service
   did not begin until a week later, on April 22.

   On July 28, 1896, the incorporation meeting to make Miami a city took
   place. The right to vote was restricted to all men who resided in Miami
   or Dade County. Joseph A. McDonald, Flagler’s chief of construction on
   the Royal Palm Hotel, was elected chairman of the meeting. After
   ensuring that the required number of voters was present, the motion was
   made to incorporate and organize a city government under the corporate
   name of "The City of Miami," with the boundaries as proposed. John
   Reilly, who headed Flagler's Fort Dallas land company, was the first
   elected mayor.

   Initially, most residents wanted to name the city "Flagler". However,
   Henry Flagler was adamant that new city would not be named after
   himself. So on July 28, 1896, the City of Miami was incorporated with
   502 voters, including 100 registered black voters. The blacks provided
   the primary labor force for the building of Miami. Clauses in land
   deeds confined blacks to the northwest section of Miami, which became
   known as "Colored Town" (today's Overtown).

Twentieth century

   Miami's growth up to World War II was astronomical. In 1900, 1,681
   people lived in Miami, Florida; in 1910, there were 5,471 people; and
   in 1920, there were 29,549 people. As thousands of people moved to the
   area in the early 1900s, the need for more land quickly became
   apparent. Up until then, the Florida Everglades only extended to three
   miles west of Biscayne Bay. Beginning in 1906, canals were made to
   remove some of the water from those lands. Miami Beach was developed in
   1913 when a two-mile wooden bridge built by John Collins was completed.
   During the early 1920s, the authorities of Miami allowed gambling and
   were very lax in regulating Prohibition, so thousands of people
   migrated from the northern United States to the Miami region. This
   caused the first Florida construction boom and many high-rise buildings
   were built: some early developments were razed after their initial
   construction to construct larger buildings. The population of Miami
   doubled from 1920 to 1923. The nearby areas of Lemon City, Coconut
   Grove and Allapattah were annexed in the fall of 1925, creating the
   Greater Miami area.

   This speculation boom started to falter because of building
   construction delays. The transport system was contantly overloaded with
   bulky building materials. In January of 1926 the Prinz Valdemar, an old
   Danish warship on its way to becoming a floating hotel, ran aground and
   blocked Miami Harbour for weeks. Already overloaded, the three major
   railway companies soon declared an embargo on all incoming goods except
   food. The cost of living had skyrocketed and finding an affordable
   place to live was nearly impossible. This economic bubble was already
   collapsing when the catastrophic Great Miami Hurricane in 1926 ended
   what was left of the boom. According to the Red Cross, there were 373
   fatalities. Other estimates vary, since there were a large number of
   people listed as "missing". Between 25,000 and 50,000 people were left
   homeless in the Miami area. The Category 4 storm was the 12th most
   costly and 12th most deadly to strike the United States during the 20th
   century. The Great Depression followed, in which more than sixteen
   thousand people in Miami became unemployed. A Civilian Conservation
   Corps camp was opened in the area.
   Giuseppe Zangara mugshot after the shooting
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   Giuseppe Zangara mugshot after the shooting

   In the mid-1930s, the Art Deco district of Miami Beach was developed.
   On February 15, 1933, an assassination attempt was made on
   President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt by Giuseppe Zangara, an Italian
   anarchist, while Roosevelt was giving a speech in Miami's Bayfront
   Park. Mayor Anton Cermak of Chicago, who was shaking hands with
   Roosevelt, was shot and died two weeks later. Four other people were
   wounded, but President-elect Roosevelt was not harmed. At his
   sentencing Zangara said, "I decide to kill him and make him suffer. I
   want to make it 50-50. Since my stomach hurt I want to make even with
   capitalists by kill the President. My stomach hurt long time." Zangara
   was quickly tried for Cermak's murder and was executed by the electric
   chair on March 20, 1933 in Raiford, Florida.

World War II

   By the early 1940s, Miami was recovering from the Great Depression, but
   then World War II started. Many of the cities in Florida were heavily
   affected by the war and went into financial ruin, but Miami remained
   relatively unaffected. Early in the war, German U-boats attacked
   several American ships. Among the American ships was the Portero del
   Llano, which was attacked by a German submarine and sank within sight
   of Miami Beach in May 1942. To defend against those U-boats, Miami was
   placed in two military districts, the Eastern Defense Command and the
   Seventh Naval District, which was designed to defend against those
   attacks.

