Features
College Offers Vision for Tomorrow's America
Two particularly powerful symbols of Miami Dade College’s diverse community are at Wolfson Campus.
One is immediately visible upon entering the atrium of Building 1. Look up and your gaze meets a rainbow of carefully arranged flags representing 157 countries.
The other is the large sculpture by Ronald Bladen titled The X, which is perched prominently on a grassy plot in the main courtyard. Two perpendicular black steel beams intersect, forming a fulcrum that binds them together into a unified sculpture.
The structure is a fitting symbol for the College’s diverse students, staff and faculty members who come from all corners of the globe, bringing with them a unique set of traditions, cultures and languages.
Miami Dade accomplishes what some would say is the impossible: the formation of a community whose very diversity most contributes to its cohesion.
“Diversity’s fantastic, but you have to bring people to a common goal,” says Dr. German Muñoz, professor and chair of the social sciences department at Wolfson Campus. “If you don’t balance diversity with universality, you go off on tangents.”
Muñoz says the universal thread that binds the College community finds eloquent expression in the 10 Learning Outcomes that were formulated by faculty members and later adopted at a special ceremony with student, community and civic leaders..
These outcomes emphasize not just the imparting of knowledge, but also multicultural awareness, civic and social responsibilities, ethical action, creativity and environmental stewardship.
Flip through a random sample of College course syllabi and you will be astonished by the number of outreach projects in which students in all disciplines partake. The majority of these endeavors connect – in some way – to the multifaceted issue of immigration.
One example is an award-winning project devised by North Campus literature professor Lisa Shaw. Throughout the semester, Shaw’s students ventured into the community and interviewed local residents who are Holocaust survivors, veterans of the Civil Rights movement and former political prisoners.
“The project goal is to engage students in intergenerational dialogue with our broad community of immigrants who have survived terror and trauma,” Shaw says.
The final product will be a professionally published anthology of survivor stories and student essays.
Student Tawana Jenkins interviewed George Gottlieb, a survivor of two concentration camps, including Auschwitz. Gottlieb lost many of his family members to the Holocaust. His post-war journey took him to Germany, France, Canada and eventually South Florida – the country’s largest community of Holocaust survivors outside of New York City.
“It took me 25 years to choose to speak about the Holocaust,” Gottlieb told Jenkins. “I never spoke to anybody, not even my children.”
“His voice is the voice of many and his courage shows the resiliency of his people,” writes Jenkins about the experience. “I am grateful for meeting a great man with such a strong passion for life.”
Shaw explains: “We cannot come close to fully understanding the dimensions of anguish some of these people have survived. All we can do is be present, listen and make good on a promise to hear and retell their stories.”
Toward a Definition of America
Stories like this are unfolding against the backdrop of an unprecedented national debate on immigration in which much is at stake.
The foreign-born population in the United States has reached an all-time high. According to recent Census data, more than 31 million people living in the U.S. are legal immigrants, refugees, persons on student or work visas, or undocumented immigrants. Between 1999 and 2000, the foreign-born U.S. population increased by 57 percent. Second only to New York, Florida remains a destination of choice for immigrants to the U.S. Miami-Dade County stands apart as the only U.S. county in which immigrants are the majority of the population.
With its diverse community and location in a city dubbed “The Gateway to the Americas,” MDC is directly implicated in these national discussions. One need look no further than the saga of the Gómez family to ascertain one of the many dimensions of this broader debate (see “One Family’s Story”).
Politicians from both major parties have drawn South Florida into the forefront of these discussions. President George W. Bush brought the debate to MDC when he spoke at the 2007 Kendall Campus commencement, using the occasion as a platform to announce his views on immigration reform.
The Bittersweet Taste of Exile
Members of the College’s artistic community – from newly enrolled students to senior-level members of the faculty – frequently use their crafts to explore immigrant experiences and encourage students to do the same.
Carlos Moreno, an international relations major, uses creative writing to process the struggles he’s encountered before and after his family was forced to leave Venezuela.
