Melting Pot
Florida's demographics include some ethnic and religious groups you may
not have known are here.
By Mike Vogel
Some of the religious and ethnic groups that have helped define Florida
in recent decades are well-known and well-established. Cubans, the
state's largest foreign-born group, are familiar to most Floridians,
with the Cuban population at nearly 643,000 today.
Florida's Cuban population has reshaped Miami-Dade County and made it an
international gateway with vital implications for the state's economic
and cultural future.
Reflecting migration from within the U.S. rather than immigration from
abroad, south Florida's Jewish population has grown since 1940 to around
581,000.
While the overall percentage of Floridians who are Jewish is only 3.5%,
slightly higher than the national average of 2.2%, the Jewish population
of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties comprises a tenth of all
Jews in the U.S., representing the third-largest concentration of Jews
in the country after New York and Southern California. "The influence of
the Jewish population is felt significantly in the cultural, political
and economic arenas of south Florida," says Ira Sheskin, director of the
Jewish Demography Project at the Sue and Leonard Miller Center for
Contemporary Judaic Studies at the University of Miami.
Less well known, however, are other religious and ethnic groups that
have migrated or immigrated to Florida:
Sarasota has an Amish community, for example, that began in the 1920s.
Among the 2.67 million immigrants in Florida, there are now Mayans in
Jupiter, Finns in Lake Worth, Bosnians in Jacksonville and Jamaicans in
Miramar.
How do ethnic pockets develop? Social scientists call it chain
migration: Some pioneer =97 perhaps a refugee resettled by a faith
group, perhaps an independent-minded entrepreneur =97 tells a family
member or friend, who tells somebody, who tells somebody else.
Top 10 Countries of Origin
Cuba 642,951
Mexico 189,119
Haiti 182,224
Colombia 157,371
Jamaica 141,182
Canada 99,139
Nicaragua 98,022
United Kingdom 70,384
Dominican Republic 66,690
Germany 64,088
Source:
2000 CensusIn the pages that follow, Florida Trend looks at groups you
may not be aware of =97 some new, some long-standing =97 that will be
part of Florida in the new century.
Puerto Ricans, U.S. citizens, make up 264,627 of the state's 16-plus
million population. The 2000 Census counted 50,065 Puerto Ricans in
Orange County, the most in the state, followed by Miami-Dade with
49,551, and Hillsborough with 25,849.
Of the state's 2.67 million foreign-born population, 1.2 million are
naturalized citizens.
Franklin County has the lowest foreign-born population in the state:
210. (69 Europeans, 68 Latin Americans, 38 Asians, 22 Canadians, 13
Australians and no Africans).
Miami-Dade and neighboring Broward are a United Nations unto themselves;
the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area has more foreign-born people
(1.6 million) than the rest of the state's metros combined. Six out of
10 foreign-born Floridians call south Florida home.
Amish: Sarasota
Like a lot of people from Ohio, Tim Miller's family vacationed in
Florida in the winter. Indeed, Miller, 43, can't remember a time when
he, his parents and brothers and sisters failed to travel to Sarasota
County. Unlike a lot of people, however, Miller was raised Old Order
Amish, a Christian denomination known to outsiders for horses, buggies,
bearded men and modestly dressed women =97 and known among themselves
for an earnest adherence to Biblical precepts, adult baptism and freedom
from what they consider destructive worldly influences.
Old Order Amish and their sibling believers =97 New Order Amish, Beachy
Amish (Miller's denomination as an adult), Amish-Mennonite and Mennonite
=97 began arriving in Sarasota in 1925 after, of all things, four young
Amish men drove to Florida in a 1919 REO Speed Wagon. One persuaded his
father in Ohio to go to Florida to farm. After a setback near Venice,
the farmers found fertile soil in Fruitville in Sarasota County and made
a go of celery.
Word of Florida's winter warmth spread, and a "national tourist camp"
where vacationing believers built cottages was developed in the
Pinecraft and adjoining Homecroft areas. Today, the small area, hemmed
in by sprawl, is home to 500 residences that are tidy and often tiny =97
some just 600 square feet =97 bearing plaques with German and Swiss
surnames such as Yoder and Miller.
