Miami Herald February 12, 2003 Cuban exiles shifting hard-line position Polls: Dialogue, dissidents backed

BY ANDREA ELLIOTT AND ELAINE DE VALLE In a marked shift away from hard-line positions, a majority of Cuban Americans in South Florida say they support dialogue with Cuban government officials and believe that dissidents on the island are more important than exiles to Cuba's political future, according to two polls released Tuesday on a range of Cuba-related topics. More than half of South Florida's Cubans support recent efforts at dialogue between exiles and Cuban government officials, according to a poll commissioned by The Herald. And nearly 70 percent of Cuban Americans believe dissidents in Cuba play a more important role in a democratic transition than exile leaders, according to another, unrelated survey conducted for the Cuba Study Group, an organization of prominent Cuban Americans. Each survey separately polled 400 Cubans in Broward and Miami-Dade counties. ''Cuban Americans in South Florida have reached the point of exhaustion at railing against the dictator and now maybe they're willing to do something differently,'' said pollster Rob Schroth, whose company, Schroth & Associates, conducted The Herald's survey. ``These numbers indicate that a significant number of Cuban Americans have clearly decided that ousting the dictator is not as realistic as dialogue with a democratic purpose.'' Both polls seem to confirm a major shift towards moderation by Cuban exiles, framed by several significant events in recent months: First, the January visit of Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas to Miami to garner support for a growing dissident movement on the island. Second, a statement in January by Jorge Mas Santos, head of the Cuban American National Foundation, that his organization would be willing to meet with high- ranking members of the Cuban government to discuss a democratic transition -- barring Fidel and Raul Castro. And third, a meeting in Miami last week between exiles and Cuba's top diplomat in the United States to plan for a conference in Cuba to discuss the Castro government's relations with the exile community. The Herald poll shows that 56 percent of Cuban Americans support such a meeting, scheduled to be held in Havana in April. VARELA PROJECT Both polls also showed that a majority of Cuban Americans -- between nearly 60 percent and 66 percent -- support the Varela Project, an initiative by opposition leaders on the island to bring about democratic changes through a referendum based on the Communist Party Constitution. The Cuba Study Group, whose poll was conducted by Bendixen and Associates, is a supporter of Payá, the leader of the Varela Project. Pollster Sergio Bendixen said Payá's image has greatly improved among exiles in the past 10 months. In a poll he conducted in April 2002, 30 percent of Cuban Americans had a positive impression of Payá, compared to 67 percent of those polled in January. Although a series of past polls show support for engagement with Cuba's government increasing over time, the surveys released this week show some clear about-face moves. In 1993, for example, only 36 percent of South Florida Cubans favored a dialogue with the Cuban regime, while 73 percent favored military action by exiles. In 1994, a WLTV-Univisión 23 poll also conducted by Schroth & Associates put the number who supported dialogue efforts even lower -- at 18 percent -- while showing that 73 percent of Cubans felt the best way to topple Castro was to isolate Cuba. ''I think the change has been taking place since the mid-'90s, and then I think there was a seismic change in the aftermath of the experience of the Elián González affair,'' said Miami banking executive Carlos Saladrigas, who chairs the Cuba Study Group. Saladrigas called the Elián episode a ''turning point'' in the community. ''It was when the Miami community realized, as a diplomat friend of mine said, that we were playing checkers while Castro was playing chess,'' Saladrigas said. The bottom-line message of these polls, he said: ``We don't mind that there is a soft landing, but we need to insist that there is a landing.'' Fifty-four percent of Cubans polled by Schroth said they support the Mas Santos initiative to meet with Cuban government officials. CANF Executive Director Joe Garcia was not