The city inherited the mantle of Capital of the Americas as a result of politics – most notably, the historical accident that has kept Havana out of competition for the title since 1959 – but mainly because of finance.

Miami’s money industry has ties extending south nearly to the Pole, and the city is the leading importexport hub in the region, a brokerage house for a bewildering variety of products and commodities shipped through the region. Perhaps even more important is the largely successful merging of Anglo-American business and culture with the customs of the Americas to the south, which demonstrates daily that while borders drawn by statesmen and enforced by arms are one thing, human ambitions and the historical momentum they generate are quite another.

For a traveller, Miami’s internationalism translates into a metropolitan sprawl with an astonishing diversity of ethnic neighbourhoods where homeland language and customs are preserved in family life, cafes and restaurants serve indigenous fare, and shops and markets trade in the essentials and whimsies of the communities’ particular traditions and heritage.