There is a letter in the Miami Herald today - BAY OF PIGS: Museum is `quintessentially American' by Nicholas J. Gutierrez, Jr. He annoys me, always has. Does what he says in his letter annoy you? It does me:“The museum's detractors like to huff about public access to this bayfront property. But they ignore that for the past 11 years, the public has enjoyed absolutely no access to it.”
We are not museum detractors you dope. Maybe we want what we voted for!! Most people are saying it is the wrong place for the museum celebrating Cuban heritage (you will note by his letter, this is quickly morphing into a Cuban History thing since the Bay of Pigs history alone won’t fly as easily). What is wrong with the Freedom Tower, Nicholas, it is a stone's throw away from the waterfront and could serve the purpose? And, to be accurate Parcel B is 120,485 Sq. ft. that is 2.76 acres according to county records on line. The reason being, the property around the perimeter is not technically counted as part of parcel B. When I hit on this area, nothing shows up for it.
Guiterrez is rude, I heard him on the radio once speaking for the sugar industry and all he did was interrupt everyone. He is on the South Florida Water Management District Governing Board and he is a lawyer for the Sugar Industry. I wish Governor Crist had removed him from the Governing Board.
Here is what is on the SFWMD website so you know what you are up against if you are a soccer field fan:
Professional, Business and Service Affiliations:
• Secretary and Director (9 terms), National Association of Sugar Mill Owners of Cuba
• Chairman, Property Rights Committee of the Cuban-American Bar Association's Cuban Law Project
• Secretary, The Sugar Industry of Cuba Institute
• General Counsel to the Cuban Association of the Tobacco Industry
• Member, Board of Directors of the National Association of Cuban Mineral and Petroleum Rights Holders
• Founder and President of the Bridge of Young Cuban Professionals
• Member, Committee for the Liberation of Guantánamo Detainees
• Founder, first President and current Director of South Florida Lawyers' Division of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
• National Vice-President for the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies' E.I. Wiegand International and National Security Law Practice Group
• Bar Memberships: State of Florida, United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, United States Supreme Court, Miami-Dade County Bar
• Rated "A-V" by Martindale-Hubbell, the highest professional and legal rating awarded to practicing attorneys
• Winner of Nova Southeastern University and St. Thomas University Hispanic Law Students Association's 1996 and 1999 "Hispanic of the Year Awards"
23 comments:
He is another mouth piece for hire who will say anything. He sounds like a nasty piece of work.
Parcel B was promised to be a soccer field. No waterfront park site should be paved. We need open green space. No other City in America would act so aggressively to pave every blade of grass.
Gutierrez said: This certainly merits the exercise of our right to pursue this worthy and ambitious project through recognized democratic channels, especially in the absence of any competing proposals. That is no land grab.
There are competing proposals, there was a charrette where were you? And where are these soccer fields 1/2 mile from the site?
And what do you mean stores...what do we need more stores on the waterfront. have you been to bayside. What do you think those are? They are stores.
I look at this guy and i think: Oink.
I can understand your opposition to the location of the Bay of Pigs Museum but the personal attack on Nick Gutierrez was unnecessary. As I said on my own blog I have met Nick a couple of times, not enough to even pick each other out of crowd but we've met enough to recognize one another. Nick is a lawyer and a fighter. Don't knock him for doing his job. After forums I found him to be friendly and generous no matter how hot he got in debate.
He was not debating, he was interrupting rudely so no one else could talk. and for him to say people are museum detractors is dopey -- not once did anyone say anything to detract from the museum.
However, maybe he is just trying to fan a flame that doesn't exist and that would make him manipulative.
You know no one is bad 100% of the time. Hitler was nice to his mistress. Sanabria as we have been told, helps tots at Christmas. Just because you had a good experience with him...well that is good for you but it doesn't make a person admirable. On the South Florida Water Mgmt. district he sees to the needs of the Sugar Industry not the best interest of the water needs of the people and the environment. He is a special interest guy.
Nick would not be thought badly of by me if he had honestly said I am a paid representative of someone and I have to fight for the paving over of the waterfront.
Well, who benefits if he fans the fire? Would it be his law firm?