In a recent edition of Kendall Campus’ literary magazine, Miambiance, Moreno writes: “I am an immigrant. It is not a part of who I am; it is all that I am. It defines my taste in food and the scents that release streams of memory. It infiltrates my voice.”
Moreno’s journey has led him to the realization that moving to a new country requires the creation of a new self. His creative writing has allowed him to more effectively and productively negotiate the challenges of this process of self-redefinition.
“The trials and tribulations of being an immigrant, giving everything up for a dream, the trauma of adaptation – all ultimately get channeled into my writing,” he says.
Ultimately – as is the case for many displaced artists – Moreno says his true homeland is neither Venezuela nor the United States, but the space created by his acts of self-expression.
“I’m an immigrant, and there’s no coming back. I don’t belong here or back home,” he says. “The only place I belong is in my writing.”
Artist and professor Yovani Bauta is also acquainted with this sense of conflicted belonging.
Bauta worked as an attorney in his native Cuba until his activities became suspect in the eyes of the government. Despite his professional successes, he was disbarred in 1983.
Unsure of his next step, he left Havana and returned to his native Matanzas, where he began to express himself in paintings. This experimentation soon blossomed into an artistic career, but once again he ran up against the repressive restrictions of Castro’s government, leading to his defection from Cuba to Spain in 1992. A year later he arrived in Miami and began his career at MDC.
While he regards his decision to leave Cuba as the right one, Bauta says he feels uprooted from his native culture, even if he continues to view a return to Cuba as undesirable.
“It’s like a wound that never heals,” Bauta says. “I frequently reflect on what I’ve left behind. I can still hear the sound of the church bell in my native town. I still remember the smells of the street.”
The artistic practice, for Bauta, is about making this aching sense of loss creatively productive. It’s also about working through the emotions associated with being cut off from the country of his birth and focusing on new possibilities available to him in his new location.
These themes find powerful expression in Bauta’s paintings. For example, one of his early works is an impressionistic series of blue enamel coffeemakers that function as symbols of his childhood and experience of exile.
“As many people in Miami know, the ritual of coffee drinking lies at the heart of Cuban culture,” Bauta says. “My grandmother used to make coffee for everyone at 3 p.m. every day.”
One still-life of the coffeemaker contains the suggestive outline of a steeple in its handle – a nod to his Catholic upbringing, Bauta explains.
A more recent project, La caída (The Falling), depicts a man in freefall, his form outlined with fiery reds. While the tragedies of Sept. 11 are a specific point of reference, Bauta also sees the falling figure as an evocative commentary on the condition of exile and cultural dislocation.
Bauta shares his artistic vision with his students, encouraging them to find a creative outlet and channel their struggles into a form of expression that is uniquely their own.
Orlando Rojas uses his skills as an experienced film director and screenplay writer to explore the way in which his own story is intertwined with those of other exiled artists.
A celebrated director in his native Cuba, Rojas began to attract negative attention from the government for his boundary-pushing movies, which frequently contained coded critiques of his country’s repressive regime. The shooting of his film Cerrado por reformas (Closed by Renovations) was halted after just three days due to political controversy. The government subsequently blacklisted him and placed further restraints on his creative projects.
In 1997, Rojas was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim fellowship. Six years later, he was granted permission to travel to New York to work on his Guggenheim film project, and he defected. Soon after, he was invited to produce a short documentary on Chilean poet Pablo Neruda for Miami Book Fair International. Later, he was offered the position of Tower Theater coordinator, where he remains.
“I’m now looking for redemption,” Rojas says. He’s planning an artistic comeback through the filming of a documentary that follows the story of exiled Cuban ballerina Rosario “Charín” Suárez.
“This film is now four years in the making, and is finally entering the final stages of production,” Rojas explains. “The work focuses on the difficulties of pursuing one’s creative craft in repressive societies and amid the limitations imposed by exile.”