   In February 1942, the Gulf Sea Frontier was established to help guard
   the waters around Florida, and by June of that year, more attacks
   forced military leaders in Washington D.C. to increase the numbers of
   ships and men of the army group. They also had moved the headquarters
   from Key West to the DuPont building in Miami, taking advantage of its
   location at the southeastern corner of the U.S. As the war against the
   U-boats grew stronger, more military bases sprang up in the Miami area.
   The U.S. Navy took control of Miami's docks and established air
   stations at the Opa-locka Airport and in Dinner Key. The Air Force also
   set up bases in the local airports in the Miami area.
   Pan Am's terminal at Dinner Key in 1944 during World War II
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   Pan Am's terminal at Dinner Key in 1944 during World War II

   Many military schools, supply, and communications facilities were
   established in the area. Rather than building large army bases to train
   the men needed to fight the war, the Army and Navy came to South
   Florida and took over hotels for barracks, movie theaters for
   classrooms, and local beaches and golf courses for training purposes.
   Eventually, over five hundred thousand enlisted men and fifty thousand
   officers trained in South Florida. After the end of the war, many
   servicemen and women returned to Miami, pushing the population up to
   almost half a million by 1950.

First Cuban wave

   Following the 1959 revolution that unseated Fulgencio Batista and
   brought Fidel Castro to power, most Cubans who were living in Miami
   went back to Cuba. That soon changed, and many middle class and upper
   class Cubans moved to Florida en masse with few possessions. Some
   Miamians were upset about this, especially the African Americans, as
   Cuban workers were replacing them at jobs. The school system struggled
   to educate the thousands of Spanish-speaking Cuban children. Many of
   those Cubans later participated in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.
   Many Miamians, thinking that World War III (the Cold War) was looming
   ahead, left the city, while others started building bomb shelters and
   stocking up on food and bottled water. Many of Miami's Cuban refugees
   realized for the first time that it would be a long time before they
   would get back to Cuba. In 1965 alone, 100,000 Cubans packed into the
   twice daily "freedom flights" from Havana to Miami. Most of the exiles
   settled into the Riverside neighbourhood, which began to take on the
   new name of " Little Havana." This area emerged as a predominantly
   Spanish-speaking community, and Spanish speakers elsewhere in the city
   could conduct most of their daily business in their native tongue. By
   the end of the 1960s, more than four hundred thousand Cuban refugees
   were living in Miami-Dade County.

   In the 1960s and 1970s, the Attorney General's authority was used to
   grant parole, or special permission, to allow Cubans to enter the
   country. However, parole only allows an individual permission to enter
   the country, not to stay permanently. In the case of Cubans, the Cuban
   Adjustment Act of 1966 resolved this dilemma. The Act provides that the
   immigration status of any Cuban who arrived since 1959 and has been
   physically present in the United States for at least a year "may be
   adjusted by the Attorney General to that of an alien lawfully admitted
   for permanent residence" ( green card holder). The individual must be
   admissible to the United States (i.e., not disqualified on criminal or
   other grounds).

Social unrest

   Although Miami was not really considered a major centre of the Civil
   Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, it did not escape the change
   that occurred. Miami was a major city in the southern state of Florida,
   and had always had a substantial African-American and black Caribbean
   population.

   In the 1970s, Miami was a news leader, resulting from response to a
   Dade County (now Miami-Dade) ordinance protecting individuals on the
   basis of sexual orientation. Opposition to this ordinance was led by
   Florida orange juice spokeswoman, Anita Bryant.

   In December 1979, police officers pursued motorcyclist Arthur McDuffie
   in a high-speed chase after McDuffie made a provocative gesture towards
   a police officer. The officers claimed that the chase ended when
   McDuffie crashed his motorcycle and died. The coroner's report
   concluded otherwise. One of the officers testified that McDuffie fell
   off of his bike on an Interstate 95 on-ramp. When the police reached
   him he was injured but okay. The officers removed his helmet, beat him
   to death with their batons, put his helmet back on, and called an
   ambulance claiming there had been a motorcycle accident. Eula McDuffie,
   the victim's mother, said to the Miami Herald a few days later, "They
   beat my son like a dog. They beat him just because he was riding a
   motorcycle and because he was black." An all-white jury acquitted the
   officers after a brief deliberation.

   After learning of the verdict of the McDuffie case, one of the worst
   riots in the history of the United States, the infamous Liberty City
   Riots, broke out. By the time the rioting ceased three days later, over
   850 people had been arrested, and at least eight white people and ten
   African Americans had died. Property damage was estimated at around one
   hundred million dollars. One more person, a sixty-five year old woman
   named Mildred Penton, died from a coma five weeks after being struck in
   the head with a brick.