surprised at the support for dialogue and said that if the word did not carry such historical baggage among exiles, the numbers would be higher. ''Of course, rational people want to talk about their problems in order to resolve them. The problem is that, unfortunately, dialogue here doesn't mean the same thing as anywhere else in the world,'' Garcia said. ``Dialogue here means to surrender to the ideas of the communist revolution, which I don't think anybody here or on the island would agree to.'' Longtime Castro foe and anti-dialogue activist Ninoska Pérez Castellón said that the polls hold little weight because she believes they are ''You know what my poll is? The fact that Mario Díaz-Balart was elected against someone who advocated the lifting of the embargo and dialogue with Cuba,'' Pérez said, referring to Díaz- Balart's victory for a Miami congressional seat in November against a veteran politician who campaigned on the embargo issue. ''If it were really the way the community feels, then neither Ileana Ros-Lehtinen or Lincoln Díaz-Balart nor Mario Díaz-Balart would be in office,'' Pérez said. ``That is my true poll. Not these paid polls, because there is always an interest behind them.'' She also said that most of the people she meets on the street or through her radio program on WQBA-AM (1140) do not believe dialogue is a mechanism for change. ''The majority of people I encounter in my daily life do not support that thesis. That's not the feedback that I'm getting and I don't believe those figures,'' Pérez said. In the 1970s and '80s, the word ''dialogue,'' when referring to conversations between exiles and the Castro government, often became synonymous with treason. The first such dialogue in 1979 in Havana elicited several incidents of violence against participants in Miami, whose homes and businesses were firebombed. Even before the 1979 dialogue, people who advocated any softening of the hard line against Cuba were taking a risk. One of them, Luciano Nieves, was shot to death in 1975 in the parking lot of what is today Miami Children's Hospital. His killer, Valentín Hernández, is serving a life sentence. Even in the 1990s, exile reaction to dialogue-minded Cubans has been volatile. When Miami lawyer Magda Montiel Davis shook Castro's hand, planted a kiss on his cheek and called him a ''great teacher'' during a pro-dialogue conference in Havana in 1994, she became a pariah among many exiles. Death and bomb threats were called to her home and office. Her entire staff quit in protest. Her car was attacked by protesters. Her children were harangued in school, her parents harassed by friends. Protesters marched on her Key Biscayne neighborhood. AT A DISTANCE CANF has been careful to keep a distance from the Havana conference in April, which will focus on immigration matters. Similar conferences were held in 1994 and 1995, but until this year, never had a Cuban official solicited views from exiles for the conference. ''Every time Fidel Castro talks about sitting down, he wants to talk about migration, he wants to talk about giving people more food, he wants to talk about ways to continue the ongoing system,'' Garcia said. ``But he doesn't want to talk about giving new form to a system that is morally and financially bankrupt.'' Though some of the Miami participants raised political issues at past conferences, they have not led to any real openings, Garcia said. ``Those are conversations that produce absolutely nothing.'' But Garcia does espouse the idea that change must come from within the island. ''We agree with that. It puts us in the role that we should be: supporting that change,'' Garcia said. 'The easiest thing in the world is to lead from Miami and not risk your life. Meanwhile, the dissidents take tremendous chances. They are risking their lives, their families' well-being, their security to bring about change.'' Saladrigas said the idea that dissidents are more important to a democratic transition in Cuba does not exclude exiles from participating. ''What is changing is our perceptions of how change needs to come about and what are the means available to bring about that change,'' Saladrigas said. ``Anything we can do here to lessen the fear of change in Cuba is positive and will contribute to accelerating the positive change, which at the end of the day is inevitable.''

