Ralph Fernández has come a long way. A decade ago, the lawyer from Tampa, Florida and head of the local delegation of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) was feared for his tactics of disrupting any gathering that dared advocating a semblance of normal relations with Cuba. I vividly remember Fernández’ appearance at a 1997 meeting of a handful mostly Anglo liberals and leftists at the Unitarian Universalist Church in a forlorn corner of suburban Tampa. Halfway into speeches celebrating the sendoff of an embargo-defying donation of aspirin, school supplies and toilet paper to Cuba, Fernández stood up denouncing the evils of Cuba. And he would denounce. And denounce. Outside the church, a dozen or so members of other exile Cuban groups waved signs, yelling insults at anybody entering or leaving the building. Half a dozen nervous-looking Hillsborough County cops stood at the doors inside the building to make sure things don’t get out of hand. Fast-forward five years. When the outgoing mayor of Tampa made a surprise trip to Cuba in 2003, accompanying a local business delegation, Fernández publicly accused Dick Greco of “cavorting with an international terrorist.” Fast-forward another half-decade, and almost everything has changed. On a Saturday night in May 2007, several dozen Cuban American lawyers, doctors, educators and academics huddled at Tampa’s Ybor City Hilton to talk about political strategies on how to best achieve an end to the nearly 50-year old embargo against Cuba. The Hilton is the most prominent hotel in Ybor City, the most Cuban neighborhood of the US city with the second-largest concentration of Cubans. Yet not a single protester or police uniform could be seen anywhere near. To be sure, Fernández was there the next morning, arguing with members of the anti-embargo group when they gathered at José Martí Park to honor the father of Cuba’s independence. But just after this event, he gave a remarkable interview. “Boy, I tell you what,” he told an NBC News reporter. “If I had said this years ago, I would have gone to that tree over there and gotten a rope. But I think we need to re-establish diplomatic relations with Cuba.” All right, advocating diplomatic relations with a neighboring country hardly fits the category “radical.” But given where Cuban American activists like Fernandez have come from, this is nothing less but a small sensation. Fernández is not the only Cuban American beginning to re-think Washington’s Cuba policy. His change of mind reflects a shift in attitudes among Cuban Americans in general. And politicians such as Fernández’ former boss at CANF, Joe García, are beginning to spin their wheels. The Miami politico, a former executive director of the once-leading anti-Castro organization, joined the Democrats during a time of total Republican domination. Two years ago, he began attacking the Bush Administration’s restrictions on travel and remittances as a heavy-handed infringement on human rights. García is not suicidal. In fact, many speculate he is doing all this with an eye towards a bid of ousting embargo stalwart Lincoln Díaz-Balart, Fidel Castro’s nephew and would-be nemesis in Miami, from his long-held Congress seat in 2008 or 2010. And quite a few observers of Miami politics believe García actually has a good shot at beating the Republican. García sure has seen the polls. According to the most recent annual Florida International University survey of attitudes among Cuban Americans, a full 64.4 percent said they would prefer to go back to the old regulations before the 2004 Bush restrictions that limit Cuban Americans to visit family once every three years. In the 2004 rules, remittances were reduced to $300 every quarter, and only to family—defined by the U.S. government as parents, siblings, grandparents and children. That excludes cousins or uncles and aunts—a very un-Cuban definition of “family.” Needless to say, the regulations caused a backlash among Cuban Americans that almost cost George W. Bush Miami during the 2004 presidential elections. An unprecedented number of Cuban Americans, nearly one-third, voted for the Democratic candidate. The Cuban American majority in favor of lifting the travel ban altogether is surprisingly large, if polls are an indication. In the FIU survey of 1,000 randomly selected Cuban Americans, 55.4 percent said they wanted unrestricted travel to Cuba for all US citizens and residents, no questions asked. One national politician who is trying to jump into this breach is presidential contender Barack Obama. The Democrat from Illinois made history in August by becoming the first front-running presidential candidate ever to hold a stump speech in Miami promising to ease the embargo if he wins. The man behind Obama’s gambit was Joe García, who lined up the Miami-Dade Democrats in support of Obama’s Cuba proposals. The preacher-style speech had all the signs of success: Obama’s campaign sold 1,300 fundraising tickets for the event at the Miami-Dade Auditorium in Little Havana, and the applause of the largely Cuban American crowd was rousing. The handful of protesters outside were made to look like cranks. But the argument that the change in Cuban American opinion will automatically translate into radical change of US policy is weak. For one, the Cuban Americans with the most conciliatory views tend to be the more recent immigrants, who are generally less wealthy, less weighty in the community, and less likely to be registered to vote. “While the Cuban-American community as a whole is slowly drifting toward moderation, its hard-line political elite has become entrenched in the most powerful American institutions,” says Miami columnist and academic Max Castro, alluding to Congress, the State Department and, not the least, the campaigns of presidential candidates. What’s more, the March FIU survey also shows that the Cuban American opinion shift is limited. While the number of Cuban Americans supporting the trade embargo continues to decline, the blockade policy still is popular in Miami. Even though 76 percent say the embargo has worked “not very well” or “not well at all,” a full 57.7 percent are in favor of maintaining it. And the change of mind over Washington’s Cuba policies does not necessarily reflect a change of heart over Cuba itself. If US-Cuba policy continues to be determined by public opinion in Miami, a mountain of Cuban American resentment against the Cuban government has to be overcome before achieving a semblance of normal relations. According to the FIU survey, a full 50.8 percent would like to see a “sudden and violent” change of government in Cuba. What’s more, 51.1 percent would like to see “direct U.S. military action;” and an even bigger number—70.7 percent—would favor “military action by exiles.”
Even so, the fact that a growing number of people such as Ralph Fernandez are either jumping off the bandwagon of traditional anti-Castro politics, or even openly dissent with the once-monolithic Cuban American view, opens up Washington’s Cuba policy for other actors. Already, other groups that have a stake in US-Cuba relations are beginning to throw their weight around Congress. A wide alliance of forces, ranging from Midwest farmers, large commodity companies, port officials and travel industry associations, to churches and academics, to libertarians and left-wing Cuba solidarity groups have begun to exert some pressure on representatives and senators. The challenge is to get the public at large and Congress to care enough about Cuba to take action. For that matter, anti-embargo activists have not yet been able to match the dollars the pro-embargo PAC is throwing around among candidates. But if Washington’s Cuba laws continue in their petrified state, the emergence of an anti-embargo pot of money is probably just a matter of time. Also, dismantling the travel ban—a crucial component of the embargo—as a first step could change political dynamics altogether. Some observers believe that once the travel floodgates are opened and 2 million US citizens visit Cuba every year, the rest of the embargo will quickly be history. “Imagine for a moment that Congress completely restores the right to travel,” says John McAuliff, who heads a New York-based group that tries to line up the US travel industry behind the anti-embargo push. “This would be a sea change that fundamentally transforms the dynamic of the Cuba issue in Florida and the country as a whole.” |
