Drive west on Royal Palm Boulevard past the lakes and the gated entrances, and you reach a place that did not exist a generation ago. Weston was swampland and sugar plans before it was a city. Today the Colombians in Weston, Florida have helped turn this planned Broward County suburb into one of the most prosperous Latin American enclaves in the country, a town where the bakery smells of pan de bono and the conversations in the school pick-up line drift easily between English and Spanish.
The Place
Weston sits at the western edge of Broward County, pressed up against the Everglades, about thirty miles north of Miami. It was carved from roughly 15,000 acres that the aluminium industrialist Arthur Vining Davis assembled in the 1950s, land that later passed to the Arvida Corporation and JMB Realty.
The developers first called it Indian Trace, then renamed it Weston in 1984. The first homes were completed that decade in the Country Isles and Windmill Ranch sections, and the population grew so fast that residents voted to incorporate. Weston became a city on 3 September 1996, with roughly ninety per cent voter approval.
The growth was extraordinary even by South Florida standards. Weston counted fewer than 10,000 residents in 1990, then leapt to nearly 49,000 by 2000 and past 65,000 by 2010. A swamp on the edge of the Everglades had become a full-sized city in a single generation, almost entirely from scratch.
It is, by design, an affluent place. The 2020 census counted 68,107 residents, and the median household income was estimated at about $122,774 in 2021, well above the national figure.
How It Became Colombian
Weston was built as a blank slate, and that blankness mattered. There was no older population to displace, no established ethnic territory to negotiate. The families who arrived in the 1990s and 2000s were, in a real sense, founding residents of the city alongside everyone else.
The exodus of the 1990s
The arrival of Colombians in South Florida accelerated sharply in the mid-1990s. The violence at home was staggering. By one widely cited count, more than 46,000 Colombians were killed in narco-related violence between 1983 and 1994, the years that spanned the rise and fall of the Medellin and Cali cartels.
Those who could leave often did. The 2000 census identified around 100,000 Colombians in South Florida, and researchers at Florida International University noted that a large share of arrivals were professionals: doctors, engineers, lawyers and business owners who could secure visas and afford to start again.
It was, in many cases, a reluctant departure. These were not families fleeing poverty but families fleeing fear, leaving behind careers, extended relatives and a country they loved. The same scholarship described a kind of national worry that so many educated citizens were going at once, and a hope that they might one day return.
For most, the return never came. The children put down roots in American schools, the businesses re-established themselves abroad, and a temporary exile slowly hardened into a permanent home. Weston was one of the places where that settling happened.
Why Weston, and not Miami
Earlier waves of Colombians had settled closer to the city, in places like the Colombian heart of Jackson Heights in Queens and, in Florida, in the Colombian enclave of Doral. By the late 1990s a professional class was looking for something different: good public schools, safe streets, large houses and a short commute to business parks rather than to the urban core.
Weston delivered exactly that. Its schools were new and highly rated. Its homeowner associations kept the lawns trimmed and the streets quiet. For a family that had left a country precisely because it no longer felt safe, the orderliness was not a cliche. It was the whole point.
The same logic drew Venezuelans in even larger numbers, so many that the city earned the half-joking nickname “Westonzuela”. But the Colombian presence was substantial and earlier. By the 2000 census Weston held the fourteenth highest concentration of Colombian residents of any place in the United States, at roughly 6.19 per cent of the population.
A community that compounded
Migration tends to compound. Once a handful of families settle and report back that the schools are excellent and the neighbours friendly, relatives and former colleagues follow. A Bogota surgeon tells a Bogota classmate. A Cali businessman recommends his accountant.
The Hispanic share of Weston climbed accordingly, from 30.2 per cent in 2000 to 44.9 per cent in 2010 and 54.1 per cent by 2020. Spanish became a second civic language, spoken at home by roughly a third of households. The Colombian families were a steady thread running through that growth, opening the bakeries and restaurants that gave the new suburb a flavour of home.
From newcomers to neighbours
What began as a refuge became, over two decades, simply home. The children who arrived as toddlers graduated from Cypress Bay High School and went on to American universities. Their parents joined the chamber of commerce, coached youth soccer at the regional park and queued for arepas on Sunday mornings like everyone else. The story stopped being one of flight and became one of belonging.
The Landmarks
La Pequeña Colombia Bakery & Restaurant, 1300 SW 160th Ave. For more than twenty years this family-run spot has been a Sunday institution, its cases full of pandebono, almojabanas and buñuelos. It is the kind of place where the staff know which customers want their café con leche before they ask.
Pan Pa Ya, 2362 Weston Rd. A branch of the beloved Colombian bakery chain, open here since 2002, in the Town Center area. It anchors the weekend ritual of fresh bread and pastries that so many Colombian households brought with them, and stays open late into the evening.