Note that I never mentioned that it was good for him to be on the SFWMD Board. I may like him but I'm not blind to a conflict of interest. But please the Hitler parallel...a tad over the top. Call me jaded but we are all special interest groups. We only point it out when someone represents the other side.
.....that is true cardinal... any group is special when it has my interest...
I have heard no one object to a Cuban Museum, or to any museum for that matter. People object to paving over scarce waterfront when museums could easily be built west of 95. Taxpayers also object to being forced to fund other peoples museums.
Who is going to pay for this museum? Should it not be in the Freedom Tower as originality proposed, or even the old Philip Johnson MAM space once they move to the park? What is going to be done with these pre-existing poorly thought boondoggles? Considering that we are giving away public land to construct this new museum, will the community have a say in the subject matter on display. Everybody has a right to tell their own story if they want to foot the bill themselves but the museum here is proposed on public land. Will it reflect all of rich diversity of the communities in Miami? Therefore, should we must address the subject of the museum/parking garage since it has been thrust upon us. What a museum is about, the story it tells, and how it tells the story is an important statement on a community and a society. This is now well accepted and the divisive ethnic argument that advocates of the museum/parking garage are trying to deploy to guilt the rest of the community to accept uncritically their conceptualization of this project so lets take a moment to analyze their concept of the Museum as they have proposed it in context. Museums are both socially constructions of a community and actively work to construct our own interpretations of reality and thus are significant for the narrative they tell. Why a community that has no anthropological or ethnographic collection on Latin America now feels compelled to construct a whole building devoted to telling the story of the Bay of Pigs fiasco is in and of itself astounding. Why has there been no compelling outcry to construct and build a significant museum of pre-Colombian art? Why is there not even a suitable display of the interesting collection we have currently at UM's Lowes Museum? Why is there still no museum on the African-American experience in South Florida when that has become the celebrated subject for a few new significant museums around the nation? Would not our telling of that story would be especially rich here as we present ourselves at the crossroads of North America, South America, Central America and the Caribbean. What about a museum built around our own pre-Colombian Indians, considering the significant recent find of the Miami Circle? Why is that find left to languish covered by a tarp like an abandoned storm damaged roof? What about the tragic story of the more recent Native American arrivals (the Seminole and Miccousukee) their wars and the tale of woe surrounding their arrival? At a time when cities all around the world are building museums to tropical/subtropical peoples why are we proposing one based upon the narrow experience of the elite white expat exiles from Cuba and their entourage? Paris recently opened the Musee du Quai Branly attended by Guatemalan Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu, Amsterdam has recently renovated a huge anthropological museum building - The Tropenmuseum- or Tropical Museum for the Royal Institute for the Tropics and the British Museum in the last few years opened the Sainsbury African galleries. Why are no members of our business civic community are racing to show their cosmopolitan, worldly and sophisticated character and put their name on such worthy subject matters locally? That our local elite and local officials have now started to morph the concept of the museum from one devoted solely to the Bay of Pigs and expand it to tell the tale of all of Cuba's History still illustrates the endemic racism that is imbued withing the thought processes and instrumental rationality of our local leaders. Their conceptualization of the museum is still bedded in a story that begins when white Europeans arrived to Cuban and squabbled, while the story of when slaves arrived to the Caribbean is far more significant for the history of the area and all of the Caribbean expat communities in South Florida including Cuban Americans whatever their skin color. Are not the amazing stories of all of the members of our communities including the dark skinned members worthy of representation? What about a narrative that revolves around this event? This is the path new world class museums on these subjects are taking. That it never figured in the crass political motives of those behind this parking garage/museum is telling indeed. The very notion of this museum is a divisive political statement and must be analyzes as such!
Maybe with his overly grand sense of himself, long winded speeches, rude interruptions, and unwillingness to listen to anybody else he is trying to impersonate Fidel?
Actually, the letter proves Grimm's point rather well. Now the debate is over the museum rather than the loss of the parkland and the major "feature", namely a %^&$%%## parking garage.
Oh, and the letter is pretty disingenuous. Grimm doesn't condemn the existing museum at all; he agrees that he'd jump at the chance to move if he was in similar circumstances.
It's fair to complain about an advocate being disingenuous. If the advocate has a good argument he or she should put it forward. The lack of one here is rather telling.
