An aerial view of Little Havana in 1986
Little Havana is a predominantly-Cuban neighborhood of Miami, Florida. The neighborhood was once a thriving Jewish neighborhood in the 1930s, but the influx of Cuban immigrants in the 1960s led to the neighborhood coming to be nicknamed "Little Havana" after the Cuban capital. 98% of the population was Hispanic in 2011, but by 1989 only 58% of the population was Cuban; other inhabitants were from Nicaragua, Honduras, or other countries in Central America, coming to the United States in the 1990s. In 2010, the neighborhood had a population of 76,163 people.
Little Havana was a very important center of the Miami drug trade during the 1980s, when Cuban gangsters from the Montana Cartel, Robina Gang, and other groups competed over the drug trade coming into Miami. The neighborhood was devastated by gang warfare between the Montana Cartel and Diaz Brothers in 1983, between the Robina Gang and Mexican gang in 1984, and the Robina Gang and the Haitian Poulet Gang in 1986, and much of the population lived in poverty in a drug-infested area. Little Havana was one of the hottest warzones of the Miami drug wars of the 1980s, but the violence died down with the cocaine trade in the late 1980s.
Gallery[]
