MiamiHerald.com

COLUMNIST

Born in Matanzas, Cuba, in 1959, Fabiola Santiago grew up in Miami enamored of her family's nostalgic stories and their memories of the softest sands and the bluest beach in the world, Varadero. Exiled to the United States in 1969 with her parents and younger brother on one of the historic Freedom Flights, Fabiola has been a writer and editor for The Miami Herald since 1980.

Her award-winning stories and essays on arts, culture and identity have been published in several magazines and anthologies in the United States and abroad. She was the founding city editor and managing editor of the Spanish-language El Nuevo Herald from 1987 to 1993, and in 2001, shared in a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the federal government seizure of the child Elian González.

She has taught journalism at the University of Florida, Florida International University and Barry University. Fabiola is a graduate of the University of Florida and has three daughters. She lives in Miami. Her novel, Reclaiming Paris, is the story of a woman's quest for identity set in contemporary Miami to the backdrop of the city's Cuban culture and history. The book has also been published in Spanish as Siempre París and in Norwegian as Habanita. Read more about her work at www.reclaimingparis.com and www.fabiolasantiago.com.

You can contact Fabiola at fsantiago@miamiherald.com

Fabiola Santiago: Boy Scouts should live up to own values

All eyes are on the U.S. Supreme Court — and they should be — as the nation’s highest court grapples with issues that address the constitutionality of same-sex marriage.
In My Opinion

Fabiola Santiago: I am Cuban and American — y más

Somos cubanos y punto.” We, those in exile and on the island, are all Cubans — period.
Fabiola Santiago: Dissidents choosing to act like free people

NEW YORK — The first time I “met” Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo — aka @OLPL — on that infinite and unpredictable public square that is the Internet, he was tweeting from Havana.
In My Opinion

Fabiola Santiago: Disruption of Yoani speech in New York carries echoes of Cuba

What do you know?
In My Opinion

Fabiola Santiago: In New York, as in Cuba, Yoani Sánchez speaks her mind

NEW YORK — I only knew Yoani Sánchez through her written words.
In My Opinion

Fabiola Santiago: Despite “reforms,” some Cubans aren’t free to travel

For all of the Cuban dissidents and bloggers who have taken to the skies to exercise a right that we, in the free world, take for granted — the right to travel freely — there are other Cubans who still cannot do so.
In My Opinion

Fabiola Santiago: Cuba’s bloggers are as sharp abroad as at home

The Cuban bloggers, bold chroniclers of totalitarian rule, are traveling in winter, an apt metaphor for the old order they’re challenging back home, and to a smaller but no less significant extent, for that of the traditional exile.
In My Opinion

Fabiola Santiago: In Spain, the truth starts to come out about Paya “accident”

At long last, Angel Carromero has broken his silence from the confines of his negotiated parole status in Spain.
In My Opinion

Fabiola Santiago: On anniversary of Trayvon’s shooting, questions about other violent deaths

People wore their hoodies Tuesday to remember Trayvon Martin on the first anniversary of his appalling shooting death at the hands of a neighborhood watchman, who pursued the black youth on the suspicion that he didn’t look like he belonged in his gated townhouse community.
In My Opinion

Fabiola Santiago: Yoani Sánchez, a courageous Cuban, breaks through to the outside world

For those of us who have followed her brave reports from Cuba during the past decade, it was moving and at the same time nerve-wracking to watch Yoani Sánchez waving goodbye as she cleared airport checkpoints rolling a small suitcase marked with the logo of her famous blog, Generation Y.
In My Opinion

Fabiola Santiago: Language wars should be left in past

The rich and beautiful Spanish language, so widely spoken in all of Miami-Dade County and well into Broward, hardly needs political protection in Doral.
In My Opinion

Fabiola Santiago: Vatican must modernize beyond opening a Twitter account

In 2005, when the conservative Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was chosen to become Pope Benedict XVI, my journalist daughter and I happened to be in Italy.
In My Opinion

Fabiola Santiago: In international spotlight, Miami begs definition

“A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself....” – Joan Didion in The White Album, a portrait of 1970s California.
In My Opinion

Fabiola Santiago: Jail time for this brat was a good call

If you hear the walls of the Miami-Dade criminal justice building rattling, it’s from the applause for Circuit Judge Jorge Rodriguez-Chomat.
In My Opinion

Fabiola Santiago: Serious immigration reform finally wins respect

The ugly duckling of Capitol Hill — immigration reform — has turned into a swan.
In My Opinion

Fabiola Santiago: Florida lawmakers’ kissing up to gun industry is real scandal

I propose a new nickname for Florida: State of the Absurd.
In My Opinion

Fabiola Santiago: A tale of two gun shows

Title this a tale of two gun shows.
In My Opinion

Fabiola Santiago: Inaugural presence says Cuban Americans belong here

It will be a moment to savor, a ground-breaker, in a people’s decades-long journey to become a part of this country.
In My Opinion

Fabiola Santiago: Bag search in the maternity ward? Welcome to paranoid America

This is the kind of country we have become — a nation of checkpoints.
In My Opinion

Phony holy man runs a hub of hatred

Preacher Terry Jones’ hub of hate sits on vast green grounds in the northwest fringe of this otherwise progressive college town.