   In March 1980, the first black Dade County schools superintendent, Dr.
   Johnny L. Jones, had been convicted on grand theft charges linked to
   gold-plated plumbing. His conviction was overturned because his jury
   had been all-white, and on July 3, 1986, the state attorney Janet Reno
   announced that Jones would not be retried for that case. However, in a
   separate case, he was convicted on misdemeanor charges of soliciting
   perjury and witness tampering, and received a two-year jail sentence.
   Many believed Jones was targeted because he was an African American man
   with power.

Later immigration

   Cuban refugees arriving in crowded boats during the Mariel Boatlift
   crisis.
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   Cuban refugees arriving in crowded boats during the Mariel Boatlift
   crisis.

   Later, the Mariel Boatlift of 1980 brought 150,000 Cubans to Miami, the
   largest in civilian history. Unlike the previous exodus of the 1960s,
   most of the Cuban refugees arriving were poor. Castro used the boatlift
   as a way of purging his country of criminals and of the mentally ill,
   as well as further removing possible political dissidents. During this
   time, many of the middle class non-Hispanic whites in the community
   left the city, often referred to as the " white flight." In 1960, Miami
   was 90% non-Hispanic white; by 1990, it was only about 10% non-Hispanic
   white.

   In the 1980s, Miami started to see an increase in immigrants from other
   nations such as Haiti. As the Haitian population grew, the area known
   today as Little Haiti emerged, centered on Northeast Second Avenue and
   54th Street. In 1985, Xavier Suarez was elected as Major of Miami,
   becoming the first Cuban mayor of a major city. In the 1990s, the
   presence of Haitians was acknowledged with Haitian Creole language
   signs in public places and ballots during voting.

   Another major Cuban exodus occurred in 1994. To prevent it from
   becoming another Mariel Boatlift, the Clinton Administration announced
   a significant change in U.S. policy. In a controversial action, the
   administration announced that Cubans interdicted at sea would not be
   brought to the United States but instead would be taken by the Coast
   Guard to U.S. military installations at Guantanamo Bay or to Panama.
   During an eight-month period beginning in the summer of 1994, over
   30,000 Cubans and more than 20,000 Haitians were interdicted and sent
   to live in camps outside the United States.

   On September 9, 1994, the United States and Cuba agreed to normalize
   migration between the two countries. The agreement codified the new
   U.S. policy of placing Cuban refugees in safe havens outside the United
   States, while obtaining a commitment from Cuba to discourage Cubans
   from sailing to America. In addition, the United States committed to
   admitting a minimum of 20,000 Cuban immigrants per year. That number is
   in addition to the admission of immediate relatives of U.S. citizens.

   On May 2, 1995, a second agreement with the Castro government paved the
   way for the admission to the United States of the Cubans housed at
   Guantanamo, who were counted primarily against the first year of the
   20,000 annual admissions committed to by the Clinton Administration. It
   also established a new policy of directly repatriating Cubans
   interdicted at sea to Cuba. In the agreement, the Cuban government
   pledged not to retaliate against those who were repatriated.

   These agreements with the Cuban government led to what has been called
   the Wet Foot-Dry Foot Policy, whereby Cubans who made it to shore could
   stay in the United States – likely becoming eligible to adjust to
   permanent residence under the Cuban Adjustment Act. However, those who
   do not make it to dry land ultimately are repatriated unless they can
   demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution if returned to Cuba.
   Because it was stated that Cubans were escaping for political reasons,
   this policy did not apply to Haitians, who the government claimed were
   seeking asylum for economic reasons.

   Since then, the Latin and Caribbean-friendly atmosphere in Miami has
   made it a popular destination for tourists and immigrants from all over
   the world, and the third-biggest immigration port in the country after
   New York City and Los Angeles. In addition, large immigrant communities
   have settled in Miami from around the globe, including Europe, Africa,
   and Asia. The majority of Miami's European immigrant communities are
   recent immigrants, many living in the city seasonally, with a high
   disposable income.

1980s

   In the 1980s, Miami became one of the United States' largest
   transshipment point for cocaine from Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru. The
   drug industry brought billions of dollars into Miami, which were
   quickly funneled through front organizations into the local economy.
   Luxury car dealerships, five-star hotels, condominium developments,
   swanky nightclubs, major commercial developments and other signs of
   prosperity began rising all over the city. As the money arrived, so did
   a violent crime wave that lasted through the early 1990s. The popular
   television program Miami Vice, which dealt with counter-narcotics
   agents in an idyllic upper-class rendition of Miami, spread the city's
   image as one of America's most glamorous subtropical paradises.

