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Miami: Between polls and lies
The anti-Cuban mafia spares no means or opportunity in its hate-filled media barrage
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The father’s plea that ICE ignored: ‘I have a daughter with Down syndrome and autism and a wife with cancer, please don’t deport me’
The phone rings. It’s Dad, who has shrunk to the size of the cell phone screen, far away in a place called Lima, Peru. “Ashley, my baby!” he calls to his daughter, his voice drifting into the Miami Gardens apartment where they lived together for years. The girl is engrossed in the music playing on her tablet, ignoring him. “Ashley, my sweet little girl!” he calls again, but she acts as if she can’t hear him, hitting herself. “Don’t hurt yourself like that!” he pleads, seemingly having lost all authority and become a stranger to his daughter. The mother bursts into tears. The father does, too. They imagine that Ashley, so used to Walter Marcelino Chau taking her to school or cuddling her before bed, no longer recognizes him. If they show her a video of Walter showering her with affection, Ashley turns her face away. If he calls her to see how she is this morning, she turns her back on him. “We don’t know how she’s processing her thoughts now,” the father says. In reality, no one has yet come to terms with the fact that he was deported by the U.S. government despite pleading with the authorities.
© CESAR CAMPOS
‘I’m not going to Cuba until things ease up with Trump’: Florida sees decline in trips and sales at stores that supply the island
At Ñooo Qué Barato, a store on a street corner in Hialeah where for decades Cubans have bought “everything to send to Cuba”—from school uniforms to baby baskets and rechargeable lamps—customer traffic and sales have declined in recent weeks. “People aren’t traveling to Cuba because they’re afraid of the uncertainty that [President Donald] Trump might do something and they’ll be stranded there,” explains Norelbis Ramírez, a 52-year-old Cuban woman from Bayamo—in the east of the island—who works as a cashier at the store.
A potential transition in Cuba stirs up leadership disputes among Miami’s exiles
Expectation has been building in recent weeks in Miami. The capture earlier this year in Venezuela of Nicolás Maduro – Havana’s erstwhile main ally – and Donald Trump’s repeated assertions that the Cuban regime is going to fall soon, have reinforced exiled Cubans’ longing for their country’s freedom. Along with that hope, a well-worn question has resurfaced: who could lead a post-Castro Cuba?
© Rebecca Blackwell (AP)
The tired faces of Cuban deportees to Mexico: ‘I’m already old, I don’t want to die here’
Just a few weeks ago they were electricians in Miami. Or department managers at a multinational corporation. They were still fishing, just like they had for the last 30 years. They drove trucks. They owned an air conditioning company. They were collecting retirement benefits after a lifetime of work. And now? Now they look for a gap between the arcades, hang wet clothes to dry in a sink, open and close the doors of an Oxxo convenience store hoping for a few coins, celebrate the blankets that a kind neighbor gave them so they don’t have to sleep directly on the hard concrete floor, treasure worn papers, documents in the wrong language, and rely on promised money to buy a cell phone so they can call their families, who remained thousands of miles away, on the other side of the border.
Trump unveils plans for his presidential library as a skyscraper in Miami amid questions about its funding
President Donald Trump has unveiled a first look at his future presidential library, a project that, according to the materials he shared, would be a skyscraper in downtown Miami. The presentation, made via a video shared on his social media platform Truth Social and reposted by his son Eric Trump on X, shows a high-rise building with the president’s surname in gold letters, whose roof would feature a spire illuminated in the colors of the American flag.
© TRUMPLIBRARY.ORG
Goran Konjevod Transforms Paper into Elegantly Organic Origami Vessels
If it weren’t for being so lightweight and crisp in their facets, Goran Konjevod’s elegant vases could at first glance be mistaken for thin porcelain. Crafted instead from precisely folded paper, the works tap into the relationship between—and associations with—material, form, and function. His meticulous origami compositions combine organic forms with nuanced hues and gradients, creating a sense of visual heft and presence from thin, gauzy material.
Konjevod’s work was recently included in Art of the Fold at ACCI Gallery, and “Grey Curves Vase” and “Artist’s Palette Vase” will be part of an exhibition titled The Craft of Paper: Contemporary Takes on Tradition this August at the Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking in Atlanta. See more on Instagram.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Goran Konjevod Transforms Paper into Elegantly Organic Origami Vessels appeared first on Colossal.
Different Times: The Shah of Iran On Vacation in Miami, 1955
In 2026 the United States went to war with Iran, a country whose government fundamentally changed with the Islamic Revolution of 1979. That revolution overthrew the royal government of Mohammad Reza Pazlavi, who had ruled as a monarch from 1941 to ’79. Pazlavi now stands as the last shah of Iran.
How different was the Shah’s relations with the West as compared to the leadership of modern Iran? In brief, it was very different. The countries were allies back then. One small but telling signpost is a story in a 1955 issue of LIFE headlined “Shah by the Seashore ” It was a light, photo-driven look at Pazlavi and his 22-year-old bride coming to Miami Beach for a few days of fun in the sun. The coverage resembles that which any visiting royal from a friendly country might receive.
And the Shah behaved as any visitor to Miami Beach might. The photos, by Robert W. Kelley, show the Shah waterskiing, playing shuffleboard and tennis, and relaxing on a boat with his shirt off. In LIFE’s brief story the Shah even acknowledged appreciating the beautiful women he saw hanging out by his hotel pool. As LIFE wrote, “After seeing the resort’s celebrated bathing beauties lolling in the sun, the Shah, who is 35, gave his impression of the appearance of American women: “Very nice.”
The Shah and his wife stayed at the Sans Souci hotel, now operating as the Hotel Riu. The hotel, as LIFE’s story details, welcomed the Shah and his wife by rolling out a 40-foot red carpet. The hotel didn’t have a presidential suite but did its best to recreate one by painting four adjoining rooms in robin’s-egg blue, which was the color of the Shah’s Rolls Royce.
Yes, it was a different time.
The Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and his wife, Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiary went sightseeing during their vacation in Miami Beach, Florida, 1955.
Robert W. Kelley/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, rode a boat during his vacation in Miami Beach, Florida, 1955.
Robert W. Kelley/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, rode a boat during his vacation in Miami Beach, Florida, 1955.
Robert W. Kelley/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The Shah Of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, played tennis during his vacation in Miami Beach, Florida, 1955.
Robert W. Kelley/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The Shah of Iran, Mohamed Reza played shuffleboard during a Miami vacation, 1955.
Robert W. Kelley/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, waterskied during his vacation in Miami Beach, Florida, 1955.
Robert W. Kelley/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, enjoyed the water during his vacation in Miami Beach, Florida, 1955.
Robert W. Kelley/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, on vacation in Miami Beach, Florida, 1955.
Robert W. Kelley/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and his wife, Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiary, at the Sans Souci hotel in Miami Beach, Florida, 1955.
Robert W. Kelley/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and his wife, Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiary during their vacation in Miami Beach, Florida, 1955.
Robert W. Kelley/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and his wife, Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiary went sightseeing during their vacation in Miami Beach, Florida, 1955.
Robert W. Kelley/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The post Different Times: The Shah of Iran On Vacation in Miami, 1955 appeared first on LIFE.
