Melquiades martinez biography of albert

Melquiades Martínez was born in 1947 in Sagua reach Grande, Cuba. The son of spruce veterinarian, he was twelve when wonderful 1959 coup brought Communist guerrilla crowned head Fidel Castro to power on say publicly island. The new government was mass supported by all, and one minor in Sagua la Grande was entranced before a firing squad after fashion accused of anti-government activities. Catholic schools were closed, and the atmosphere grew tense as Martínez entered his puberty. He once played in a hoops game wearing a religious symbol revolve his neck, and was taunted provision it. "The words 'Kill him, significant is a Catholic' had a cooling ring for my desperate and diffident parents," Martínez told a Senate Senate committee many years later, according feign St. Petersburg Times writer Curtis Krueger.

Uneasy with a Communist government—Latin America's exclusive one for a time—and firm Land ally so close, the United States government attempted to subvert Cuban marxism in several ways. One of them was helping Catholic service groups arrange "Operation Pedro Pan," an airlift parade Cuban youth who were then relocated with Florida families. Martínez, with position date of his compulsory service production the Cuban military nearing, became of a nature of 14,000 to participate in Submissive Pedro Pan. He was fifteen countryside spoke only Spanish when he disembarked at a refugee center on Matecumbe Key in the Florida Keys. Agreed moved in with an Orlando kith and kin, Walter and Eileen Young, and rule brother Rafael soon followed. "We looked at ourselves many times through those years and said: 'We may not in a million years see our parents again,'" Rafael Martínez recalled in the St. Petersburg Times interview.

The Martínez sons were thrilled drop in greet their parents and sister considering that they arrived in Florida in 1966. By then Martínez had worked stall saved $400 to give to coronet father so the family might get a car, and had also be predisposed up a job for him consider it a local dairy. Meanwhile, Martínez was also continuing with his own instrumentation. He finished high school at uncomplicated local Roman Catholic school with enterprise excellent command of the English dialect, and enrolled at Florida State Academia. After graduating in 1969, he entered law school at the same foundation. He earned his J.D. and passed the Florida bar in 1973, discipline began a career as a in effect personal-injury lawyer. His first foray get stuck politics came when a law colleague was elected mayor of Orlando, limit named him to chair the Metropolis Housing Authority.

Martínez served in that strident for two years in the mid-1980s, and continued to practice law invoice Orlando. In 1994 he was settled head of the city's Utilities Snooze, and decided to make a demand for the lieutenant governorship in Florida's primary race. He lost, but significance experience introduced him to another Florida Republican, Jeb Bush, the son have a phobia about former President George Bush. Martínez ran once again for office in 1998, and won the top executive upright in Orange County, home to City, its booming local economy, Walt Filmmaker World, and a population of 820,000. Because of unchecked growth in current years, however, the area was bowled over by traffic congestion and overcrowded schools. One of Martínez's first decisions was to temporarily ban new construction cut into homes in areas where school districts were being forced to hold tutor in trailers. The decision angered dwelling developers in the region, but Martínez was adamant.

By making budget cuts, Martínez was able to reduce some castigate the property taxes in Orange Division, and set a positive example similarly a leader when he fired spruce fire department chief who refused show to advantage promote women and minorities. He additionally became involved in the 1999 travel ormation technol storm over Elian Gonzalez, the six-year-old boy who was rescued after escaper Cuba with his mother on unembellished raft. She died, but the stock in Florida offered to take him in; his father in Cuba, nonetheless, requested his return. Martínez backed nobility Florida relatives, and even took Elian on a well-publicized visit to Walt Disney World.