“The documentary is meant to be biographical, but it’s also autobiographical,” he adds. By telling the Suárez’s story, he ends up “telling my own story,” he added.
Rojas’ project illustrates one example of how personal stories overlap at MDC. It offers a case study for the community- building process that occurs across the College’s eight campuses on a daily basis when students, staff and faculty members talk about the myriad ways in which the reality of immigration impacts them personally and informs their experience.
For Some, No Other Option
For some segments of the immigrant community, the time, space and security to reflect on their cross-cultural journeys is in short supply. This is especially true for undocumented immigrants, of which there are currently more than 12 million in the U.S., a figure predicted to rise by about 500,000 each year, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
While some states – Texas and California among them – allow undocumented students to pay in-state tuition, Florida does not. The resulting financial burden and the ever-present threat of deportation are fixtures unlikely to change in the near future.
Take Gabriel Silva (not his real name), a highly successful MDC student who left Brazil with his family at the age of 14. His parents had grown tired of the frequent outbreaks of violence in the squalor of Rio de Janeiro’s shanty towns. The last straw came when Silva’s cousin was shot while waiting at a bus stop.
“When we arrived in Miami, my young niece kept commenting on how nice it was to be able to go outside at night – something you just don’t do where I’m from,” he says.
Despite his academic success, Silva is worried about things many people take for granted.
“I can’t legally work, get a driver’s license, health care or financial aid,” he says. “If I’m able to find the money to continue my education after my time at MDC, I will hit a wall as soon as I try to go on the job market. I’m caught in a state of limbo.”
Silva says he regularly hears of friends and acquaintances that are picked up by immigration officials and deported.
“One thing I really want others to understand is that people don’t sever themselves from their homes unless they are truly desperate and feel they have no other option,” Silva says. “We just want an opportunity to make a contribution to American society.”
While acknowledging the complexities of the immigration debate, MDC President Dr. Eduardo J. Padrón has been very open about his conviction regarding the importance of not excluding America’s immigrants from educational opportunities.
“Including our immigrant population in education ... is a critical pathway toward prosperity,” said Padrón, a Cuban exile who arrived in the U.S. at age 15. “They bring immense potential, and to view it otherwise is a mistake. We need them to succeed just as our hospitals desperately need nurses, our classrooms need enthusiastic teachers and our burgeoning IT industry needs fresh recruits.”
Changing Countries, Changing Roles
Newcomers to the United States often feel overwhelmed by the anxiety and loneliness associated with trying to find a foothold in a country whose language, laws and customs are unfamiliar to them.
MDC functions as the proverbial “X” on the map for refugees in South Florida, largely through the crucial services provided by the Refugee/Entrant Vocational Education Services and Training (REVEST) program.
Eduardo Chávez, REVEST director, says the program has served as a lifeline for more than 18,000 refugees, providing them with intensive language courses; post-secondary vocational training; a citizenship program for elderly citizens; a foreign physician alternative certification program; employability skills, advisement, transportation and childcare subsidies; and referrals to other local agencies.
REVEST student Alicia Viera left her native Cuba in November 2000 out of a desire to live in a less oppressive society.
“I wanted to live and work in a free, open society, with the right to disagree, make my own decisions and pursue my personal goals without asking for permission first,” Viera says.
At first she was completely disoriented by culture shock, but eventually, with the help of several classes she took through the REVEST program, Viera was able to get on her feet and forge ahead.
“Adapting to life in a new country, especially when you come by yourself and you don’t speak the language, requires a lot of strength and energy,” she says. “Depression and frustration are dangers in this kind of situation, and the REVEST staff served as the seeing-eye dogs who helped me follow the path in front of me.”
After completing the program, Viera went on to get an associate degree in graphic arts from MDC. She was invited to join the prestigious Phi Theta Kappa International Honors Society and graduated from the College with Highest Honors. She then landed a job as a tutor in the computer courtyard at Wolfson Campus, eventually taking on a role in which she provided direct assistance to REVEST students.
