The ‘Cuban-American’ candidate with Oviedo roots seeks the White House

One calendar year ago, July 2022, Francis Suarez was celebrating his 15 years of marriage to Gloria Font.. A reel on Instagram compiled the couple’s best moments accompanied by the song Bendita tu luz by Maná. A year later, the politician of Cuban parents. born in Miami, is one of the candidates for the Republican primaries. and will be measuring forces with his most favored rivals: former President Donald Trump and the current governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis.

Her marriage and a good part of her life is told in social networks. It can be said that is a family man who almost always poses with his two children and his wife, a 43-year-old businesswoman who studied hotel management at Florida International University.

He often presents her as his “secret weapon” and places her at the center of his life. So much so that he dropped out of the Miami mayoral race in 2013 when she was pregnant with their first child. One part of the press says he did not want to stress her out with the campaign and that he had been having fertility problemsbut another part indicates that he had problems with some donation and withdrew from the electoral race.

But Suarez, 45 years old and a lawyer, became mayor of Miami in November 2017 with 86% of the vote after a meteoric career that began in 2009, when he was a Miami city commissioner.

He is credited with. a “Kennedy style” because of his good looks, prospects for a bright political future, and connections to a political family committed to public service. His father, Xavier Suarez, also served as mayor of Miami. in the 1980s and 1990s, although his last victory in 1997 was annulled after an investigation for electoral fraud. Nevertheless, he was one of the most beloved aldermen Miami has ever had, a friend of former Presidents George Bush and Ronald Reagan.

The first Latino candidate

Suarez has become the first candidate of Latin American origin seeking the presidency of the United States. The U.S. press labels him as the “Cuban-American” candidatealthough he was born in Miami and the closest he has been to Cuba is the Versailles café, an icon of Cuban exile in Miami.

One of Suarez’s anecdotes is recounted in a publication of this business. “I remember one in particular was. when Fidel Castro died and I came here to receive Willy ChirinoI keep a photo of that moment, it’s my favorite memory; also, after the July 11 protests in Cuba, it was a very special moment when we gathered here in Versailles to support what was happening”.

But, in addition to his Cuban roots, these days there is also talk of. the Oviedo origins of the politician who has visited Spain on at least two known occasions. One of the first visits he made as a child, when he was 9 years old, in 1987, when he accompanied his parents on a trip to Asturias to visit his maternal aunt and uncle, as reported in the newspaper La Nueva España.

Another visit was narrated by El Heraldo de Aragón occurred in 2019, when he already had the credentials of mayor of Miami and was in Zaragoza to sign a cultural cooperation agreement.. The chronicles of the time explain that Suárez felt an attachment to the Aragonese capital because his wife was born in Zaragoza and was baptized in El Pilar.

In addition to his wife, the American press highlights the role of the candidate’s mother, Rita Suarez.a Cuban immigrant who arrived in Miami in 1961 at the age of seven. “Cubans who arrived in the 1960s could only bring three pairs of underpants, two pairs of socks, a shirt and a pair of pants. They had to use their brains to succeed.”

The woman is proud to see her son in the role of husband, father and now the first Latino candidate seeking the White House.