On a sweltering June day, a bearded Amish man on a bicycle pedals down
Beneva Road; an Amish woman in her long dress and head covering waits on
her three-wheeled bicycle for the traffic light on Bahia Vista to
change. (Many liberal Amish drive, as do Mennonites. The only horses and
buggies are on porch decorations.)
The area is home to a few Amish-style restaurants, including Miller's
Dutch Haus, which offers waistline-swelling portions of comfort food
topped off with huge slabs of pie. There are a couple of produce stands
and a couple of furniture stores selling Amish- and Mennonite-crafted
furniture, and there's a mural by Yoder's Restaurant but little of the
Amish-centered tourism business found around northern communities.
The enclave is an anomaly in Florida; it's even an anomaly among the
faithful. The Mennonite Tourist Church, one of about a dozen Amish and
Mennonite churches in the area, is said to be the only one in the nation
where Old Order Amish and liberal Mennonites worship together. And it's
unheard of for the largely rural Amish to cluster in a village. "It's
bursting at the seams," says Miller. People pay dearly for space for a
cot on someone's porch. "If you want to see everyone," Miller says, "you
have to come to Pinecraft." (Mennonites live throughout the region.)
The sense of community is palpable. It's noteworthy how many of Miller's
customers know each other. Year-round residents meet nightly at the
local park for shuffleboard.
Also distinctive is their industry. Many grew up with German as their
primary language, and traditionally Amish education ends with the eighth
grade.
Most are self-employed. Miller has not only the restaurant but also a
furniture store. The Overholt home on Bahia Vista has a produce stand
and also is the epicenter of a publishing enterprise that brings out The
Christian Hymnary, a 1,000-song hymn book used throughout believer
communities and compiled by John J. Overholt. He moved to Florida in
1967 with his wife, Vera, and their two kids for the warmth. They later
had three more children. The family made recordings and toured
communities in Europe and sang in churches. "It was a rich life but not
in dollars and cents," says Vera Overholt, 71. (John Overholt died in
2000.)
Eldest son, Nathan, 37, seems the modern Amish-Mennonite man. He quotes
the Book of Proverbs with ease, sings on the family CD, composed a hymn
in the songbook and has his own landscaping business. His secretary,
Caryn Swartzentruber, wears the traditional Amish-Mennonite dress and
head covering =97 and a cell phone earpiece as she updates him on
business. And Overholt and his brother Matthias are cutting-edge
ranchers: They're raising water buffalo, the source of gourmet
mozzarella.
With Pinecraft surrounded now by newer developments, the Overholts'
water buffalo are on land around Myakka City east of Sarasota =97 home
to a new Amish and Mennonite area.
Mayans: Jupiter
To see how an ethnic pipeline flows, look at Mayans living in Jupiter.
In 1981, a Catholic priest took eight Guatemalan war refugees from a
Miami-Dade detention facility and brought them to Indiantown in west
Martin County. Family and friends followed. Within a few years, the area
had thousands of Mayans.
Indiantown had agricultural work, and the name pleased the Mayans =97
"in a humorous sense, this is a town where we Indians ought to go" =97
says the University of Florida's Allan Burns, who has written about
them.
Later, a few Mayans originally from Jacaltenango in northwest Guatemala
ventured down the road from Indiantown to Jupiter, a booming, upscale,
coastal town in north Palm Beach County. They started a wave of
immigration by men such as Prudencio Camposeco from Jacaltenango and its
nearby villages =97 a mountainous, agricultural area close to the
Mexican border.
While in his late teens, like others from Jacaltenango, Camposeco
crossed into Mexico and then into the U.S. west for a year and from
there to Jupiter. "My friend came here before," explains Camposeco. "He
was here, and we had some other friends from our town. They knew how to
get jobs."
Camposeco, 30, has been in Jupiter for 10 years, one of an estimated 700
Jacaltenango men and 2,000 Mayans in Jupiter. It's been tough going for
the group. While the Mayans provide a labor pool for toil most Americans
don't want, there's been friction over the scores of day laborers who
gather in the mornings on Center Street to be picked for $60 to $80 a
day (or less) work in landscaping, construction and golf course
maintenance.
