Competing Elites Cuban Power, Anglo Conversion, and Frustrated African Americans

• Published in: This Land Is Our Land p. 34
• Main Authors: Dunn, Marvin, Stepick, Alex, Grenier, Guillermo, Castro, Max
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: United States University of California Press 26.04.2003
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: African Americans; American minorities; American studies; Anthropology; Bank loans; Behavioral sciences; Black communities; Business; Business structures; Communities; Cuban Americans; Economic disciplines; Economics; Ethnic groups; Ethnic studies; Ethnography; Ethnology; Finance; Financial economics; Financial instruments; Government; Government officials; Hispanics; Human geography; Human societies; Immigration & emigration; Loans; Mayors; Migration, immigration & emigration; Neighborhoods; Political science; Social geography; Social groups; Social sciences; Sociology; White American culture
• ISBN: 9780520233973; 0520233972; 9780520233980; 0520233980

Francena Thomas, an African American middle-level administrator in county government, was not interested in insulting people; she tried to frame her criticism constructively. It was, after all, a meeting called by the Community Relations Board, and she knew many of the American whites and Latinos there. The issue was power and how the Cubans exercised it. “Sometimes you act like a nine-hundred-pound gorilla,” she proclaimed. Guillermo Martinez, a Cuban journalist, later a member of the editorial board of theMiami Herald,admitted, “That’s true, but you should realize one thing. What you are seeing now is a nine-hundred-poundbabygorilla.”