“This was a wonderful opportunity for me to start giving back to REVEST in gratitude for what they provided in my early years in the United States,” Viera says.
Many students enrolled in the REVEST program go through the humbling experience of transitioning from working professionals in their native countries to individuals with no recognized qualifications in the U.S.
“Most refugees have to cope with a huge loss of status,” Chávez says. “They go from being surgeons and psychiatrists to stocking shelves at Publix, washing dishes and cleaning toilets.”
Such was the case for Milva Barragn, a psychology professor in her native Colombia before she left in 2004.
“I really had to start over,” Barragn says. “ When I first came here, I had to take on a lot of cleaning jobs.”
The real turning point for Barragn came in the form of the REVEST classes leading to a business supervision and management vocational certificate. This training landed her a position at the Children’s Home Society of Florida, where she now oversees management activities for educators and family support workers who are helping women with HIV and substance abuse problems.
“I am truly grateful for the REVEST program,” Barragn says. “My life changed 180 degrees after entering the program.”
In addition to the REVEST program, many other College initiatives provide vital services to immigrants, including an annual immigration law clinic organized by MDC legal studies professor J. Danixia Cuevas.
Bridging Origins With New Beginnings
A project by MDC computer science professor Mario Sánchez casts the human dimension of these stories of immigration into stark relief. Titled Havana Today in Images, the project presents a collection of satellite images of Havana neighborhoods as well as street-level photos of houses and buildings taken clandestinely by Sánchez’s contacts.
The project emerged as a result of a convergence of Sánchez’s personal and professional life. One day he was looking over the property deed of the Havana house from which his father was forced at gunpoint, and Sánchez decided to write a letter to the U.S. Department of State indicating his desire to assert his ownership of the property.
To his surprise, the government responded that it would keep the document on file as proof of ownership. While this has no legal weight in Cuba, it provided Sánchez with a sense of vindication, a feeling of being reconnected to an important part of his past and identity. Meanwhile, Sánchez, who is working on a doctorate, was immersed in the burgeoning field of satellite digital imagery.
“I thought it would be great if people could locate their former properties, view images of them and claim them online,” Sánchez explains. “I also wanted to automate a process whereby a record of this claim would be sent to the Department of State.”
Sánchez is now hard at work producing a Web site where displaced Cubans can view high-resolution satellite images that have been associated – or “geolocated” – with frontal, street-level photographs.
For his Tower Theater exhibition, Sánchez pieced together large aerial images into a 135-square-foot composite of Havana, allowing visitors to scrutinize specific neighborhoods and streets. The response was overwhelming.
“When word got out about the exhibition, people began lining up outside the Tower Theater hours before it even opened,” Sánchez recalls.
Many people cried as they gazed upon images that evoked memories of a life now left behind.
“I thought the event would mostly be attended by the older generation, but it was besieged by people in their 20s and 30s, many of whom had been born in the U.S. and spent all of their lives here,” he says.
MDC at Forefront of National Debate
The intergenerational pull of Sánchez’s project – and the way it fuses the personal with the political, past with present, the College community with the broader public and lost origins with lives reestablished in a new country – is a potent emblem for the fertile intersection between MDC and the multifaceted realities of immigration.
While the Tower Theater exhibition obviously possesses a uniquely Cuban dimension, it also speaks more generally to something all immigrants confront: the enriching but often highly emotional process of forging a new identity in a foreign country, of balancing losses with gains, endings with beginnings, harsh realities with long-nurtured dreams.
One of the many reasons why the College is so highly regarded by the public is its ability to facilitate this process for individuals while simultaneously including them in an enriching community that is stronger and more vibrant than the mere sum of its parts.
“Miami Dade College is a model to the world for its ability to educate and transform a global student body into people who can freely pursue their own dreams,” says Muñoz, the social sciences professor and department chair.
The College’s commitment to pluralism, inclusion and the actualization of potential provides an inspirational vision for a nation currently at a crucial crossroads.
— Christopher C. Gregory-Guider