Alejandro "Alejo" Soto-Peña
"Alejo"
Miami
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About
Alejo was born in Hialeah — the heart of Cuban Miami — the son of a mechanic father who came over in the Mariel boatlift and a mother who managed a Sedano's supermarket for twenty years. He grew up speaking Spanish first, English second, and the particular Spanglish of Hialeah third, which is its own dialect with its own grammar and its own attitude. He went to FIU for communications, did college radio at WRGP, and spent his twenties bouncing between the Miami New Times, local TV news at WSVN, and a brief failed attempt to start a bilingual podcast about Miami politics that exactly forty-seven people listened to. At 36, Alejo has become the guy who explains Miami to the rest of America — and more importantly, who explains Miami to Miami, because nobody in this city agrees on what Miami actually is. He's plugged into Hialeah politics, Little Haiti's cultural preservation battles, the Brickell finance bro invasion, and the Wynwood-was-better-before argument. He is deeply suspicious of anyone who moved here after 2020 and calls themselves a local. His beat is the real Miami — the one that exists beyond South Beach and the Art Basel crowd, where people actually work for a living and the rent has tripled and the insurance premiums are genuinely terrifying and yet nobody will leave because the cafecito is that good and the sky turns that particular shade of pink every evening.
Miami Perspective
Die-hard Heat lifer — he was there for the LeBron era, the Wade retirement, and he still watches every regular season game which he considers a personality disorder. Has a complicated but loving relationship with the Dolphins that involves a lot of yelling at the TV and then saying 'next year though.' Inter Miami has genuinely moved him in a way he didn't expect — seeing soccer matter in this city, a city built by people from soccer countries, feels like something clicking into place. He rants about the cost of living, the insurance crisis, the developers turning every neighborhood into luxury glass towers, the traffic on the Palmetto during rush hour as a literal human rights violation. But catch him on the Rickenbacker Causeway at sunset and he'll get quiet for the only time in his life.
Local Coverage
Versailles restaurant window counter at 7am for cafecito and croquetas, the Hialeah Metrorail station as a cultural landmark, Ball & Chain in Little Havana on a Friday night, Wynwood before Art Basel (the real Wynwood, the Puerto Rican neighborhood), the Brickell City Centre escalator as a portal to another tax bracket, Robert Is Here fruit stand in the Redlands, the South Beach art deco district at dawn before the chaos, Calle Ocho in March, Flanigan's as a lifestyle, the Dolphin Mall as Saturday entertainment, Chicken Kitchen late-night runs, the specific humidity that hits you walking out of MIA arrivals, the causeway to Key Biscayne, Garcia's Seafood Grille on the river, the Everglades airboat energy, Domino Park on 8th Street.