Today, Varela's once-isolated house off 152nd Street and 152nd Avenue is surrounded by sprawling suburbia now known as West Kendall. All around him, farm land has turned to development.
Houses are everywhere.
Strip malls line the streets. Warehouses, industrial plants and fast-food joints mark every crossroad. As fast as they lay down the asphalt, cars fill it. Aventura in the northeast, Doral and West Kendall to the west, curving east to the sleek high-rise condos of Brickell Avenue. A few spots in Miami-Dade remain untouched by the building boom.