MIAMI

The sharp smells of fresh pasteles (pastry) and cafe cubano waft from a hundred neighborhood coffee stands. Youngsters are everywhere, downing batidos (exotic fruit milkshakes) at open-air counters or putting away Grandes Macs at the McDonald's eatery on Flagler Street. This is Little Havana, a 5-sq.-mi. Cuban enclave in the middle of Miami.

Hispanics account for more than half of the city's population (207,000 out of 370,000), and the overwhelming majority of them are Cuban. They have given Miami, as Rum Maker Gerardo Abascal observes, "a spontaneity and boisterous flavor that it never had before."

Some 700,000 largely middle-class Cuban refugees have fled their Communist-dominated island home for the U.S. since Fidel Castro took power. Of these, 430,000 have settled in southern Florida's Dade County, where they were initially welcomed with sympathy and federal relocation grants. The Cubans have long since spread out from Little Havana. Neighboring Hialeah (pop. 133,000) is 65% Latin, and the Cubans have moved on to such well-tended suburbs as Coral Gables, Kendall and Westchester. They have prospered mightily, prompting Cuban Writer Jose Sanchez-Boudy to boast with only slight hyperbole: "We have been the most successful immigrants this country has received since it was founded."

Cuban enterprise has transformed Miami and Dade County into a dynamic commercial center. The area now boasts 230 latino restaurants, 30 furniture factories, 20 garment plants, a shoe factory that employs 3,000, and about 30 transplanted cigar factories. Hispanics are prominent in land development and make up 60% of the construction work force. They control 14 of the 67 local commercial banks. One, the Continental National, has seen its deposits swell from $2 million to $29 million in the past four years. Latinos generate an estimated $1.8 billion in annual income and have created 100,000 jobs. Says Jan Luytjes, a business professor at Florida International University: "We are seeing the rebirth of small entrepreneurship."

Every day scores of planes, from 747s to vintage C-46s, haul television sets, machinery and other U.S.-manufactured goods to the Caribbean and Latin America, returning with clothing, fresh flowers and food. In Coral Gables alone, 80 international firms have opened offices. Exxon, Du Pont and General Electric have their Latin American headquarters there. International trade now accounts for $4 billion in state income and has created 167,000 jobs, some of which have been filled by other Latin American nationals who have been drawn to the booming area.

For the Cuban middle class, hatching deals over lunch at Little Havana's American Club or lounging on weekends at the Big Five Club, life in the U.S. is a dream that grew out of a nightmare. Says Frank Soler, 35, who fled to the U.S. at age 17 and is now editor of El Miami Herald, a Spanish-language edition of the Miami Herald with a daily circulation of 50,000: "Suddenly we lost everything and were confronted with potential poverty and hunger. Fear spurred us to work our tails off to regain what we once had." Result: 40% of the county's Hispanics earned more than $12,000 last year. Nearly two-thirds own their own homes.

Brief though their stay has been, the Cubans have already had considerable impact on the region's culture. They have a plethora of Spanish-language newspapers and a string of glossy magazines to choose among (including a Hispanic version of Cosmopolitan). The Cubans enjoy a Spanish-language television station and a multitude of nightclubs that have brought back Havana's brassy night life.

The youngsters of the Hispanic community make up one-third of Bade County's pupil population, and they score well above other Bade students on English and math achievement tests. They have ready access to bilingual education, and in 1976, 72% went on to college.

In 1973 Bade County declared itself to be a bilingual jurisdiction, and Spanish became the second official language for such things as election ballots, public signs and local directories. Despite this accommodating gesture, there is friction between Hispanics and non-Hispanics in Bade. Many English-speaking residents, particularly older ones, resent the pervasiveness of the new language. There are frequent complaints of Cuban clannishness (only 5% of Cubans intermarry) and of arrogance. Result: many anglos are gradually retreating from Miami.

Miami's black community, which makes up 16% of the local population, is particularly resentful. Garth Reeves, publisher of the black Miami Times, warns of black hostility because of competition with Hispanics for low-cost public housing and lower-level service jobs that formerly were a black preserve. Says Reeves: "Before the Cuban influx, blacks had most of the hotel jobs, now they have less than 2%." One reason for this decline is that many jobs now require both English and Spanish, and most blacks do not speak the latter.

The Cubans have their own complaints. They point out that only two Hispanics hold elective offices in Miami: Mayor Maurice Ferre, a Puerto Rican, and City Commissioner Manolo Reboso, a Cuban. Cubans have no representatives in the Florida legislature or in the U.S. Congress. Latins hold only 20% of the city government jobs in Miami and only 4.9% of the top bureaucratic posts. Much of the blame for that rests with the Cubans: only 47% of them are American citizens. Many still see themselves, apparently, as anti-Communist absentees from their island home.

But the old political emotions are fading. Says Alex Robles, a prosperous home-builder who fled Cuba in 1960: "To move back would be just as big a dislocation as coming here. I wouldn't go through the pain." As Mario Vizcaino, director of the city's Cuban National Planning Council, puts it: "Ten years ago, to become an American citizen was almost an act of betrayal. Now there is a growing awareness of voting power, that the voting booth is the place to get things done." Coupled with that attitude is a developing feeling that perhaps the U.S. is, after all, the Promised Land--a feeling that 132 other Cubans were allowed to share recently, when the Castro regime, in a small bid to thaw chilly relations with the U.S., gave them permission to emigrate.

Whatever the reason, Cubans are now taking out U.S. citizenship at the rate of 1,000 a month. They are also registering to vote at the rate of 800 a month; at present about 100,000 of the 351,000 eligible latino voters are actually registered. As a result of this increasing political involvement, two latino city commissioners were elected in Hialeah last year, and a hefty slate of Hispanic candidates is being prepared for state elections. Says Florida state Democratic Chairman Alfredo Buran: "We've been viewed as outsiders with no interest in government. This is going to change."

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