New York Mayor Bill de Blasio became the latest presidential candidate to flash a little español this week when, during a political rally Thursday, he pulled out a Spanish phrase he thought might motivate workers striking at Miami International Airport.
But instead of endearing himself to South Florida’s Hispanic diaspora, an apparently unwitting de Blasio uttered a revolutionary rallying cry deeply associated with Fidel Castro’s Communist revolution and a man viewed by hundreds of thousands of Cuban exiles as a sociopath and mass murderer.
In a gaffe that forced him to apologize hours later, de Blasio quoted notorious Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara as he spoke Thursday in Terminal D to contract workers protesting poor pay and unsafe conditions. The big-city mayor apparently thought he was saying something akin to the United Farm Workers’ co-opted Si se puede! and instead dropped Che’s most famous quote — instantly enraging Florida Democrats and illustrating concerns that some of the Democratic Party’s biggest figures remain ignorant to the intricacies of Miami politics.
Read more at our news partner the Miami Herald.