Leslie Pantin, Sr.
Pantin was a prominent Cuban exile and community leader in Miami.


Leslie Pantin, Sr., and Víctor Pantin were introduced to the insurance business by their father who ran Cuba’s second largest insurance company. A year after Castro came to power the Pantins left Cuba expecting to return within six weeks. The law banned non-U.S. citizens from brokering insurance, so the Pantin brothers worked for another agency for $100 a month, soliciting their exile friends as customers. But many insurance companies refused to insure Cuban exiles. “They said Cubans were a bad risk, they didn’t speak good English, they couldn’t read traffic signs, they were bad drivers,” Leslie Pantin, Sr., told the Miami Herald. “It was the bias that’s normal when there’s a new immigration to a country.” By 1966, Pantin became a U.S. citizen and Pantin Insurance prospered, becoming (under the name AmerInsurance) one of the largest Hispanic-owned property and casualty insurance agencies in Florida. Pantin, Sr., became a bridge builder between the Cuban community and Miami’s business establishment, and was the first Cuban on the Orange Bowl Committee and the first Cuban in the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce.

“His legacy is such that the footprints will be difficult to see. His joy was in seeing a job well done, not who got the credit.” –Community relations consultant Robert Simms

His Miami Herald obituary on May 9, 1989, describe him as “a man for all seasons” and as being responsible for approaching the Miami Establishment with the notion that Cubans need not be feared as they integrated in the local community life.