The average Center Street day laborer pulls down about $60 a day, which
at best would be $1,300 a month presuming he doesn't get sick, it
doesn't rain and he gets picked to work every day.
He pays about $150 to $225 a month in rent (usually four to six men
split a $900-a-month rental) and sends back $500 to $800 to family in
Guatemala, leaving himself no more than $275 to $650 to pay for
utilities and food.Upward mobility is hard for the many who lack proper
immigration papers. Immigration status is their top concern, according
to a survey by Timothy Steigenga, a Florida Atlantic University Wilkes
Honors College professor in Jupiter who has researched and worked with
them.
Few women immigrate, so men have a tough time starting a family. Many
feel lonely away from Jacaltenango. There "at least we have the support
of the community, the family and friends," says Jeronimo Camposeco (no
relation to Prudencio), a social worker with Redlands Christian Migrant
Association and a local leader.
The Mayans have created what community they can. Steigenga says new
arrivals get low-interest or no-interest loans from friends and family
to pay off the $4,000 to $6,000 high-interest debt owed to the "coyotes"
who got them across the border.
When a countryman dies, Mayans go house to house to collect money to
ship the deceased back home. There's a soccer league with teams
representing different villages around Jacaltenango; the games are both
sport and social occasion.
In 2002, with the Honors College's help, Mayans held a Fiesta Maya
music, dance and folklore celebration coinciding with an annual
traditional church-community festival in Jacaltenango. A Jacaltenango
priest said Mass in Jupiter to open the celebration, then flew to
Jacaltenango to say Mass a few days later. The Mayans secured marimbas,
a xylophone-like percussion instrument. "It's the most important musical
instrument in Guatemala," used in ceremonies and celebrations, says
Jeronimo Camposeco, himself a musician.
Prudencio Camposeco's life beyond work revolves around church. He
coordinates transportation for the local Catholic church, St. Peter,
which just added a Mass in Spanish.
Prudencio Camposeco, who trained to be an elementary school teacher in
Guatemala, has his own landscaping business in Jupiter. To preserve his
immigration status, he hasn't returned home in 11 years. In June, he was
sick for a week, his first extended illness, and it made him realize how
much he misses his family. He talks by phone at least each week with his
parents and sisters, with whom he shares his pay. "I decided to come
here to find a better way of life and help my people," Camposeco says.
"Leaving there is hard," he says of the politically unstable country.
Then he adds: "To live there is hard."
Finns: Lake Worth
As a boy in post-war Finland accustomed to homemade toys, Peter Makila
marveled at the battery-powered, factory-made wonders from his uncle in
America.
As a teenager in 1965, he moved to Lake Worth to be with his uncle and
got the unimaginable =97 his own car. He returned to Finland, spent 27
years in Canada and then finally returned to Lake Worth, where he leads
a double lif as an insurance agent and Finland's honorary consul.
He's a busy consul. Lake Worth for decades has been a hub for the
hospitable Finns =97 from Canada first, then the upper Midwest and then
the home country. There are 4,900 people of Finnish descent in Palm
Beach County, according to the 2000 Census.
Finns danced their beloved tango at Finn social clubs and stayed in
Finn-owned motels. "It's very comfortable to go where there are other
Finns," Makila says.
Buses deposited Finns at the door of the Scandia Bakery & Coffee Shop
downtown, where they checked bulletin boards for rooms to rent and
Seurakuntien Tietoja (church news). "Very good days," remembers Aune
Kaanto, who with her husband, Taisto, owns the bakery. A delightful
throwback with its tasty and inexpensive pastries and karelian pies,
Scandia shows no sign of imitating the monotonous trendiness of
post-Starbucks coffee shops.
But business has slowed. Finnair stopped direct flights to south Florida
a few years ago, impacting Finn tourism. Hispanics and Haitians are more
numerous.
Makila, 57, has hopes. Finnair is starting direct flights again in
October. And this February, Lake Worth hosts FinnFest, an annual
gathering rotated around the U.S. He expects 4,000 to 5,000 Finns to
visit, hopefully 1,000 direct from Finland.
