Miami’s Calle Ocho Festival has been canceled because of coronavirus fears
This year’s Calle Ocho Music Festival, part of Carnaval Miami and sponsored by the Kiwanis Club of Little Havana, will be canceled because of the potential spread of the novel coronavirus, Miami elected officials and administrators announced Friday.
The decision, confirmed by the Miami Herald early Friday, was finalized before a 9 a.m. news conference where city leaders announced that Ultra Music Festival would be canceled. Fifteen minutes before the conference, Miami Commissioner Manolo Reyes tweeted the Calle Ocho Festival cancellation announcement.
“The safety and health of our residents is always our first priority. For this reason, the city of Miami and the organizers of Calle Ocho Festival have agreed to cancel this year’s event,” Reyes wrote.
Calle Ocho Festival, which was scheduled for March 15, attracts hundreds of thousands of people each year to the heart of Little Havana. Officials close a stretch of Southwest Eighth Street for music performances, food vendors and other activities. Venezuelan pop duo Mau Y Ricky were supposed to be the kings of Carnaval Miami, and other artists such as Tito Puente Jr., Manu Manzo and Bianca were set to perform. Calle Ocho Music Festival also hosts El Croquetazo, a contest to see how many croquetas a person can consume in eight minutes.
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and other commissioners told reporters the city would deny organizers of the Calle Ocho Festival the special events permit necessary to stage the event.
“This has been a very difficult decision that we have made,” said Commissioner Joe Carollo, whose district includes Little Havana. “But it’s been the responsible decision to make.”
Attorney Jorge Fernandez of the Kiwanis Club of Miami told reporters that the event will likely not be rescheduled for later this year because of major logistical challenges. The festival raises money for social programs that the Kiwanis Club sponsors, so the cancellation will leave a gap in funding, according to Fernandez.
“Obviously we are disappointed in the city of Miami’s decision not to allow the Calle Ocho Music Festival to go forward this year,” Fernandez said. “The effect this will have on the Kiwanis Club of Little Havana will be detrimental to the organization’s ability to provide services and programs to underserved kids in the city during the upcoming year.”
Carollo, Suarez and Commissioner Ken Russell signaled that the city will explore options to support the Kiwanis Club in light of the cancellation.
“We will be working with them throughout the year and not only reach out to their sponsors, but also directly with the organization to allow them to continue to fulfill their mission to this community,” Suarez said.
The decision sparked criticism from Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, a former Miami city manager and fire chief, who discussed the cancellations in a radio interview Friday with WIOD’s Brian Mudd.
Gimenez, who met with City Manager Art Noriega and Ultra security chief Ray Martinez yesterday, said the Calle Ocho decision was all but required after scrapping Ultra.
“You couldn’t cancel one without the other,” he said. “They came to a different conclusion than we did in Miami-Dade.”
In a Twitter post later, Gimenez urged the public to “prevent unnecessary panic in your community” by learning the facts about COVID-19 risks and precautions.
“You can take this to an extreme,” Gimenez told Mudd. “Are we going to close all places where more than two people congregate?”
Still, other events in Miami and across the country were either canceled or postponed as the number of cases increased. On Friday, the county-funded History Miami museum declared it was scrapping next weekend’s Map Fair.
“Our Map Fair is an international event, drawing dealers, collectors and others from a number of countries and from North America,” the nonprofit said in a statement Friday. “Their health and the health of those in our community with whom they would be in contact is our first priority.”
Michael Weiser, History Miami’s board chairman, said the “tactile” nature of the map festival — where attendees pay to leaf through antique charts and atlases — makes it particularly problematic for coronavirus.
“You can’t clean off an antique map with a Clorox wipe,” he said. “It doesn’t work.”
Another change to this year’s calendar of major events: South Florida’s marquee annual tech conference, eMerge Americas, has been postponed until November 4.
The city of Austin announced that major entertainment event South by Southwest would be canceled, perhaps the largest event to be scrapped over fears of the spread of coronavirus. The release of the latest James Bond movie has been postponed by months, according to the Washington Post.
This story was originally published March 6, 2020 at 8:48 AM.