El Colombiano, 2221 N Commerce Pkwy. Tucked into a commerce park, this restaurant trades in the generous plates of the homeland: bandeja paisa heavy with beans, rice, plantain and chicharrón, and a properly slow-cooked ajiaco. Office workers and families fill it at lunch.
Las Rikuras de Weston, 66 Indian Trace. Named for the Spanish word for delicious treats, this casual restaurant keeps the empanadas, arepas and bandeja paisa coming. It sits in one of the older retail strips, a reminder that the Colombian footprint here predates the polished Town Center.
Weston Town Center, 1675 Market St. The city’s 32-acre civic heart, a $42 million development begun in 1999, with its market street of restaurants, salons and boutiques. On weekend evenings it becomes the de facto plaza, where Colombian, Venezuelan and Anglo families share the same outdoor tables.
Cypress Bay High School. One of the largest public high schools in Florida, with enrolment that has topped 4,500, and a name that recurs in college applications across the Colombian community. For parents who left a country over its schools, the academic ranking here was never an abstraction.
Weston Regional Park, 20200 Saddle Club Rd. A 102-acre complex of baseball diamonds, soccer pitches and basketball courts that opened in 2000, home to the Weston Community Center and a YMCA. On Saturday mornings the soccer fields fill with families, and the touchline Spanish is unmistakable.
Where They Came From
The Colombians who settled in Weston came largely from the cities, not the countryside. They were people of Bogota, Medellin and Cali: the professional and business families most able to read the danger early and most able to afford an exit.
That urban, educated origin shaped the community they built. They arrived expecting good infrastructure and demanding good schools, and they had the means to choose a master-planned suburb over a cheaper, denser neighbourhood closer to Miami.
It also explains the particular texture of Colombian Weston. This is a community of paisa restaurants and weekend bakeries, yes, but also of medical practices, law offices, import businesses and real-estate firms run in two languages. The migration carried its middle class intact.
The pattern echoes other professional Latin American enclaves nearby, from the Cuban families who shaped Doral to the affluent Jewish communities that settled in Parkland and Hollywood, each drawn west and north into Broward by the same promise of new houses, good schools and quiet streets.
Weston Today
Weston today is a mature suburb rather than a frontier. The lakes the developers dug have weathered into the landscape, the palms along the boulevards have grown tall, and the children of the 1990s arrivals are raising children of their own.
The Colombian presence is now woven so completely into the place that it no longer announces itself. It is simply there, in the bakery queue, the soccer league, the dual-language banter at the Town Center. The community that came fleeing instability has spent thirty years building the opposite of it.
That does not mean nothing is fraught. South Florida’s large Colombian and broader Latin American population has watched recent shifts in federal immigration enforcement with real anxiety, a reminder that even an established, prosperous community can feel the ground move. But the roots in Weston run deep now, planted in a place that, like its residents, had to be built from nothing.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Colombians live in Weston, Florida?
Exact current figures are not published, but at the 2000 census Weston had the fourteenth highest concentration of Colombian residents of any US place, at about 6.19 per cent. The Colombians in Weston, Florida remain a significant part of a city where over half the population is now Hispanic.
Why did Colombians settle in Weston rather than Miami?
Many of the Colombian families who arrived in the 1990s and 2000s were professionals seeking highly rated public schools, safety and large homes. Weston, a newly built master-planned suburb, offered all three, which is why the Colombians in Weston, Florida tended to be middle-class and urban in origin.
Is Weston a Venezuelan or a Colombian community?
Both. Weston’s nickname “Westonzuela” reflects its very large Venezuelan population, but the Colombian community is substantial and arrived earlier, and the two groups share much of the same civic and commercial life.
Where can I find Colombian food in Weston?
Long-standing options include La Pequeña Colombia Bakery & Restaurant on SW 160th Avenue, Pan Pa Ya on Weston Road, El Colombiano on North Commerce Parkway and Las Rikuras de Weston on Indian Trace. Expect bandeja paisa, ajiaco, arepas and fresh Colombian breads.
When did Weston become a city?
Weston was developed by Arvida as a community called Indian Trace, renamed Weston in 1984, and incorporated as a city on 3 September 1996 with roughly ninety per cent voter approval.
What drove Colombian migration to South Florida?
The acceleration of the 1990s was driven largely by the cartel-era violence at home, in which more than 46,000 Colombians were killed in narco-related violence between 1983 and 1994. Many professional families left to seek safety and stability for their children.
If your family’s story passed through Weston, or any of the places Colombians have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From the cities of Bogota, Medellin and Cali to the lakeside boulevards of Weston, to wherever you are now.