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.
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