| RIPTIDE | ▼ HIALEAH CRASS COLOR H ÑOOO! QUE BARATO! AD DEPICTS TV SHOW HOST IN BLACKFACE. BY JOSHUA CEBALLOS ialeah department store Ñooo! Que Barato! is known for stock- ing every staple a Cuban Ameri- can (or a Cuban) could possibly seek — from guayaberas to school uniforms to pins for cloth diapers to convenient packaging for transporting goods across the Florida Straits to the island. But a new addition to the popular discount outlet’s advertising arsenal is raising local eyebrows. On a recent night, a van with a television screen parked on Okeechobee Road beside the store could be seen airing a commercial promoting the store’s line of all-white cloth- ing aimed at Santería practitioners. The ad de- picts popular Cuban television show host and comedian José Pérez Córdoba, better known as Carlucho, dressed in drag as a Santería priestess — and in blackface, with his face cov- ered in black greasepaint and wide splotches of bright red lipstick around his mouth. The video, which is also posted on the Ñooo! Que Barato! Facebook page, shows Carlucho on the phone with Afro-Cuban co- median José Téllez Fernández, known by his stage name “El Enano,” who he has presum- ably dispatched to bring back white skirts and beaded necklaces. When New Times called Ñooo! Que Barato! owner Serafín Blanco on May 2, to ask whether he felt some might view the black- face portrayal as racist, Blanco said the possi- bility hadn’t occurred to him but that he would stop airing the ad if it was thought to be offensive. The following day, the Ñooo! Que Barato! Facebook page removed the ad. GET MORE NEWS & COMMENTARY AT MIAMINEWTIMES.COM/NEWS ▼ MIDTOWN RENTER BEWARE M 4 4 LUXURY APARTMENT CLAIMS 80 PERCENT RENT HIKE LETTER THAT WENT VIRAL WAS A “CLERICAL ERROR.” BY ALEX DELUCA iamians have seen it all: Rising sea lev- els, falling iguanas, drug lords, corrupt public officials — you name it, we’ve had it. But a sudden 80 percent rent increase, even amid the city’s increasingly dire housing afford- ability crisis? That’d be a first. So on April 29, when a tenant at the posh Midtown Five apartments shared a photo on the popular r/Miami subreddit showing a lease renewal letter that indicated a whopping 82 percent rent hike for a one-bedroom, one-bath- room apartment — from $1,858 to $3,855 at a minimum — the post went viral. The April 26 “I don’t think [it’s racist], but if you think it would hurt someone, I can take it out,” the owner said. Blanco explained that Carlucho is a per- sonal friend and that the comic did the com- mercial to highlight the store’s Santería-related wares. Though the video was posted in March, Blanco said it had been filmed some time ago. Carlucho did not respond to an emailed request for comment. Blackface and minstrelsy have a history in Cuba and the Caribbean as long as in the U.S., though the Cuban perception of such images is markedly different from the present-day North American perspective. Blackface became popularized as a form of “IT’S NOT ONLY THAT IT’S BLACKFACE, BUT THAT IT’S MOCKING AFRO-CUBAN RELIGION.” theater in Cuba in the 19th Century as a form of racial mockery after formerly enslaved people and Afro-Cubans demanded inclusion and emancipation. But when Cuban exiles came to the U.S. and particularly Miami in the latter half of the 20th Century, black- face comedy and min- strelsy — known in Cuba as teatro bufo — found new life, accord- ing to anthropology professor Ariana Hernandez-Reguant. “Cuban blackface minstrels...found a wel- come in exile,” Hernandez-Reguant and coau- thor Jossianna Arroyo-Martínez write in “The Brownface of Latinidad in Cuban Miami,” an essay published on the website CubaCounter- points.com. “In 2000s Miami, Cubans have used blackface to comment on a new society structured by class and race. The more they themselves have been represented in the U.S. media as brown (recall Scarface, and more re- cently, Paula Deen’sson as Ricky Ricardo), the more they have claimed a whiteness that should grant them inclusion and a path for up- ward mobility. In Miami, no matter their immi- grant cohort, Cubans report overwhelmingly Screenshot via Facebook (over 95 percent) as white. But while their po- sition in a white and black world is unambigu- ous, their relation to a hybrid, or brown Latinidad, is far more complicated.” Hernandez-Reguant tells New Times that whereas the U.S. has a longer history of racial reckoning that has made the broader culture aware of the racism and offensiveness inher- ent in minstrel shows, Cuba has yet to experi- ence such a reckoning, which explains why