Big Time

Val's profiled in the Miami Herald today.

Valentin ''Val'' Prieto has few memories of Cuba: the lone plum tree in the backyard of his home in Oriente province, a frail neighbor who regularly slipped him candy through the chain-link fence -- and the day his whole family cried.

Though only 3, Prieto remembers that 1968 day. His whole world changed as he said goodbye to his island home -- a bittersweet choice his family made to flee Fidel Castro's communist regime.

Prieto's story is not unusual in Miami. But the way he tells it is. Several times a day, the 40-year-old Prieto -- a project manager for a South Miami architectural firm -- logs onto his home computer as ''Babalú blogger,'' one of the first Cuban Americans to chronicle the exile experience in the fast-developing genre known as blogging.

Congrats, Val.

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