Miami Herald February 13, 2003

Cuban community split on policy

Recent arrivals are more receptive to U.S. ties with island, two polls show Alexander Rodríguez loves his parents more than he hates Fidel Castro. Since he left Cuba for Miami five years ago, he has gone back once to see them. ''If I could, I would go every weekend,'' said Rodríguez, 28, who -- like many recent Cuban exiles with a strong connection to the island -- supports efforts to normalize relations between the United States and Cuba. ``Anybody who thinks differently, it's because he doesn't have family there.'' Rodríguez echoes the growing voice of Miami's recent Cuban exiles, whose more moderate views on Cuban issues -- from the U.S. trade embargo to dialogue with the Castro regime -- contrast sharply to those of earlier exiles, according to two polls released this week, one by The Herald, the other by a Cuban-American organization. The gap stems from differing emotional and practical bonds with the island, say activists, pollsters and other experts. Those who arrived in the first waves of the 1960s and '70s tend to have weaker ties with those living in Cuba today, and are more guided by their experience as political exiles who opposed the revolution. By contrast, Cuba's failed economy largely drove the more recent waves -- especially in the 1990s -- and while these exiles also oppose Fidel Castro, they are much more open to normalizing relations because their contact with the island is greater. ''What you're seeing is people who are intimately involved in the Cuba tragedy as opposed to people who are philosophically involved,'' said Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation. 'There are people in Miami who work two jobs: one to keep their lives in Miami and one to keep their families' lives in Cuba. Those people want to solve the problem because it's destroying them.'' The emotional divide between older and newer waves of exiles is not new to many Cubans in Miami, but the polls confirm it. The most dramatic differences in attitudes surfaced over travel and money-wiring restrictions, the embargo, the dissident movement in Cuba, and whether to engage in political dialogue with Cuban government officials, the poll conducted for The Herald showed. The Herald poll and a separate survey commissioned by the Cuba Study Group each surveyed 400 Cuban Americans in Broward and Miami-Dade counties. The Cuba Study Group, composed of prominent Cuban Americans, supports the Varela Project, an initiative begun by disssident leader Oswaldo Payá to bring about democratic reforms through a referendum based on the Communist Party's own constitution. A TIME DIFFERENCE Both polls asked respondents when they arrived in the United States. One striking difference: Though only 34 percent of the 1960s wave supports easing restrictions on travel to Cuba, the figure almost doubles to 64 percent among those who arrived in the 1990s, according to The Herald poll. Another notable disparity: While only 29 percent of the 1960s wave supports lifting restrictions on the amount of money they can send to Cubans on the island, 61 percent of the 1990s wave would support such an initiative. And though a slim majority of the earlier arrivals agree that the Varela Project is important to a democratic transition in Cuba, the figure rises to 87 percent among those who arrived after 1990. ''You will see a much more moderate, pro-negotiation point of view from people that came in the 1980s and 1990s, in contrast to people who came in the 1960s and 1970s,'' said pollster Sergio Bendixen, who conducted the Cuba Study Group poll. ``It's the main reason that Miami's exile community now holds a much more moderate approach.'' While 54 percent of the 1960s exiles surveyed support the concept of ''forgiveness and reconciliation'' as part of a democratic transition in Cuba, support jumps to 70 percent among '90s exiles, according to the Cuba Study Group poll. Likewise, 66 percent of the 1960s exiles support the embargo, compared with 47 percent of the 1990s exiles, according to the Herald poll. When asked whether the current Cuban government is slowly moving toward democracy, 10 percent of the 1960s exiles agreed, compared with 32 percent of the 1990s exiles. Support for an exile dialogue with Cuban government officials -- excluding Fidel and Raúl Castro -- for democratic transition is much stronger, at 61 percent, among 1990s exiles, compared with 43 percent among those who arrived in the 1960s, in the Herald poll. Cuban American National Foundation Chairman Jorge Mas Santos proposed such a dialogue last month. The Herald poll also reflected a similar gap in support for a Castro-sponsored conference planned for April in Havana between exiles and Cuban officials: 47 percent of the 1960s exiles support the conference, compared with 69 percent of the 1990s exiles. The polls underscore the notion that age and generation do not dictate Cuban-American perspective as much as the era in which exiles left the island. There are several significant exile waves -- the Freedom Flights of the late 1960s and early '70s, the Mariel boatlift of 1980, and the rafters of the '90s. The first wave came in the two years following the 1959 revolution, with about 135,000 Cubans landing in South Florida. Those exiles ferried about 5,000 more Cubans to Miami in 1965, when Castro opened the port of Camarioca to those who wished to leave. To stop illegal migration, Cuba and the United States then agreed to daily ''freedom flights'' that began that year and brought about 340,000 new Cubans to South Florida until Castro cut the flights off in 1973. The largest influx came in 1980, when about 125,000 Cubans arrived in a five-month period in the Mariel boatlift. In the 1980s and '90s, Cubans arrived by sea in the hundreds and thousands each year, often in flimsy vessels built out of scrap material, culminating in a 1994 mass rafter exodus of more than 30,000. That year, the U.S. and Cuban governments reached an accord for the United States to issue at least 20,000 visas to Cubans each year. Known as el bombo -- the lottery -- this and illegal smuggling operations are the main avenues for immigration today. `A BETTER LIFE' ''The recent wave are not so much political exiles as immigrants who come here, like other immigrants from Latin America, in search of a better life,'' said Max Lesnik, one of the directors of Alianza Martiana, an anti-embargo organization. ``They became opposers for economic reasons, not for political or ideological reasons. The exiles of the right do not want to recognize that.'' For Peter González, a busboy at the Hialeah Latin Café, connecting to the island is about taking care of the aunt who raised him. ''If they don't have the dollars I get them, they would have nothing. They would starve,'' said González, 31, who moved to Miami three years ago after winning the visa lottery. ``I go to help my family. I'm not interested in what is happening with the regime.'' Anti-dialogue activist Ninoska Pérez Castellón said she questioned the credibility of the polls because they differ from the viewpoints she has heard. ''There might be more people that came with a different view but I find a lot of people who came in the 1990s who favor sanctions for Castro and they do not travel to Cuba,'' she said. ``I think I have a pretty good feel about what this community is all about. I don't see these people who support the dialogue out there. All I hear is a lot of criticism for the dialogue.'' But to Santiago Quintana, criticizing the regime takes a back seat to doing right by his family in Cuba. Quintana, 66, has been back to the island three times since he arrived 15 years ago. He supports easing travel restrictions and dialogue to normalize relations. ''It would be the most correct thing to do. It would make life easier for us here and for them there,'' Quintana said as he sold mangoes and bell peppers on a Hialeah street corner. His son and several grandchildren live on the island. ``When I'm there, I feel good, happy.''

