Miami s Osvaldo Soto, pioneering Cuban-American lawyer who fought discrimination, dies at 91 David Ovalle, The Miami Herald
Jan. 13 Amid the anti-Hispanic backlashes in the early 1980s, Miami s clerk of courts made a decision that seems unthinkable today the banning of marriages from being conducted in anything but English.
Osvaldo Soto s response: He set up an open-air wedding chapel in a Little Havana parking lot and offered free Spanish-language marriages. Ahora los declaro marido y mujer. Felicidades, Soto told the first couple there. I now declare you husband and wife. Congratulations.
The episode in 1984 was but one small fight in his lifelong crusade against discrimination in Miami, where over decades he became a revered figure fighting on behalf of Miami s Hispanic and minority communities. Soto, who suffered from Parkinson s disease, died Saturday of natural causes at age 91.