Miami.
Home to 99% humidity
snarled traffic and more than 1.5 million Hispanics making a good mosaic of cultures.
I came here from Argentina as a six-year-old
and quickly found out how culturally Cuban the city really is.
Here they make up half of the population, between refugees who fled the Castro regime
and their descendants.
For decades, they've been resolutely conservative.
In the run-up to the midterm elections
and in the midst of Trump's increasingly anti-immigrant rhetoric,
I've come back home to find out if these loyalties still hold true.
Hialeah Gardens is a traditionally conservative area
home to a mix of older, more established Cubans and other newly arrived Latinos.
I joined Raul and his team of Cuban American college Republicans
canvassing on behalf of Frank Mingo, who's vying for a local office.
And if they don't know nothing about Mingo,
I just love telling them who he is even if they don't support him.
At least them knowing, that's amazing for me.
It's already a success for you.
Yeah, that's great.
Why are you guys here today and why do you do this work?
My whole family is Republican and they don't like getting taxed,
I don't like getting taxed either,
and I think that's tough later on, you know,
you're making a good amount of money but then they go to other people because
they don't like working, they like getting some food stamps.
All my family's from Cuba, they come from Cuba
but then they're hard-working people.
But a lot of people think this is good to get taxes.
How do you feel about President Trump?
A lot of his points I do agree with.
Sometimes the way that he talks doesn't come out right
but I do agree with a lot of his points.
Like on immigration?
That's tough.
Yeah, I know. I understand.
Because I have so much family who has come and they have worked hard
but there are so many other people out there who are just doing us bad.
You know?
There's nothing that can happen that you think that could change your opinion?
No, there's really nothing.
I'm gonna vote for Trump.
Back at the campaign headquarters, a few miles away,
I met Armando Ibarra, the president of Miami-Dade young Republicans.
Most people here in Hialeah fled oppression in Cuba,
I think they, very rightfully, have a very good scepticism
of government policies, centralisation, collectivism
or anything that reminds them of the failures in Cuba.
We're so excited to become American.
One day, my children or grandchildren, they may stop marking Hispanic
because at that point, they will feel fully American.
I feel fully American.
What Armando describes is the Cuban American political identity
forged between the 60s and the 80s
when hundreds of thousands fled the Castro regime.
The first group came mainly from the middle and upper classes
fearing reprisals from the communist government and the loss of their wealth and possessions.
In 1961, the CIA led the Bay of Pigs invasion
sponsoring Cuban counter-revolutionaries and promising them land and sea support
that never really came.
That failure in the early months of John F Kennedy's presidency,
still symbolises the treachery of the American left to older Cubans.
This, coupled with a disdain for socialism,
led many Cubans to the Republican party
but recently things have started to change.
Nearly half of Cuban Americans in Florida have voted for Obama in 2012
a titanic shift from the 78% who voted for Bush in 2004
and in 2016 Trump lost district 27 in Miami
which holds most of the state's Cuban population by the largest margin
any Republican candidate has ever lost there.
At Florida International University,
I met Andy Vila, a 20-year-old Cuban socialist
who emigrated from the island in 2004.
Before 2016 he, like his parents, had been passionately conservative
but Trump changed all that and created a generational divide in his family
that's becoming increasingly common in others.
During the 2016 election, I never supported Trump
and I was always a Republican that was against Trump.
I always said, this guy is not a Republican
I see him as a fascist.
So the S word … socialism.
The dirty word, right?
It's a dirty word at home, right?
Yeah, my household was very conservative.
I felt connected to capitalism in the sense that my country's lack of it
was the direct cause of its troubles.
I guess you can call it like a coming out, right?
I said I know that you guys knew me as a conservative
but now I'm a progressive.
Now we can't just talk about politics because it'll be a fight over the dinner table.
Do you think there's a generational gap among Cuban
and Cuban American people in the United States?
The people that I've met, definitely show that.
Older Cuban conservatives are generally conservative
not really because they care too much about what the current message
of the Republican party is but simply because the Republican party
is the party of capitalism, is the party of America,
is the party of nationalism.
I think that younger people care a lot more about the issues that
affect us here in America.
The Democratic party and leftist and socialists
do have strong opinions about the injustices that keep on happening
in our world, not just our country,
and the Republican party doesn't offer that.
The most unlikely populations, like Cuban Americans,
are turning more and more to the left.
While some younger Cuban Americans may be drifting left,
the older generation remains resolutely Republican.
Versailles Cuban bakery in Miami's Little Havana district
has been a stronghold representing the traditions
of the exiles since 1971
On the day of Fidel Castro's death in 2016,
pots and pans celebration exploded in front of the restaurant.
Osvaldo, who came to Florida on a boat in 1994,
comes to Versailles most days.
He's drawn to Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric.
As night fell, rumours swirled that Maria Elvira Salazar
would be making an appearance.
She was previously a presenter on the Hispanic TV channel
MegaTV
and now she's running with the Republican party for the 27th congressional district.
Amongst the exile, she's a rock star.
There's giddy excitement and I can't wait for her to get in
and there's this man walking around looking at every corner.
It's definitely the event of at least the month.
[Applause]
What would you say to someone that says
that the younger Republican crowd is gonna be more important,
that these people are sort of ageing out and they, you know,
you should be looking to getting younger people into voting for you
and into the Republicans …
Well, they vote.
This is a voting crowd, everybody votes here.
I do believe that I'm gonna have the Republicans,
the young and the old, and I'm gonna have the Democrats
the Hispanic Democrats and the Hispanic independents
voting for me regardless of age.
How do you sort of bring that back in considering that the rhetoric
that Trump brings and some of the way that he talks about some immigrants …
Sure, you're absolutely correct
and some of the words that the president has used
are not the best words, they're pretty insensitive in many occasions.
At the same time, the words of a president are not as important
as the values that are entrenched in the party.
But if you leave the party because you are upset with the president,
then you are not present in that conversation,
national conversation that includes the Hispanics which is
the largest minority in the country.
So I want to represent them and sit at the table, not sit at the back.
As she posed for photographs,
Salazar felt at home with her base.
She's confident but it remains to be seen whether the younger generation
educated in America, separated from the exile experience
and turned off by Trump's rhetoric will be as welcoming to her message.