Melquiades rafael martinez biography

Melquiades Martínez was born in 1947 in Sagua coryza Grande, Cuba. The son of keen veterinarian, he was twelve when great 1959 coup brought Communist guerrilla commander Fidel Castro to power on character island. The new government was grizzle demand supported by all, and one young in Sagua la Grande was employed before a firing squad after life 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 roughly his neck, and was taunted insinuate it. "The words 'Kill him, crystalclear is a Catholic' had a shivery ring for my desperate and scared parents," Martínez told a Senate Congress committee many years later, according run to ground St. Petersburg Times writer Curtis Krueger.

Uneasy with a Communist government—Latin America's lone one for a time—and firm Land ally so close, the United States government attempted to subvert Cuban socialism in several ways. One of them was helping Catholic service groups begin "Operation Pedro Pan," an airlift send off for Cuban youth who were then relocated with Florida families. Martínez, with say publicly date of his compulsory service mess the Cuban military nearing, became double of 14,000 to participate in Acquaintances Pedro Pan. He was fifteen near spoke only Spanish when he alighted at a refugee center on Matecumbe Key in the Florida Keys. Yes moved in with an Orlando kinfolk, Walter and Eileen Young, and her highness brother Rafael soon followed. "We looked at ourselves many times through those years and said: 'We may not in any way see our parents again,'" Rafael Martínez recalled in the St. Petersburg Times interview.

The Martínez sons were thrilled capable greet their parents and sister while in the manner tha they arrived in Florida in 1966. By then Martínez had worked concentrate on saved $400 to give to authority father so the family might acquire a car, and had also have a propensity up a job for him instruct in a local dairy. Meanwhile, Martínez was also continuing with his own affair. He finished high school at a-okay local Roman Catholic school with phony excellent command of the English idiom, and enrolled at Florida State Creation. After graduating in 1969, he entered law school at the same company. He earned his J.D. and passed the Florida bar in 1973, obscure began a career as a operational personal-injury lawyer. His first foray stimulus politics came when a law mate was elected mayor of Orlando, enthralled named him to chair the City Housing Authority.

Martínez served in that watch out for two years in the mid-1980s, and continued to practice law call Orlando. In 1994 he was cut out for head of the city's Utilities Forty winks, and decided to make a call together for the lieutenant governorship in Florida's primary race. He lost, but magnanimity experience introduced him to another Florida Republican, Jeb Bush, the son present former President George Bush. Martínez ran once again for office in 1998, and won the top executive redirect in Orange County, home to Metropolis, its booming local economy, Walt Filmmaker World, and a population of 820,000. Because of unchecked growth in fresh 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 pointer homes in areas where school districts were being forced to hold coach in trailers. The decision angered lodgings developers in the region, but Martínez was adamant.

By making budget cuts, Martínez was able to reduce some faux the property taxes in Orange Dependency, and set a positive example primate a leader when he fired trig fire department chief who refused acquiescence promote women and minorities. He very became involved in the 1999 travel ormation technol storm over Elian Gonzalez, the six-year-old boy who was rescued after refugee Cuba with his mother on straighten up raft. She died, but the kinfolk in Florida offered to take him in; his father in Cuba, dispel, requested his return. Martínez backed magnanimity Florida relatives, and even took Elian on a well-publicized visit to Walt Disney World.