Offshore Islands
Page 51
The two men arrived at Miami International Airport early on the Friday evening and took a taxi to the downtown Sheraton Hotel which overlooked Biscayne Bay. The arrangement with Vasquez was that they wait for his call the next morning.
Their plan was to discuss Salgado’s interest in the project and then take the daily American Airlines’ flight down to Baranquilla the Sunday afternoon.
The meeting had been set up by Ivan Garcia who had introduced Salgado to Kennedy as a wealthy industrialist and a potential investor. Kennedy first had thought that Salgado was a Miami Cuban; it was not until after they had agreed to the meeting that he had discovered he was a Colombian.
Kennedy had received an information package, which had indicated that Salgado Industries were located in the city of Baranquilla, on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. They were involved in a wide range of speciality chemicals, mostly detergents and fertilisers, supplying the local and regional markets.
There had been a general softening of attitudes in the United States towards Cuba. The relations between the two countries had been gradually defrosting and travel restrictions had been loosened. Academics and students were beginning to travel for study in Cuba and Cuban musicians were touring the USA.
The anti-Castro Cubans in Miami were beginning to lose their influence. The CANF, Cuban American National Foundation, was the largest exile organisation representing the Cuban community in the USA. It was modelled on the pro-Israel lobby, and was a formidable fund raising machine. There were however, allegations that it was involved in a series of bombings and other anti-Castro plots.
Miami was changing rapidly. Forecasts indicated that the Latino population was expected to make up seventy percent of the population of Miami-Dade County by the year 2020. They would be second and third generation Cubans, or immigrants from other Latin American countries. Cuban-Americans were already twenty percent of Florida’s electorate.
The downtown area of Miami was run down, it was almost like a Latin American town, with its small city blocks or cuadras as they should have been called. All signs and notices were in both English and Spanish in the shops. After crossing Washington the area became very seedy with its poor Hispanic and Black populations.
They met Vasquez at the Miami Book Fair, at a stand of publishers specialised in revolutionary style literature. The tall young man who accompanied him spoke English with an American accent, but was a fluent Spanish speaker.
They took a cab to South Beach, over the MacArthur Causeway facing the Port of Miami, where the cruise ships were lined-up like a waiting cab rank, they included the ‘France’ once the pride of France that had been re-baptised the ‘Norway’.
The port was the called ‘Gateway to the Caribbean and Central America’, where tourists not only from the USA but Europe and Japan started their dream cruise. Each ship seemed to be capable of taking one or two thousand passengers, which represented a formidable industry and a huge number of people who could pay for a week or ten days on a first class cruise liner in the Caribbean.
Kennedy marvelled at Ocean Drive with its Art Deco buildings and hotels painted in pastel colours. The cafe terraces were filled with attractive young people. The Tropical Cafe seemed to be a fashionable and noisy place. Red Ferraris, Mercedes coupes, Jaguars, a 57 Oldsmobile and a Porsche were ostentatiously parked at the roadside in front of the glitzy bar.
Vasquez invited Kennedy to lunch at Page’s, a restaurant close by his offices. They chose a table on the pavement terrace taking advantage of the bright sunshine, in the pleasant, dry December weather. Vasquez ordered a seafood Pesto Peine and Kennedy a steak; Vasquez then selected a Beaujolais Nouveau from the wine list.
The population of Miami was a bewildering mixture of strange people to Kennedy; across the street he observed a mad old dame dressed in shamrock green, who looked like she had jumped out of the Muppet show. She dropped a coin into the newspaper vending box and took a copy of The Miami Herald.
She was succeeded a little further along the sidewalk by a panhandler, who deftly inserted a paper clip into a parking meter to extract a coin. At a nearby public telephone a man shouted down a public phone in Spanish, though he looked like an American, a few instants later he slammed down the phone screaming Cojones, a word Kennedy had heard on more than one occasion in Cuba.
Kennedy had always known that Americans were a little crazy after his year in Boston, but in Miami they seemed to be just one step from the asylum.
Vasquez had his Miami offices nearby on Lincoln Jefferson in a small classy looking building called the Van Dyke. His offices and a personal apartment covered the whole penthouse level, surrounded by a broad terrace, and climbing plants covered the walls and latticework. The roof of the penthouse was covered with red Roman tiles.
Vasquez had a pale skin slightly freckled, a square face and his hair a bore tinge of red. He was about fiftyish. He could have been Jewish, although he gave no hint as to his origins.
Vasquez informed Kennedy that they were booked the next day, on an American Airlines flight direct from Miami to Baranquilla, the flight time was about two and a half hours flying over Cuba and the Caribbean to the north coast of Colombia.
The following morning they left the hotel in the direction of the airport under heavy sub-tropical rain. The West Indian taxi driver, indifferent to the water cascading off the flyovers, well exceeded the 55 miles per hour speed limit indicated by the panels.
They met Vasquez at the check-in, struggling with the other the Central American Hildalgos at the first class counter, pushing and bustling in the generalised chaos of passengers, friends, baggage porters and a mass of excess baggage.
After boarding they were efficiently directed to their seats and were settled in with a drink brought to them by the hard-bitten airhostess of the American Airlines Boeing 727, who seemed more suited for service on Algerian Airways, as was the ancient aircraft. It surprised him that American companies flew such antiquated aircraft.