The most significant obstacles to changing US Cuba policy in South Florida today--what we might call the Miami vise--are not the old warriors like Orlando Bosch. It's more the likes of Modesto Maidique, president of Florida International University, who on February 28 published a column in El Nuevo Herald opposing any change in current US policy and pledging that the university would work to bring about the "final goal," meaning regime change in Cuba. In a stinging response in the same publication March 3, Lisandro Pérez, a professor of sociology at the university and the founding director of the Cuban Research Institute, wondered how Maidique could support a policy that causes pain to Cuban families and hampers academic research. The episode highlights both the diversity of thought in the exile community and the asymmetry of power. Today it is possible to air both views in Miami without fear of physical retaliation. But in terms of clout there's no contest. Maidique is received at the White House and is considered one of the most powerful men in Miami; Pérez is a nationally respected scholar whose influence is confined mainly to the academic sphere.

The roster of Cuban-Americans in Congress is a testament to the growing empowerment of the Cuban-American community in general and of the históricos specifically. In 1988 there were no Cuban-Americans in Congress. Today there are six, including two senators. While there is one senator for every 3 million people in this country, there is one Cuban-American senator for every 750,000 Cuban-Americans! Legislative over-representation is just one sign of the disproportionate power of the Cuban-American community, which has focused that power like a laser on one target: maintaining a hard-line US Cuba policy.

Indeed, while the six Cuban-Americans in Congress are not monolithic in party or ideology--two are liberal Democrats; four are conservative Republicans--they are when it comes to supporting an unyielding Cuba policy. Not surprisingly, they are also all históricos by birth, inheritance or adoption. New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, born here of Cuban parents who immigrated before 1959, might be considered the exception. But Menendez rose to power representing a heavily Cuban-American area of New Jersey, home to many históricos, some extreme hard-liners. On his trips to Miami he is greeted as an honorary histórico and receives tens of thousands of dollars in political contributions.

For nearly two decades, since the founding of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) in 1981 at the start of the Reagan Administration, that organization led the cause of maintaining and even strengthening the embargo, a campaign fueled by abundant contributions and tough lobbying. But the death of CANF founder Jorge Mas Canosa ten years ago left hard-liners bereft of their most effective leader and began CANF's decline. A second blow was the Elián González affair in 1999-2000--the effort to prevent a little boy from returning to Cuba to live with his father that took on the feel of a religious craze in parts of the Miami Cuban community and became a public relations disaster for hard-liners. It split CANF into warring camps and exposed the broader public, for the first time, to strains of Cuban-American fanaticism with which Miami residents had long been familiar. The outcome--the raid, the legal process and Elián's return to Cuba--left hard-liners defeated and embittered.

In Washington it appeared as if the hard-liners' viselike grip on Cuba policy had been broken and that the históricos and their friends in Congress would be overwhelmed by the tide of sentiment running against them. Spearheaded by the bipartisan Cuba Working Group in the House, led by Arizona Republican Jeff Flake and Massachusetts Democrat William Delahunt, both houses of Congress voted two years in a row, in 2002 and 2003, to gut the travel ban. But President Bush saved the hard-liners' skin by threatening a veto each time. He was helped by Tom DeLay and other Republicans in Congress, who worked furiously using dubious procedural maneuvers to prevent anti-embargo legislation from reaching the President's desk.

Spared to fight another day, their policies intact, the hard-liners regrouped and mounted a counterattack. Their vehicle this time was the new US-Cuba Democracy PAC, led by Mauricio Claver-Carone, a young Cuban-American graduate of Georgetown Law School. The PAC is fueled by tons of histórico money, most of it from Miami, and has used its dollars extremely effectively on behalf of a relentlessly hard-line agenda. The PAC's web page reports that the group contributed more than $550,000 to more than 200 federal candidates in the 2005-06 election cycle alone, making the PAC the second-largest Florida contributor to Congressional campaigns during that time. Federal Elections Commission figures confirm the PAC's fundraising prowess. The Washington-based Latin American Working Group has documented many cases where members of Congress who had earlier voted to ease travel restrictions changed their vote in 2004 after receiving contributions from the PAC.

The resilience and resourcefulness of Cuban-American hardliners show they should not be dismissed prematurely; but they are not invincible. Political winds in the country and in the Cuban community itself are running against them. DeLay is gone. So is Jeb Bush, who as governor of Florida championed the hard-line cause so faithfully that Senator Mel Martinez called him the "first Cuban-American governor." George W. Bush is a lame duck. The Democrats control Congress. Several new bills have already been introduced to ease aspects of the embargo. Four years in Iraq have shown regime change to be a disastrous policy. The majority of Americans--62 percent according to a recent poll--support re-establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba.

In the Cuban-American community, the cruel nature of recent travel restrictions has spurred the formation of new organizations to fight for change, including the Cuban-American Commission for Family Rights and the Emergency Network of Cuban-American Scholars and Artists. Dissidents in Cuba have also called for an end to the restrictions on family travel and remittances.

This call was echoed--belatedly--by a coalition of Cuban-American organizations, including the formerly hard-line CANF. This new coalition, known as Consenso Cubano, also includes the Cuba Study Group, an organization of Cuban-American business heavyweights formed after the Elián debacle to provide alternative leadership to CANF.

The Cuba Study Group, probably the most powerful player in Consenso, casts itself as moderate because it calls for ending restrictions on Cuban-American travel, even as it supports continuing the embargo and the broader travel ban. Thus, while the emergence of the Cuba Study Group does reflect divisions in the traditional exile camp, its claim to represent a new, more progressive exile approach rings hollow. Instead, its strategy appears to be fourfold: (a) to give the appearance of maximum moderation in order to avoid being dismissed as extreme, thus retaining the ability to influence Cuba policy in Washington regardless of the party in power; (b) to support travel by Cuban-Americans as a way to attract a different base from that of the históricos, including younger people and more recent immigrants, to have a means for destabilizing the Cuban government and to have a presence on the ground in case of a collapse of the regime; (c) to take the wind out of the sails of broader efforts by liberal groups to end the travel ban and the embargo; and (d) to prevent a normalization of US-Cuba economic and diplomatic relations that could lead to an economic resurgence in Cuba on the Chinese or Vietnamese model, leaving the exiles out of the picture in terms of political influence and economic dominance on the island.

It has often been claimed that US Cuba policy reflects the attitudes of the Cuban-American community. The truth is that current US policy corresponds solely to the views of a rich, entrenched, recalcitrant and demographically dwindling minority of that community.

Because Florida is both rich in Electoral College votes and a swing state, this shrinking minority within a minority has exercised a virtual veto against presidential initiatives for improving US relations with Cuba. The 2000 election showed that 571 votes can turn an election, or at least turn it over to the Supreme Court to do with it what it will.

Yet there is a market in the state, including in the Cuban-American community, for a candidate with the guts to stand up to the hard-liners. Those who espouse a militant line toward Cuba are disliked by many in the state because of their myriad and well-publicized instances of intolerance. The hard-line policy is unpopular with virtually every group in Florida, including business interests and the rapidly increasing non-Cuban Latino population, which already outnumbers the Cubans. It is past time for a national leader with the courage to make the stranglehold of the históricos history.

• « Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 75 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.