Early September and La Virgen de Regla floats down
Eighth Street. Yards of carefully laid lace, white candles and the devout fill a vigil the
length of three city blocks. The Virgin's half-curve of smile is modest and benevolent,
much like the clutch of people shouldering the shrine that encases her likeness. Yes, they
are praying and singing hymns. They carry palm-size Bibles and pewter rosaries. But these
petitioners are also laughing, gabbing, waving at the cars that pass their streetside
procession. This is Little Havana, after all, and here, the denizens possess a
preternatural gift for combining a purposeful agenda with a staunch island throwdown.
Case in point: The other procession that threads through la
sagüesera on this same evening, one composed of thirty-somethings parking their cars and
hoofing it to the inaugural show of lab6's latest space, an 1,100-square-foot gallery off
11th Avenue and Southwest Sixth Street.
This Friday-night milieu isn't happenstance. During the last three
years, Little Havana has gathered a heady steam as haven for both artists and patrons.
Cheap rents and a thriving urban culture have tempted painters, writers and musicians to
dwell and work in a neighborhood once hallmarked strictly for its ethnic gifts of Hispanic
food and history. Today's Little Havana offers this and more: galleries and studios
housing the mixed-media efforts of local talent, plus film, theater and nightclubs
soundtracked with live and original music. What Little Havana now offers Miami is a much
needed dose of alternative art and fresh venues, an escape from faddish dance clubs and
meet-and-greet happy hours, a place where culture and fun are not mutually exclusive.
 The crowd spills out of lab6 during a recent opening.
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Such is lab6, with its exhibit by Yamel Molerio, whose pieces are
constructed in a medium he refers to as ``scratch.'' Perhaps if you were still in
elementary school you would recognize the process: A canvas colored with crayons or paint,
then slathered with black. The edges of scissors used to etch out words and shapes.
Remember? If not, maybe Molerio's work will spark the memory with a series of pop-Cuban
maxims straight from the fabled island. ``Three years ago, I got tired of painting,'' says
the 30-year-old Molerio. Someone interrupts him for a moment and offers a quick combo
handshake and backslap. Molerio bobs his head in thanks, then continues. ``I decided to go
minimal, totally kitsch, against everything they teach you in art school.''
Here is Jesus, with the required holy rays jetting from his head,
one hand outstretched and holding a stack of bills: Que dios te lo paga (May the Lord
reward you). Over there, one hardware nail prying another from its plank: Un clavo saca a
otro clavo (nailing a new love will make you forget the last one who tore out your heart
-- not a literal translation, but that's what it means nonetheless.) A small squiggle of
line in the center of the canvas: Eres un pendejo (no translation required, but if so, you
are a pubic hair).
The crowd at lab6 digs the anti-arthouse vibe. They shuffle around
the one-room gallery clutching beers, gesturing dramatically with their free hands. People
talk loudly and interrupt each other. They fish beers out of an Igloo on the floor. They
cluster on the second-story landing bumming cigarettes and calling out to those just
arriving. The same evening, across town at a Coral Gables gallery, the atmosphere is more
inhibited. Cliques sip white wine and speak in subdued tones. The contrast between the
Little Havana and Gables exhibits is stark, but artists and lab6 co-founders Carlos Suarez
De Jesus and Vivian Marthell wouldn't have it otherwise. ``One of my big beefs is with how
these cultural elitists incorporate urban culture into their work but look down their
noses at it as well,'' De Jesus explains. ``We have a vested interest in this
neighborhood. We live here.''
``We wanted more than a once-a-month carnival,'' Marthell adds,
referring to Viernes Culturales, a mini-fest held on the last Friday of each month where
restaurants, galleries and vendors draw hundreds of locals and tourists. ``We wanted more
art, more film, more of everything.''
When lab6 set up shop two-and-a-half years ago, Little Havana was
the kind of nighttime neighborhood you'd drive through to get somewhere else. With car
doors locked.De Jesus recalls rough streets veined with potholes and pockets of crime.
``The building half-a-block down from us was a crack house. I remember a stabbing at a
supermarket. The guy bled to death right around the corner from here.''
In February 1999, other locals voiced their own concerns about
crime at a town meeting held, in part, by Miami-Dade County's Cultural Affairs Department.
The neighborhood's rally inspired city and community leaders to launch Viernes Culturales
and tend further to neglected public spaces by resurfacing sidewalks and streets and
landscaping weedy medians.
