The Tribune

With CHARLIE HARPER

WE all know about the close ties The Bahamas maintains with South Florida. It’s hardly a secret that the legal as well as the illegal commerce between us has over many decades proven to be enduring, necessary, lucrative and quite creative. Miami-Dade County has 30 “sister city” agreements with foreign municipalities around the world, including one with The Bahamas. And one of Miami’s two “friendship city” relationships is with Barcelona which might prove to be prophetic, as we will see.

This affinity with South Florida has long carried over into the sports arena as well. Especially with the Miami Dolphins football team and the Miami Heat basketball team, many of us are fans.

Now, the world’s most popular sport looks like it might be a future contender for some of our passion for sports. Club Internacional de Futbol Miami is now five years old and better known as Inter Miami, or Miami FC. Miami’s soccer expansion team hasn’t enjoyed much success in the American Major League Soccer so far, but that is likely to change, probably soon. And as it does, we may become more and more engaged.

As Miami’s soccer profile rises, it is also interesting to explore a bit later the story of their new owners.

Less than two weeks ago, a man regarded by most observers as one of the two or three greatest soccer players to ever play the game signed with Inter Miami. Argentine superstar and reigning world champion Lionel Messi signed his Designated Player contract on July 15, committing to lead the team through the 2025 MLS season.

Messi, finishing three often unhappy years with perennial French league champion Paris St. Germain, reportedly turned down offers to stay in Paris or move to a Saudi Arabian league that is attempting to stockpile soccer superstars like we might load up on ribs or chicken in preparation for a big family cookout.

There are some good reasons for Messi to lend his immense worldwide fame and prestige to an American league that has struggled for economic viability and televised visibility since the 1980s. MLS is still an often-overlooked afterthought in the world’s soccer view, but Messi might lessen some of that disregard.

Messi and his family reportedly like Miami. At 36, he is nearing the end of his playing days, certainly as the world’s best current player. Like any sensible sportsman, he is looking for a place to retire and pursue other interests. While Paris is the City of Light, for most Latino families Miami is the better choice.

Lucky for us.

There are other reasons for Messi’s commitment to Miami. Like LeBron James at his various stops in Cleveland and Los Angeles (but not Miami), Messi was reportedly given a voice in the selection of Inter Miami’s head coach and some of his new teammates.

Fellow Argentine and former Barcelona manager Gerardo “Tata” Martino was appointed as the head coach of the club just before Messi joined. Messi’s former Barcelona teammates Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba have or will join him in South Florida. Messi played for Barcelona for 18 glorious years before moving to Paris in 2021.

Lionel Messi’s instant impact at Inter Miami and life in the United States continued on Tuesday as he scored two goals and created another in the team’s 4-0 victory over Atlanta United in a club competition. Messi had made his first start for the MLS side last week after coming off the bench and scoring on a trademark free kick in “extra time” in another interleague competition.

There is more to this story. While former English and Manchester United star David Beckham has been visibly associated with Inter Miami for several years, the team’s owners are Jorge Mas and his brother. Heirs to a South Florida fortune built by their famous father Jorge Mas Canosa, the brothers bought out their partners recently to become the principal owners.

Mas Canosa, who died in 1997, was a massively important figure not only in South Florida but at the highest levels of American politics for decades. In 1981, along with two colleagues, he founded the Cuban American National Foundation. While it is now a mere shadow of its former self, CANF was profoundly influential in Florida and national American politics for over 20 years.

CANF was founded following the election of Ronald Reagan when US Republicans sought a lobbying organisation made up of anti-Castro Cuban-Americans. The organization was molded after the significantly influential, pro-Israel organisation AIPAC and enjoyed significant backing from the Reagan administration. In its early days, CANF also received “sizeable contributions” from board members who were reportedly “leaders of Miami’s financial and import-export sector,” running companies invested in Latin America and stood to gain from Reagan’s policies that protected investment overseas.

As the tide of Cuban refugees ebbed and flowed from Cuba through The Bahamas to the US for many years, CANF and Mas Canosa strongly influenced how the US treated those Cuban refugees – an American policy that was notably differentiated from US treatment of other hopeful immigrants, including Haitians.

CANF was founded as part of a broader strategy to sideline more moderate perspectives within the Cuban-American community, and to convert anti-Castro activism in South Florida from a militantly and potentially militarily hostile approach to the Cuban Communist regime to a more politically-oriented strategy. CANF was widely described during Mas Canosa’s tenure as one of the most powerful ethnic lobbying organizations in the US, and used campaign contributions to advance and secure its policy objectives in Washington, DC.

Democratic officials believed that but for the outsized influence of Mas Canosa, the United States might have ended its infamous, consistently unpopular regime of heavy economic and political sanctions on a Cuban government from which Mas Canosa’s parents had fled. Throughout his leadership, Mas Canosa and CANF held immense influence over the US policy with Cuba. For instance, Mas Canosa is credited with aiding in the design of 1994 American legislation designed to tighten the US vise on Cuba.

Whenever the American squeeze play on Cuba comes before the United Nations, it is roundly excoriated.

So a Cuban exile family in South Florida that certainly embodied the American Dream and long maintained political influence in American politics may regain some influence on our cultural life here.

This time, though, it might be on a soccer field rather than in political backrooms, on the high seas and in refugee camps.

Equality in college admissions weakened

Ever since the American Supreme Court basically outlawed race-conscious affirmative action in the admissions process of the many, many US colleges and universities who receive some kind of federal research or other funding support, American higher education has been in the headlines.

It would be well worthwhile for Bahamian families interested in college in America for their kids to pay attention to developments.

One important such development is the US Department of Education’s decision this week to look at Harvard’s policy of so-called “legacy” admissions. This gives at least an implicit advantage to the sons and daughters of Harvard alumni. “Legacy status can break a tie,” one observer noted.

Meanwhile, reporters are scrambling to find programmes that seem to do diversity well, which is particularly valuable in light of the Supreme Court decision.

The New York Times spoke with the head of admissions for the medical school at the University of California at Davis (near Sacramento). “Mostly rich kids get to go to medical school,” he said.

In his role at the school, he has developed an unorthodox tool to evaluate applicants: the socioeconomic disadvantage scale, or SED.

The scale rates every applicant from zero to 99, taking into account their life circumstances, such as family income and parental education. Admissions decisions are based on that score, combined with the usual portfolio of grades, test scores, recommendations, essays and interviews.

This disadvantage scale has helped turn UC Davis into one of the most diverse medical schools in the country — notable in a state that voted in 1996 to ban affirmative action.

Still, more than half of medical students in the US come from families in the top 20 percent of income, while only four percent come from those in the bottom 20 percent, according to data from the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Equality in college admissions has certainly been weakened. Restoring it will be difficult.