   During the 1980s and early 1990s, many noted people visited Miami. Pope
   John Paul II visited in November 1987, and held an open-air mass for
   150,000 people in Tamiami Park. Queen Elizabeth II and three United
   States presidents also visited Miami. Among them was Ronald Reagan, who
   had a street named after him in Little Havana. Nelson Mandela's 1989
   visit to the city was marked by ethnic tensions. Mandela had praised
   Cuban leader Fidel Castro for his anti- apartheid support on ABC News'
   Nightline. Because of this, the city withdrew its official greeting and
   no high-ranking official welcomed him. That led to a boycott by the
   local African American community of all Miami tourist and convention
   facilities until Mandela received an official greeting. However, all
   efforts to resolve it failed for months, resulting in an estimated loss
   of over $10 million.

1990s and today

   The aftermath of Hurricane Andrew in the Miami area
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   The aftermath of Hurricane Andrew in the Miami area

   Hurricane Andrew caused more than $20 billion in damage just south of
   the Miami-Dade area in 1992.

   Several financial scandals involving the Mayor's office and City
   Commission during the 1980s and 1990s left Miami with the title of the
   United States' 4th poorest city by 1996. With a budget shortfall of $68
   Million and it's municipal bonds given a junk bond rating by Wall
   Street, Miami became Florida's first city to have a state appointed
   oversight board assigned to it in 1997. In the same year, city voters
   rejected a resolution to dissolve the city and make it one entity with
   Dade County. The City's financial problems continued until political
   outsider Manny Diaz was elected Mayor of Miami in 2001.

   Drug wars reached a peak in 1998, when the Liberty City area of Miami
   was the focal point of deadly battles between Anthony "Little Bo" Fail
   and the John Does, the largest gang in Miami at the time. This feud
   started when the leader of the gang, Curtis Silwa, was arrested; Fail
   saw as an opportunity to take control of the gang and reclaim revenue
   from drug sales.

   The Elián González uproar was a heated custody and immigration battle
   in the Miami area in 2000. The controversy concerned six-year-old Elián
   González, who was rescued from the waters off the coast of Miami. The
   U.S. and the Cuban governments, his father Juan Miguel González, his
   Miami relatives, and the Cuban-American community of Miami were
   involved. The climactic stage of this prolonged battle was the April
   22, 2000, seizure of Elián by federal agents, which drew the criticism
   of many in the Cuban-American community. During the controversy, Alex
   Penelas, the mayor of Miami-Dade County at the time, vowed that he
   would do nothing to assist the Bill Clinton administration and federal
   authorities in their bid to return the six-year-old boy to Cuba. Tens
   of thousands of protesters, many of whom were outraged at the raid,
   poured out into the streets of Little Havana and demonstrated. Car
   horns blared, demonstrators turned over signs, trash cans, and
   newspaper racks and some small fires were started. Rioters jammed a
   10-block area of Little Havana. Shortly afterwards, many Miami
   businesses closed, as their owners and managers participated in a
   short, one-day boycott against the city, attempting to affect its
   tourism industry. Employees of airlines, cruise lines, hotels, car
   rental companies, and major retailers participated in the boycott.
   Elián González returned to Cuba with his father on June 28, 2000.

   The controversial Free Trade Area of the Americas negotiations occurred
   in 2003. It was a proposed agreement to reduce trade barriers while
   increasing intellectual property rights. During the 2003 meeting in
   Miami, the Free Trade Area of the Americas was met by heavy opposition
   from anti-corporatization and anti-globalization protests.

   On June 27, 2005, the popular ex-city commissioner Arthur Teele walked
   into the main lobby of the Miami Herald headquarters, dropped off a
   package for columnist Jim DeFede, and told the security guard to tell
   his wife Stephanie he "loved her" before pulling out a gun and
   committing suicide. His suicide happened the day the alternative weekly
   Miami New Times published salacious details of Teele's alleged affairs,
   including allegations that Teele had sex with a transsexual prostitute
   and used cocaine. At the time, Teele was being investigated by federal
   authorities for fraud and money laundering for allegedly taking $59,000
   in kickbacks to help a businessman get millions of dollars in contracts
   at Miami International Airport. Teele was suspended from his job in
   2004 by Florida governor Jeb Bush after being arrested for trying to
   run a police officer off the road. Teele was also charged in December
   2004 with ten counts of unlawful compensation on charges he took
   $135,000 from TLMC Inc., promising that it would be awarded lucrative
   contracts to redevelop neighborhoods in Miami. Teele was also found
   guilty in March of 2005 for threatening an undercover detective.

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