Earlier this year, lab6 partnered with Artemis, a nonprofit arts
collective that fosters South Florida-based artists, and both groups sponsor Surreal
Saturdays, a multigenre event showcasing music, dance, poetry and visual arts (the event
is held on the first Saturday of each month). Like De Jesus and Marthell, Artemis director
Susan Caraballo hustles for grant dollars that bolster art and programs in Little Havana;
yet, while lab6 and Artemis operate from the Hispanic enclave, Caraballo is adamant about
her interest in all South Florida artists. ``When we first opened, we had over 400 people
stop by. People from Broward, African Americans, Asians, all different ethnicities,''
Caraballo says. ``We're very interested in non-Hispanic artists. Little Havana has more
potential than just being a historic Spanish neighborhood. It can be like Soho in New
York. It can be a place with all kinds of art.''
A stroll through el barrio would indicate as much. Last year, the
Latin Quarter Cultural Center swung open its doors, and Calle Ocho has birthed six new
galleries during the last 12 months. Restaurants like Casa Pansa and El Pub proffer live
music and a third, El Teté, features the work of visual artists. After last year's $3
million restoration of the historic Tower Theatre, moviegoers now catch second-run flicks
for $2.50 and celluloid shot by local filmmakers for five bucks on the last Tuesday of
each month. At the Dr. Rafael Peñalvar Clinic, a steady stream of piano and dance
recitals, classical theater and string quartets nourish SoFlas looking for something to do
besides blowing fifty bucks on a bar tab and cover charge.
Plus, Little Havana has this gleaming bonus: At the end of the
night, there are plenty of places to eat cheap or slam a shot of coffee.
At midnight, the throng at lab6 has thinned, with some remaining to
make after-plans or pet Acére, a sweet lab mutt rescued by Marthell. Most of the duplexes
and apartments surrounding the gallery are dark, their windows illuminated only by the
blue flicker of television sets. Tonight's opening drew a few neighbors, and De Jesus
expects more to follow.
``I like to say that people from the neighborhood are our best
critics. They come in and say, `You call this art? My 10-year-old niece can do that.' Then
they come back with their families, in dresses and ties.''
It might be worthy to note that one community's loss is another's
winning ticket. Both Little Havana artists and promoters concur that the area's
renaissance can be traced, in part, to South Beach's commercialism and overblown rents.
The result? On the Beach, an absence of frontline creative minds and a surge of ho-hum
galleries and tight-ass nightclubs, with little of the grooviness that made the Beach,
years ago, interesting to begin with. It's a familiar story. Still, the arts migration
into La Pequeña Havana is flavored with its own uniqueness, its own sazon, so to speak.
``I think of what's happening here as a conveyor belt,'' speculates
Xavier Cortada, painter-in-residence at Casa Grande Cultural Center, a studio and gallery
nestled at the eastern tip of Little Havana. A westward sun slants light between parked
cars and ficus branches while, inside the gallery, Cortada is setting up buckets to
resemble the face of a clock for his next exhibit -- Primus, an art installation exploring
the slavish cult of youth. A pioneer of the neighborhood's arts movement, the
Cuban-American Cortada exhibits locally and internationally; his most recent piece, a
mural depicting a manatee and other river life, backdrops the Riverside Garden at the
underpass of the Flagler Bridge. ``This is an enclave where immigrants can acclimate in a
monolinguistic environment and move on to somewhere else. This keeps the neighborhood
affordable for artists' groups. Following them are the folks that come in from
Westchester, Coral Gables, wealthy Cubans tugged back by nostalgia.''
So what's to stop Little Havana from spiraling down the sell-out
funnel like South Beach? Cortada thinks it's Miami's long-standing influx of Hispanic
immigrants that will preserve the neighborhood's idioms. ``In South Beach, a lot of the
immigrant population went North. There was nothing tying them to that area. There are too
many collective memories here to let that happen.''
Like those of performance artist and Little Havana resident Lourdes
Simón, who fled from Havana five days short of her ninth birthday to live in Madrid
(``very cold and stern'') and found herself two years later in Hialeah (``when I could, I
left. I wanted more''). While in her mid-20s, Simón moved to Coral Gables, where she
lived for eight years while she earned a BA in liberal studies at FIU and traveled abroad.
