Miami seems a natural site for a consulate after the restoration of ties with the Caribbean country but exiles’ hostility to Castro could benefit its smaller rival

Every March, Tampa’s historic Ybor City hosts a sandwich festival in which challengers from Miami compete with the locals over layers of pork, pickles and cheese to determine which area of Florida can claim to be the most authentically Cuban.

Contestants from the host city insist it’s the salami in their version of the cubano that regularly leaves their rivals with the taste of defeat.

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But beyond the frivolity another race is playing out between the cities, for a much more lucrative prize: the right to become the United States’ gateway to Cuba when the two cold war adversaries finally call time on more than five decades of hostilities.

Since Barack Obama made his historic December 2014 announcement of a new era in US-Cuban relations, business leaders in both cities have been working to harness the momentum of change and figure out how best to cash in once the barriers are down.

With the promise of many billions of dollars in new trade revenues at stake, representatives from each city, and the counties of Miami-Dade and Hillsborough, have met counterparts in Cuba to discuss possible partnerships in everything from air and sea transport links, medicine and healthcare, education, construction, telecommunications and tourism.

Miami, with a Cuban-American population of about a million – 10 times that of Tampa – would seem to have the natural advantage, and be the obvious venue for a new Cuban consulate, but many analysts are questioning the city’s commitment to the process.

The vociferous and hardline opposition of Miami’s sizable Cuban exile community to any dealings with their former homeland while President Raúl Castro’s communist regime remains in power is hampering efforts to forge key new relations, they say, and allowing Tampa to steal a march on its intrastate rival.

“The reality is that while Miami argues, the rest of the world moves on,” said Carlos Gutierrez, the Havana-born US secretary of commerce under President George W Bush, now a strategic adviser specialising in Cuban affairs for the Washington-based Albright Stonebridge Group.

“Tampa is more prepared than Miami. We need to start thinking strategically about the role Miami will play in Cuba, and Havana and Miami as two cities. There isn’t enough thinking, there isn’t enough debate or discussion. We tend to get caught up on tactical issues. Someone needs to raise their head above the noise and think about the future,” said Gutierrez.

In December, Gutierrez joined a group of 10 Cuban-American business leaders from Miami on a trip to Havana to evaluate attitudes and assess progress in the year since Obama’s groundbreaking announcement.

What they found, he says, was a readiness and keenness among both Cuban leadership and everyday citizens to build a new and mutually beneficial relationship with the US – an attitude he believes Miami would be wise to adopt.

“They’re very fond of America, there are US flags everywhere,” he said. “And the Cuban people are very encouraged by what’s taken place. The Cuban economy is changing, you see private businesses, co-ops, private salons, private taxis, people buying and selling homes. There’s no question that Cuba is changing and is going to change with us or without us.

“We need to look at the big picture, look down the road 10, 20 years, and stop looking at the past.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest After closing time, men play dominos outside Domino Park on SW 8th St (Calle Ocho) in the Little Havana area of Miami. Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images

The “noise” Gutierrez was referring to comes largely from firebrand Republican Miami politicians such as the city mayor, Tomás Regalado, a Cuban exile whose father was a political prisoner in Havana, and who supports the continuation of the five-decades-old US-Cuba trade embargo.

Their fierce opposition to closer ties with the island’s government and defiant message of “no compromise” has resonated like a foghorn around south Florida for years, most recently over the as-yet unannounced location of a new Cuban consulate to support the work of the country’s embassy that reopened in Washington DC last July after a 54-year hiatus.

“I’m going to go to federal court if the State Department grants a licence to Cuba to establish a consulate here,” Regalado told the Miami Herald in January, citing it as a potential security risk. “Every time the Cuban government does something we’re going to have protests. It affects our peace and stability.”

Miami-Dade commissioner Esteban Bovo Jr, whose father was part of the disastrous CIA-backed counterrevolutionary Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, was even more outspoken after the commission passed a resolution last month urging Obama to “refrain from establishing a Cuban consulate” in the county.

“Obama has more in common with the Castro brothers than he does with the American people,” Bovo said.

“[He] probably had a Che Guevara poster affixed to his wall in college.”

Another touchstone for controversy was the unveiling of a vision by county and maritime officials in January to redevelop a section of the county-owned Port Miami into a hub for renewed passenger and cargo ferry services to Cuba.

In an apparent attempt to stave off criticism over the county’s stance on a new business relationship with the Castro administration, the county mayor, Carlos Giménez, hastily issued a claridying statement: “Miami-Dade County doesn’t conduct business with countries. It conducts business with carriers.”

The US government issued licences to a handful of shipping operators last May to begin planning operations pending Cuba’s opening of its ports.

Bob Rohrlack, president of the Greater Tampa chamber of commerce, said he was unsurprised by the hostile reaction in Miami to initiatives that were not yet even concrete proposals.

“It’s really reflective of what Cuba said to us while we were there,” he said, referring to a trip by a diverse array of company executives and other chamber members to the island last year.

“They saw south Florida as an antagonist but [also] saw a cultural connection. We have a much clearer, more focused vision for the future, and their vision is looking back. You could go on forever, looking back.”

Rohrlack said that Tampa, nicknamed Cigar City for its thriving Cuban cigar manufacturing industry of the late 19th century, has deeper-seated roots with Cuba stretching back to the 1500s, and that its Cuban-American residents lacked the militancy of the south Florida population largely made up of post-revolution exiles and descendants.

“While there are some on the opposite side, the overwhelming majority of our community is open to having relations with Cuba,” he said.

Rohrlack pointed out the strong historical connection between Tampa and Cuba, which already owns property in the city: the José Martí Park, where the hero of Cuban independence raised funds for his campaign.

“We’re connecting in the modern-day world which builds off our history,” said Rohrlack, who went on to list other local acts of diplomacy: Tampa’s Moffitt Cancer Center has hosted Cuban doctors; the Florida Aquarium, the University of South Florida and the Lions Eye Institute – the largest eye transplant institution in the world – have all established contacts in Cuba, he said.

“It’s about how can we keep making those kind of connections so that when things are fully open, in an open market, we’re already prepared and ahead of the game. We’ll keep focusing on making those connections stronger,” he added, noting that the chamber passed its own resolution calling for a Cuban consulate in Tampa.



Ultimately, of course, many areas of the US will benefit economically when the trade barriers fall. The governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, for example, took a three-day trip to Cuba last month and came away with a memorandum of understanding between the city of Roanoke and the western Cuban port of Mariel, the launching point for 125,000 Cuban migrants who fled to Florida during the infamous 1980 Mariel boatlift.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Bayside marketplace in downtown Miami. Photograph: Alamy

The private US-Cuba Trade and Economic Council maintains a website that chronicles business developments between the countries.

But Florida, with its unique Cuban-American demographic and proximity to Cuba, will be always be central to the new relationship, according to experts such as Sebastian Arcos, associate director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University.

How big a slice Miami and Tampa cut for themselves, he believes, could depend largely on Cuba’s perception of their respective attitudes.

“Cubans [in Tampa] who have been established for many generations and are essentially Americanised don’t have the recent emotional connections with the island, while the other part of the population is consistent with recent arrivals who feel safer away from Miami because they don’t share the same political opposition to the Cuban regime that the majority of the population there does,” he said.

“It’s been furiously debated. From the perspective of the function of a consulate, Miami would be the ideal place but would cause a constant spend of resources in terms of security. Tampa makes more sense even though it has only about one-tenth of the Cuban population Miami has. It’s close by and has a much longer history of connection with Cuba.”

Rohrlack, meanwhile, sees the contest like he does the sandwich festival – with Tampa the clear winner.