The persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages. Unlike past immigrant groups, Mexicans…
Latino Museum Acting Deputy Director receives award aldianews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from aldianews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Miami is mourning the death of a legal pioneer, Osvaldo Soto. He helped Cuban Americans gain equal representation in government and fought for the repeal of an English-only law in Miami-Dade County. NPR s Greg Allen has this remembrance.
GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: Osvaldo Soto knew Fidel Castro. They were law students together in Havana in the late 1940s, and he supported the revolution. But like so many other Cubans, Soto became disillusioned with the Castro regime and left for the U.S. He took part in the Bay of Pigs invasion, attempting to oust Castro. When that failed, he took a series of jobs at U.S. universities teaching Spanish. His daughter, Bertilla Soto, says he wrote five books on Spanish grammar and literature.
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.