Jamaicans: Miramar
Miramar in southwest Broward is known for booming growth (doubling to
90,000 people since 1995) and corporate relocations from Miami-Dade
across the county line. Less well known: A majority of its five-member
city commission is Jamaican-born. Jamaicans are Miramar's largest single
foreign-born nationality at 9,075 in the Census, part of the total of
26,468 from Latin America.
Don't call Miramar Little Jamaica. "Certainly not," says Jamaican-born
Commissioner George S. Pedlar. "We have a very diverse population here."
Indeed, Latin American and West Indian immigrants make up a quarter of
the city's population. But Jamaicans have proved adept =97 in a city
with at-large voting =97 at electing their own. "It just happened,"
Pedlar says. "We don't want to be labeled a Jamaican community. Our
people are spread around all over. I like it that way."
In Broward as a whole, Jamaicans are the largest single foreign-born
nationality at 60,241. The Jamaica National Building Society, akin to a
savings and loan and Jamaica's oldest and largest such institution,
opened a representative office in Lauderdale Lakes in Broward in March,
to serve its 3,000 Broward customers and its 30,000 in south Florida,
says manager Carmen Bartlett.
Vietnamese: Pensacola
After the fall of South Vietnam in 1975, the U.S. established a camp at
Eglin Air Force Base near Pensacola for refugees such as 27-year-old
Thoa Nguyen and her husband, Truong Pham, and their children.
They fled Vietnam in 1975 with his family on his uncle's fishing boat.
"I just cried. I cried very hard," remembers Nguyen. She feared she
would never see her parents again. The Eglin refugee camp explains why
an estimated 1,200 Vietnamese today call the Pensacola area home. There
is a Buddhist temple, a Catholic Vietnamese church and Protestant
Vietnamese churches. There are Vietnamese restaurants, Vietnamese-owned
convenience stores and nail shops and a Vietnamese association.
"Some work for the state. Some work as farmers and some fishing," says
Father Augustine Nguyen Hue, who spent more than seven years in
captivity in Vietnam and now is pastor of the decidedly Asian-looking
Our Lady Queen of the Martyrs and its 115 Vietnamese families.
A feature of how life in America differs for Vietnamese, says Nguyen, is
how well Vietnamese of different faiths get along. A teacher in Vietnam,
Nguyen studied accounting at Pensacola Junior College and now works for
the state. She sponsored her mother's immigration here, and two sisters
and a brother followed her. "I'm glad now I'm in the United States.
There's a lot of opportunity. I tell my children all the time =97 in the
United States if you have a goal and you want to reach your goal, you
can."
Bosnians: Jacksonville
In winning the NCAA men's singles tennis championship and National
Player of the Year honors this year, Amer Delic, Jacksonville Wolfson
High graduate, followed in the footsteps of Jimmy Connors and John
McEnroe.
In moving to Jacksonville in 1996 with his parents and sister, he
followed in the footsteps of his Bosnian countrymen fleeing war.
Bosnians found Jacksonville through Lutheran Family Services. The area's
relatively low housing costs and ease of finding employment make it a
good candidate for settling refugees. The 2000 Census counted 1,992
people from Bosnia and Herzegovina, second only to Filipinos (7,260) as
the largest single foreign-born nationality in Duval County.
Jacksonville has proved to be more than a first stop for Bosnians.
Harisa Kapetanovic was 25 when she fled Bosnia in 1993. She originally
settled in California, fell in love with a Bosnian refugee in
Jacksonville, married and moved to the city, where she works for
Lutheran Family Services, helping refugees like herself. (In Bosnia, she
was a land surveyor; in America her first job was cleaning a nursing
home.)
Like many refugees, she returned to Bosnia when the war ended to visit.
She says many go back intending to stay but minority status or lack of
work brings them back to Florida.
For Kapetanovic and her husband, Nadim, the deciding factor was how much
had changed since they left. "I'll still be a stranger there," she says.
"I feel more comfortable being here."
http://www.floridatrend.com/issue/?s=3D1&a=3D5012&d=3D8/1/2003
Copyright =A9 2004. Trend Magazines, Inc. All Rights
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