Cuban-Americans view him as part of the administration, and said if he really believed what he was saying he could have done something.

It gives Raul's side a tremendous strategic advantage, either way. It freezes the opposition. It's brilliant, if you think about it. And you have to be really popular to pull this off. You have to be really sure.

The tragedy of Katrina wasn't the failure to predict the track or to predict the intensity of the storm. The tragedy was in preparing people and in particular predicting human behavior.

There's a lot of activity. The truth is that the Cuban community is still very hard line and remains trapped in the Cold War environment because Cuba is still trapped there, too. Cuba is the issue that grabs the public's attention, the media's attention, and the government's attention.

The fact that things are as convoluted as they are shows how Raul so dominates Hialeah politics. And there's a sense -- whether it's true or not -- that he's unbeatable.

We have Americans, Latin, African-American, Jamaican. We have a little bit of everything. There's a lot of people that like soccer and they come and play here.