Cuba is all about Miami, by gimleteye

Ana Menendez gets it right in The Miami Herald, "CANF leader at odds with former self". But I want to elaborate on the point that begins her editorial, from which she moves away too quickly: "... the latest report finds that more than 80 percent of the money earmarked for Cuban democracy stays here."

People who live far from Miami often ask, what drives Miami Cubans who have stubbornly refused to engage the Cuban dictatorship over long decades, turning foreign policy failure into a point of abject disappointment. There are two parts to the answer, that an honest reckoning by CANF leadership would agree with-- if such candid admissions ever reached newsprint.

First of all, there is the real anger, hatred, and desire for revenge by ordinary people harmed by a murderous regime. But let's leave this aside. US policy to Cuba, the effort to economically starve a nation whose people are proud irrespective of the conduct of its leaders, cannot have been meant to change Cuba. From China to Libya to the Soviet Union, US foreign policy often veers to the pragmatic.

What then accounts for the immoveable policy against Cuba? The CANF report more or less says it, in noting that 80 percent of the funds stay here: it has always been about Miami, first capturing then maintaining power here.

Anti-Castro fervor serves political orthodoxy for candidates who would do the bidding in office of the power elite: the Javier Souto's and Natacha Seijas and Raul Martinez and Diaz Balarts among others.

The center of power sought by the money behind the vitriol of Spanish language radio was never in Havana: it was in road contracts, airport contracts, and water pipes and pumps in Miami. The counterpoint to the screeching against Castro was the incessant drum of zoning applications to build sprawl in Miami Dade farmland.

Perhaps Menendez is right, that the least bad thing one can say, is that the CANF is pointing the way out of the immoveable US policy to Cuba that has changed nothing for decades.

But the cold, hard truth is the Miami landscape has been picked clean by development interests and the entire region is in the midst of the worst housing crash since the Great Depression-- formed from an enormous glut of housing inventory and an asset bubble Florida developers helped to inflate with policies and politics that dominate Tallahassee and Washington.

In the meantime, companies from Canada, Spain, Italy, France and Germany-- to name a few-- are securing advantage in Havana. In the past decade they have slowly moved to exploit the pent-up demand for economic development that is likely to burst in a flood of profits for saavy investors in the not-too-distant future.

These are the realities that are moving the Cuban American power elite today.

The Hialeah beachhead for Cuban American politics, funded mostly by developers who live in gated communities in South Miami and Coral Gables, doesn't matter quite so much, now that moving the UDB and other zoning changes in Miami-Dade are mostly points of pride for large corporations whose US profits matter less and less compared to what they can earn in emerging economies like Cuba's.

You won't read this point of view in The Miami Herald, but is no less apparent than the smoke filtering in from fires in the Everglades this morning.




Posted on Sun, May. 18, 2008
CANF leader at odds with former self

By ANA MENENDEZ
If all of these aid-to-Cuba groups were a charity, no sane person would give them a dime. Even the biggest donor -- the United States -- has questioned the spending.
Now the latest report finds that more than 80 percent of the money earmarked for Cuban democracy stays here. But the most surprising thing about the study is its sponsors: The Cuban American National Foundation.

Someone who left Miami in the 1990s and returned today would be flabbergasted. But CANF has been slowly adapting since the death of its founder, Jorge Mas Canosa in 1997. Friday, the group of former Republican party loyalists hosts a lunch for Barack Obama.

Many factors have contributed to the once-hardline organization's evolution. But no single person more embodies its philosophical shift than its president, Francisco ''Pepe'' Hernandez.

''Before, we thought we could go to Cuba and invade and establish democracy by force and the U.S. would help us,'' Hernandez told me. ``Those times are over. A man like me who has struggled and dreamt has to reach the conclusion that the future does not belong to my generation. Change in Cuba has to come from inside.''

BRAVE ADMISSION

It's a brave and stunning admission for a man who sat with U.S. presidents, cultivated confrontation, and lobbied for the unsparing laws that helped shape this country's failed Cuba policies.

The political divide among Cuban Americans in Miami is often seen as a generational one. But at 71, Hernandez proves that members of what is often called the ''historic exile'' are often at odds with their contemporaries, many of whom spent the better part of last week bashing CANF.

In Hernandez's case, his new willingness to engage Cuba puts him at odds with an even more intimate figure: his former self.

''I'm speaking as someone who had a lot to do with the policies, or at least someone whom people want to blame for them,'' he said, a smile in his voice. ``But Cuba has bought some $900 million from the U.S., including the paper used to print Granma. That's something people don't understand. Embargo? What embargo?''

Almost 50 years into his fight, Hernandez -- the Bay of Pigs veteran who was implicated in a plot to kill Castro, a CANF heavy who publicly berated journalists -- has become the voice of calm reason.

CONCESSION TO REALITY

His goals have not changed (''Nothing about how I view Cuba's rulers has changed'') but his methods have -- a concession, he says, to reality.

His shift also reflects a more general souring on empty American promises. For decades, administration after administration courted the Cuban-American vote on the cheap: flattering with hope while changing nothing.

Today, Hernandez refers to the 2004 restrictions on exile travel to Cuba as the ``Bush absurdity.''

''Who's ever heard of an exile group begging the U.S. government to stop them from visiting their homeland?'' he asks. 'What other group says to the U.S., `Please don't let me help my family.' It's absurd.''

Hernandez played one of the most important roles in creating the conditions for the absurdity that became exile politics. Now, near the end of his struggle, he's pointing the way out of the politics of self-destruction.

''The worst thing for me,'' he said about the travel ban, ``is that there are people in my generation who asked for this.''

It's too late to recover the millions squandered over the years. But we may yet recover our sanity. Few could have predicted that CANF would lead the way.

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