I love museums. When I travel I divide the bulk of my time time between museums, parks and performing arts. Obviously, if I am in state or national park the green and the nature is the full attraction. When in Miami, after you visit a museum once or twice a year, what does one do as an outing, beyond the beach and mall?
I and many people yearn for more and greener parks.
I have no idea what Mr.
Nicholas Gutierrez, Jr. enjoys doing in his spare time, but I ask him to find a park in our urban core, Downtown Miami, where he can walk more then 2 minutes in one direction without
running into more concrete. In fact try to find a park anywhere on the mainland of the City of Miami where one can escape our harsh concrete environment.
Since I have arrived in Miami in 1979, Miami has become a much more angry and agressive place. Socially and visually, it is not a pretty picture compared to other cities I visit.
I contend that lack of green space, places for children and adults to chill out and escape our harsh city life is one reason for the agressive behavior of many people. Many people in our county are working their asses off, much more then full time just to survive and our governments are providing little in return in terms of great free public places.
We need to be much smarter with our limited public spaces as smart cities around the world would not use precious waterfront land for a non water related facility.
Indeed, why is the County Commission having the manager "study" this matter?
There is the Dan Paul Amendment which protects Parcel B.
Build up to a 1500 square foot toilet there, as allowed by the amendment, put in a soccer field and as many shade trees that fit as was promised. Then place a small plaque informing the people that this is a green park to be preserved by ordinance forever. Hand off! Then place the same plaque on all parks in the County and encourge cities ot do the same.
As others have mentioned, there are many buildings in Miami and throughout the County which can be recycled into museums in the same manner great cities, which are far richer then Miami, have done all over the world.
Steve Hagen, chair 305 754 0099
Parks & Public Space Committee of Miami Neighborhods United
Re: Why don't we analyze...
It didn't take long to trot out the race card, did it? "Elite white expats exiles?"
I'm against the project in its current state, and I don't even live in Miami anymore, but after your racial blast, perhaps it should stay there. Screw you!
Over half the hispanics in Miami-Dade County are not Cuban. We do not share the Cuban History and I doubt we share its desire to have this museum anywhere other than where it is.
This sounds like a land grab by the Miami Heat which originally promised the voters soccer fields. Where are the soccer fields already?
Sign me, gringa peruana.
By all means, non-Cuban Hispanics rise up and overthrow the tyranny of the few against the many!
ok.
I am confused. That museum doesn't belong there. No building belongs there.
I think that by the time everyone finishes building all the museums they are plotting to build, we are not going to be able to afford the tickets...(not to mention grant funding for museums is going to be heavily fought for considering the explansions and buildings going up to the north of us)
Will someone tell me, why MAM has to move, when they can't even fiancially float where they are...next to the tourist accessable Metro Mover and in the heart of Miami?
How many thousands of people work next to that building, without ever venturing over there during lunch for a quick look-see? Is that going to change when they block the bay and make folks walk further to get there?
Good point. Miami Art Museum is in a relatively new building designed by one of the most famous architects in the world. MAM is centrally located and adjacent to mass transit. Yet no one goes and MAM cannot even afford its meager $3 Mil overhead. True, they have no collection. Now County and State funding is getting cut. No one donates cash. Anyone see a pattern? Performing Art Center repeat?
Miami Art Museum has no collection and no visitors and no money. Why do they want to move to a much more expensive location?
Gutierrez is hurting the Bay of Pigs veterans and shows little respect for our community. Oink is right, but I also see ehehehe on this guy's face.
The veterans deserve a better place and the bayfront belongs to the public. What is it about these two facts that this idiot and others like him fail to understand. C'mon, it's obvious that there's money involved or they wouldn't be fighting for so hard to steal Parcel B from us.
The Bay of Pigs veterans would be smart to discredit of this guy and start listening instead to the Cuban community out here. The museum belongs in the Freedom Tower, 8 Street or other place where we will all support it.
Little Havana would be a great location. Tourists could visit and stay and shop at stores on 8th Street.
Parcel B is just a scam so the Heat can get a multi-level parking garage on the water.
Anyone check the registered lobbyist lists? Is the Heat behind the scheme to build a multi-level garage on Parcel B or are the Cubans so desperate they will take any free piece of land offered?
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