“It’s really exciting to see that it has not only survived, but it has thrived,” CocaCola_UNITED CEO Mike Suco said of FiestaBham. The annual celebration of Hispanic culture will be held today in Birmingham's Linn Park.
“It’s really exciting to see that it has not only survived, but it has thrived,” Suco said of the event that used online programming in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “It has really grown and turned into something even bigger than I think any of us could have imagined.”
“Wherever you grew up or whatever your background is, there’s a whole world out there of people that have different beliefs, have different views, have different foods, cultures, religions—all of those things,” he said. “[Fiesta] opens the door for us to be just more accepting of each other and to accept differences as a positive thing.
“I’m one generation away from a family who lost everything,” Suco said. “If you don’t believe the United States is the greatest country that allows the greatest of opportunity, then I don’t know how to convince you any other way.”After Suco’s father and grandfather, Manuel, were jailed for voicing their discontent with the then-government of Cuba, Suco’s parents fled to Miami, Florida, with Joseph, then 13 days old, as well as Teresa’s parents.
Manuel persuaded José and Teresa to move close to Birmingham from Miami. Teresa studied at the University of Montevallo and earned her doctorate at the University of Alabama before she started teaching at Jacksonville State University, where she worked for 43 years.Growing up in Jacksonville, Suco lived with his parents and his two brothers: Manuel, named after his grandfather, and, Joseph, named after his father.
Their relationship eventually rekindled when Suco got a phone call from his mother, then still a professor at JSU, about someone he dated in the past.
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