A trip to Puerto Rico to study theater led her to discover boleros, the crooning romantic
ballads conceived in late-1800s Cuba. ``The bolero was born in Cuba, and then emigro,''
says a honey-voiced Simón, who often divides the words within her sentences between
English and Spanish. ``Now there's wonderful boleros in Argentina, Chile. The beauty of
the bolero is that you can have one written by a Cuban and then made famous by a Chilean
singer. It brought cultures together; it's one of the things about it that bewitches me.''
Her interpretations of the genre are no less enchanting. Tall and
shapely, the dark-haired Simón rivets eyes when she performs, her singing a soft pierce
of alto in a dark room. She holds the microphone before her as if cupping water with her
hands, and between songs she offers listeners poetry and musings about love and cubania.
In ``Nido,'' she refuses to believe that there is no returning home. Instead she finds
solace in love, and through it, returns to her birthplace.
Dicen que a casa, que no se regresa
Que después de la partida y
experencia de la vida
Jamas se puede volver.
Dicen que a casa, que no se regresa.
No estoy de acuerdo.
En tus brasos encuentro
El camino directo al lugar de nacimiento
El camino al regreso.
Performing in Little Havana since 1999, Simón decided to move
there earlier this year because she wanted to belong to what she calls a ``family'' of
artists. ``The Gables is nice, lovely, fine, but too solitary. Aqui, I can walk to the
supermarket, visit the art gallery, treat myself to a breakfast for $2.10 at El Pub. You
feel like you are part of a village, a community.''
``To me, it was and is the beginning of Cuba in Miami.''
Inside Hoy Como Ayer, heavy rains and national events have muted
the usual Thursday-night revelry known as ¡Fuacata! At eleven o'clock, there's no wait at
the bar and tables are available. Glowing from the club's dark walls are painted takes of
La Caridad del Cobre, Cuba's patron saint, here depicted in nude and folk form. The 30 or
so people that have made it out gather in campfire circles around candle-lit tables. Even
while sitting, those here can't help but move in time to a recording of percussionist
Milton Cardona's tribute to Eleggua. Tonight, his bull-strong vocals are a fortifying
gospel.
``Everybody I've talked to here is conveying the same sadness,''
says Eric Fabregat, who along with Ralph de la Portilla and Steve Roitstein launched the
weekly fete earmarked by son, soul and irrepressible dancing. ``Everybody here has the
desire to struggle forward,'' he adds, referring to the Sept. 11 attacks on the World
Trade Center and Pentagon. ``It's too much for the heart to take day in and day out.
Tonight is like a despojo.''
The trio brought their brand of healing to Little Havana five
months ago, after Fabregat and de la Portilla walked in the venue that once housed Café
Nostalgia and lamented its lack of bustle. ``We saw this beautiful cozy lounge, and it was
completely empty,'' remembers de la Portilla. ``We thought, let's make some calls and see
if we can fill this up.'' With backgrounds blending theater, arts and music, the three did
just that, and their Ministry of Culture now promotes a mainstay night in Little Havana's
arts roster. And the fuacas are a faithful lot, arriving each week a few hours before
midnight and closing the joint down at 3 a.m., exhausted and happy and sheathed in sweat.
By 1 a.m., four Corona-swigging girls in halter tops have hit the
deck. The bar's now busy. The club's filled out. The girls roll shoulders and shake ass to
an aural stew of vinyl, trombone, guitar and timbales. A stage light dusts their heads
with gold, and they dance unabashed.
``These aren't just kids in guayaberas with cigars,'' says
Roitstein. ``We're getting all kinds of Latin Americans, Anglos, Germans. We sensed there
was a need for this. For us.''
DETAILS
For information about the events or artists cited in this story,
check StreetMiami listings or contact:
lab6 at 1165 SW Sixth Street, Second Floor, 305-324-0585, lab6@bellsouth.net.
- Artemis Performance Network, 1165 SW Sixth St., First Floor,
305-324-0585, artemisperf@hotmail.com.
- Tower Theatre, 1508 SW Eighth Street, Miami, Independent
Feature Project, 305-538-8242 or 305-644-3307 for regular showtimes.
- Xavier Cortada, artist-in-residence at Casa Grande Cultural
Center, 104 SW Ninth Street, Miami, 305-858-1323.
- Lourdes Simón, 305-439-9876, SimonPerformance@aol.com.
- ¡Fuacata! at Hoy Como Ayer, 2212 SW Eighth Street,
305-541-2631.
