MIAMI – Tom Kirby, an affable St. Petersburg public relations consultant, is saying how much he likes Miami.

He is marveling at its cosmopolitan flavor.

He is joking about his Spanish lessons.

He is promoting communication and brotherhood.

Tom Kirby, a nice man. He is helping to foment a nasty little war in Miami.

Tom Kirby directs the Florida English Campaign. He was in Miami recently to promote the campaign’s major goal – passage of a constitutional amendment next year making English the official state language of Florida.

The amendment, which Kirby hopes to put on the 1988 ballot, sounds innocuous enough in a state that already has an official bird (the mockingbird), an official flower (the orange blossom), an official tree (the sabal palm), even an official freshwater fish (the largemouth bass).

Kirby says all it will do is ensure that government business is conducted in English, bridging the gap among Florida’s diverse ethnic groups.

“We see this as the ultimate civil rights bill,” Kirby says. “Anything that tends to separate people – to me, that’s just as bad as a color barrier.”

But in Dade County, where 43.4 percent of the population is Hispanic, the mere mention of such an amendment is akin to yelling “Fire ” in a crowded shooting gallery. Because Miami, rather than a melting pot, is a bubbling cauldron of ethnic tensions.

This is the town where Burger King banned its employees from speaking Spanish at work – then flipped its policy faster than its cooks flip their burgers.

This is the town where the county clerk, saying he was obeying a local law, refused to perform marriages in Spanish – only to be told the law says it’s okay.

This is the town where native Miamians are forever calling into English-language radio talk shows, venting their spleen about all the “foreigners” in their midst. Often, the talk-show hosts join in the tirade.

“The Cubans are organized and they have the power to take over.

That’s what they’re attempting to do,” Taffy McCallum, one of Miami’s more reasonable radio talk-show hosts, said recently.

This is the town Tom Kirby came to win over – with his reasoned tones and innocent-sounding shibboleths.

Accompanying him on his first trip last January was California semanticist and former U.S. Sen. S.I. Hayakawa, national leader of the U.S. English campaign.

The two men met with Miami’s first Cuban-born mayor, Xavier Suarez.

They told the mayor that eight states, including California, have made English their official language.

They told him Floridians were signing their petitions fast enough to put the question on the 1988 ballot, with or without Miami’s consent.

They talked politely for an hour. Suarez, who rode to office on the strength of the Cuban vote and faces re-election this year, refused to help.

“It is somewhat nonsensical to spend this kind of time and risk this kind of divisiveness on an issue that has so little concrete benefits,” the mayor said.

Welcome to Miami, city where you can live your entire life in Spanish. You can watch Spanish soaps on TV, hear Spanish talk shows on the radio, find Spanish-speaking grocery clerks and bank tellers, write to your Cuban-born mayor or Cuban-born county manager. You can even buy the Miami Herald, the city’s largest newspaper, in Spanish.

It’s the home of Osvaldo Soto, Cuban-born lawyer and chairman of the Spanish-American League Against Discrimination (SALAD). He opposes Kirby’s amendment, saying it will send the wrong message to Hispanics and open the door to laws restricting the use of Spanish. Bilingual education, for one, will be threatened, he says.

“They say friction between the English and the Spanish is going to bring problems to this country,” he says. “To be honest with you, I don’t know of any place where the use of language has brought problems.

“In Ireland, they only speak English, and they’ve been killing each other for years. In Switzerland, where there is always peace, they speak three languages.”

Miami is also home to Terry English Robbins, a Yiddish-speaking veteran of Dade County’s language wars who took on the middle name so people would know just where she stands. She hopes Kirby’s amendment will keep street signs in English – named for Americans with American names. She also wants city parks to display statues of American, rather than Hispanic, patriots.

“Jose Marti might be a big hero to Hispanics, but he doesn’t mean anything to me. Yet we have Jose Marti statues, Jose Marti parks. We’re Jose Marti-ed to death.”

And Robbins echoes the biggest complaint heard from the English campaign’s followers: “I’m tired of going into Burdine’s at Dadeland (Mall) and not being waited on because I don’t speak Spanish.”

Seven years ago, such laments were as pervasive as the new Cuban immigrants. A majority of Dade’s people, angry at store clerks they couldn’t understand and frustrated by the rapid ascendancy of Hispanics, made one desperate attempt to regain control.

They voted, by a 3-to-2 margin, to ban county government from conducting its business in any foreign language.

What that meant, nobody knew exactly. For the next three years, county officials tried to interpret Dade’s anti-bilingual law. It was decided, for instance, that bus schedules would be printed only in English. Emergency operators could speak Spanish. Libraries could function bilingually.

The results satisfied no one – neither the Hispanics, who charged discrimination, nor the English advocates, who complained the law was vague.

In 1984, county commissioners agreed to relax the anti-bilingual law, allowing for such things as tourism promotions and hurricane pamphlets in Spanish. Yet the firestorm about language continues to rage.

Jorge Valdes, the only Hispanic on the county commission and the one who brokered the 1984 compromise, says it’s time to get rid of the anti-bilingual law because “it’s hurt us. It’s hurt us enough.”

But Enos Schera, secretary of the group that sired the law, says it’s time to get tough on Hispanics, force them to assimilate.

“They fly Cuban flags like this was a Cuban city,” he says. “It kind of makes your blood boil.”

After his unsuccessful meeting with Mayor Suarez, Kirby, the Florida English Campaign’s ambassador of goodwill, returned to Miami last month to resume the hardsell with a soft touch. He went to a sympathetic audience this time – an English-language radio talk show where people were invited to call in.

But, as always, the bitterness took over. One woman caller raged that Hispanics “do not want to communicate to you in English, and I think it’s outrageous. Absolutely outrageous.”

She proceeded to become nearly hysterical until the talk-show host, aghast at her vehemence, cut her off.

The next caller was a young man who said he delivers food for a living. “As far as I see, you’re just an unaware bigot,” he told Kirby. “What you’re trying to do is legislate nationalism.”



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