Saying openly that you don't like the US can be cool. Puts you in this egocentric traveling world of social media, where it is presumed to be mud, in the platoon of interesting travelers. Few would think of criticizing a trip to an African town, a village in Nepal or one of those Central American villages where roundabouts are the best tourist attraction. It does, Even if you barely left the hotel you slept in and lock the door when the sun went down (much better if you slept in a tent) everything was fascinating. A unique experience. Poverty and violence is intoxicating when you are passing, While wealth and calm to be able to walk the streets at night is extremely boring.
I don't escape that idiocy? I grew up in a place where traffic lights work, The municipal bus has air conditioning and supermarket products have prices labeled. From there up, Everything is similar except beauty slapping, Natural. From there down, Emotions begin.
This summer we decided to look for the shaking of the unknown and composed a trip that began three days in Miami and then took the flight to the ancient and Barbuda islands, Monserrat and Dominica. Miami in part was imposed by the connections. What traveler is interested in going to Miami?
Miami in part was imposed by the connections. What traveler is interested in going to Miami?
When the city arrived, it seemed much more orderly and clean than I foreshadowed. That is something that I have already understood in the many gringas cities that I have visited: Poverty is not in the cement of its buildings, is in the skin of its inhabitants. Miami, in any case, It does not have the inconsolatable trail of vagrants who have places like New York or California.
We stayed in a rented room in Miami Beach and went to walk through a neighborhood where you stumble with a carnal world of excesses in which nothing is covered although above all and with the hedonic pleasure of one of those places of the globe made for others. Nothing new, In my country the list of similar places is long: Torremolinos, Benirdorm, Sea roquetas, Marbella… Then you get to the beach, To take a dip, And for an umbrella they ask you 50 dollars and on the other, of a hotel, 300 U.S. dollars. They have read well, 300 U.S. dollars. Nice bathroom, towel in the sand and save 300 dollars was our option.
De Miami Beach y sus Ocean Drive, Lincoln Road and Paseo Marítimo little is saved. Money horta ostentation comes to overwhelm. We saw types in swimsuit starting his drunkenness jumping on his ferrari, convertible cars that exhibited tanned bikinis, We listen 259 Sometimes the song Despacito until I want.
We listen 259 times the song Despacito until I want to flee rapidito
The city remained and we set out to do it. We rent a car to see the Everglades National Park, That in which the boats carry a giant fan behind the back and that to all of my generation reminds us of Miami Vice. There were crocodiles floating in its waters while our boat made its way through thick flooded vegetation. Nature. Interesting.
Then we discovered a neighborhood that seemed curious and beautiful: Wynwood. Is the alternative neighborhood, We went to dinner one night and another noon to walk it. The walls of the buildings are tattooed with spectacular graffiti. There is color, mix, Art stores and galleries. Life. Worth.
And then we also decided to go to what they call little Havana. It is the Latin neighborhood and perhaps the hidden heart of the city. Miami is another province in Latin America, true. More Spanish is heard than English through the streets.
It is almost impossible to see a Latin American asking for money in the streets
There you understand two things. The first that in the immense misery you see in the streets of the US, Latinos are almost part. It is very rare to see a Latin American asking for money in the streets. Many of those we met work at a bar, Then they go up to an uber and also fix houses. In hotels and airport they are the ones that clean, They serve. In stores are the dependents and in the beaches that put and remove the umbrellas. Add this rule to New York, All California, Utah, San Antonio, Las Vegas, Washington… They work, hard, for carving a future. It is hard to imagine that the US can work without this huge cheap and effective labor.
The second reflection has to do with that mirror that are the trips. For you Miami is a good hortera (All generalization is a lie and unfair), Consumption blows, of a cult of lascivious money, of an identity that hills winners and forgets its losers.
But the Venezuelan Uber driver tells you that he is delighted and that he had to flee from his homeland taking some memories and miraculously intact his life; and the doctor Cuban He tells you that he is finally being able to give his family a future to which in any case he sees in photos because he works 20 hours a day of waiter, driver and making home arrangements while validating his doctor's title (his wife, details, It is a hairdresser and takes care of children); and the waitress of Guatemala He tells you that she is happy because here when the street is not played and the type of El Salvador, Gordito, Leave some tattoo while collecting hammocks and explains that where he is, he does not think more to return.
Years ago, The first time was in India, that I learned the enormous difference between being and passing or being able to pass. There I saw the face of surprise and almost contempt of a taxi driver who listened to western ones to say that they loved Paharganj, The poor and backpack neighborhood where tourists sleep for five euros. He lived there and every day that he was working in the car, he dreamed of being able to live on the periphery of some city with those boring services that do so little matter to the western: water, light, Security… You know, A pain like Miami.
