Modern-day Miami
Over the years, Florida, and particularly Miami’s, Latino population had become increasingly diverse because of the arrival of immigrants from other Latino regions such as Latin America and the Caribbeans. In just 25 years, the Hispanic population had increased from 580,000 to 2 million, and the percentage of Cubans that make up the portion of Latino Miami had decreased from 56% to 42% (Bergad 89). In 2005, two-thirds of the Miami’s Latino households were made up of Cubans, Dominicans, and Puerto Ricans, while the other two Latino household heads were Colombians and Nicaraguans (Bergad 142-143).
Even though in the 1980s, only 8% of the Latino population then were Mexican, by “2005 there were over 540,000 Mexicans in Florida, and they now represented about 16% of all Florida Latinos” (Bergad 71). Mexicans now composed the third most numerous component of Florida’s Hispanic population, and Florida had also followed as the sixth ranking state in terms of Hispanics making up the percentage of the overall population of the state (Bergad 72). Especially in Miami-Dade County, Florida, in 2005 61% of all the residents were of Hispanic origin (Bergad 79).