white Cubans like Blanco and Carlucho don’t see anything wrong with such caricatures. “Cuba didn’t have a civil-rights movement. There hasn’t been a racial critique,” Hernan- dez-Reguant says. “When someone like Car- lucho does this character, his argument would be that while Americans see this differently, this performance isn’t for Americans.” Danielle Clealand, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin who wrote a 2018 op-ed for the Miami Herald about blackface in Cuban media, adds that while white Cubans have embraced blackface performances, Black Cubans have long called these shows what they are: racist. “There is an acute awareness that this is anti- Black and racist, and Afro-Cubans have been dealing with these offenses for decades,” Cle- José Carlucho performs blackface in a Ñooo! Que Barato! commercial. aland tells New Times. “But I think there is also a resistance in the white Cuban community to valorizing the opinions of Black Cubans.” Having viewed the Ñooo! Que Barato! video, Clealand says the ad is not only offensive on a racial level, but on a cultural level as well. “It’s not only that it’s blackface, but that it’s mocking Afro-Cuban religion. The way they talk, the way they dress, the kind of non- intellectual way of speaking — it’s playing on negative black stereotypes in violent ways.” Hernandez-Reguant notes that Carlucho has a history of blackface performance. She recalls the comic’s performance in the com- edy series, El Negrito y El Gallego (Blackie and the Spaniard), which aired locally until 2013. In El Negrito y El Gallego, Carlucho played El Gallego (the white Spaniard), while his partner, Mikail Mulkay, donned blackface makeup and red lipstick as El Negrito. “He [Carlucho] has been doing this for 20 years. He’s an actor in telenovela, they come from that tradition. [Mulkay’s] father had al- ways done blackface as well,” Hernandez-Re- guant says. letter notes that the tenants’ lease ends in July and lists more than a dozen renewal offers up to $4,600. “I think there is a happy medium so landlords can still maintain and have a good cap rate on their investment,” the poster replied to a com- menter, “but 82% is predatory.” A Midtown Five spokesperson responded via email to New Times’ request for comment, blam- ing “a clerical error” in the resident’s letter that has since been corrected. New Times attempted unsuccessfully to reach the tenant. On May 3, Reddit user elpa- peldelacasa, who first posted about the rent hike, commented that the building “lowered the rent increase from 82% to 50% (how merciful /s) So around $2,800. The way I see it, they are testing the market to see how much they can squeeze out of you. I will post a more detailed breakdown later.” Error or no, the post popped up as rental prices are surging to “insane” levels across the nation, with no end in sight. According to an April report from the online rental platform Zumper, Miami is now the third-priciest U.S. city for renters, with the median monthly rental rate for a one-bedroom unit pegged at $2,630 and a two-bedroom unit going for roughly $3,550. A sleek, 24-story, “pet-friendly apartment community” located on NE 32nd Street at NE First Avenue catty-corner from the Shops at Midtown Miami, Midtown Five contains 400 apartments, from studios to one-, two-, and three-bedroom units. The tenant’s Reddit post has garnered nearly 800 comments, with many users noting the ab- surdity of the letter. “They aren’t raising your rent, they are kick- ing you out,” reads one reply. “You, my friend, are getting gentrified. Only tech bros and NY finance dudes allowed in Mi- ami’s ‘luxury’ apts,” another responded. “And Crypto bros,” added a third. It remains to be seen what the tenant’s actual renewal offer letter looks like. But Midtown Five’s own website indicates that an apartment like the one where the tenant said they live — a one- bedroom, one-bathroom, 758-square-foot unit — is currently going for at least $3,294. That’s only about $100 cheaper than the least expen- sive renewal offer ($3,385) listed in the purport- edly erroneous viral letter. You might be wondering: Is it legal for a land- lord to raise the rent by that much? The answer, thanks to Florida’s lack of rent- control laws, is yes indeed. A landlord can legally jack up rent by as much as they want, as long as they give the tenant a heads-up. As of last month, Miami-Dade County landlords are re- quired to notify tenants at least two months in advance of a rent hike that will exceed 5 percent. 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