Miami Herald February 16, 2003 Andres Oppenheimer

Best anti-Castro tool is exile moderation

Exiles' attitude of reconciliation undermines view of a U.S. menace Two major polls released last week undermine one of Cuban President Fidel Castro's key arguments for keeping his country under a four-decade state of siege: that Cuba is threatened by a ''Miami mafia'' of exiles who want to invade the island, punish those who collaborated with the communist regime, and run the nation as a U.S. colony. The two new polls of Cuban exiles -- done respectively by Schroth & Associates and Bendixen & Associates -- show that a majority of South Florida's Cuban Americans now support the idea that change in Cuba must come from within the island, rather than from exiles, and that it should be peaceful. Sixty- one percent of South Florida's Cuban Americans support the idea of ''forgiveness and reconciliation'' as a key element for a transition in Cuba, according to the Bendixen poll, commissioned by the Cuban Study Group, an organization of moderate Cuban exile business people. And 59 percent of Cuban exiles support the Varela Project, a dissident-led movement that calls for a referendum on democratic changes in Cuba within the island's current legal system, according to the Schroth poll, commissioned by The Herald. The new polls mark a dramatic change from the Cuban-American community's stands a decade ago. In the early 1990s, 73 percent of South Florida's Cuban-born residents favored military action by exiles to topple the Castro regime. The slogan at anti-Castro street rallies was ''Guerra! Guerra! Guerra!'' (``War! War! War!'') Occasionally, Cuban exiles launched armed attacks on the island, or on Cuban government aircraft or vessels. A majority of Cuban exiles at the time dismissed dissidents on the island as ''traitors,'' or Castro agents. And the late Cuban exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa, head of the powerful Cuban American National Foundation, made no bones of his intention to become president of a free Cuba. Castro, of course, turned the exile threat into a central theme of his political propaganda machine. To Cubans on the island, he has long asserted that the ''Miami mafia'' would take away their homes and run the island as a U.S. protectorate. To his audiences in Latin America and Europe, he has consistently played a tropical version of the David-versus-Goliath story, contending that Cuba is a small nation fighting for its survival against revenge-hungry Cuban exiles. ''The Miami terrorist mafia and the extreme right of the United States are working feverishly, elaborating plans, bills and other aggressive measures for the subversion and destabilization of our country,'' Castro said recently in a typical speech. But the new polls, if followed by smart policies by Cuban exile groups, could turn Castro's propaganda machine on its head. It will be much harder for Cuba's president-for-life to keep justifying 44 years without allowing political parties, elections or freedom of expression for the sake of the defense of the fatherland, if the fatherland's enemies are preaching forgiveness and reconciliation. SHIFTING THE FOCUS Embracing the peaceful way puts onus on Cuban system I may be too optimistic, but I think that the growing support for a peaceful transition to democracy by Cuban exiles could shift the focus of the Cuba debate away from Miami and toward the island's political system, where it belongs. As Madrid-based Cuban exile writer Carlos Alberto Montaner says, Castro has long tried to keep the conflict as a U.S.-versus-Cuba issue, rather than as a democracy-versus-dictatorship issue. What is the explanation for the shift in Cuban exile attitudes reflected in the new polls? For one thing, demographics. Since the 1980 Mariel boatlift, new waves of Cuban exiles have changed the profile of the Cuban exile community in South Florida. Under the 1994 U.S.-Cuba immigration agreement, about 20,000 Cubans a year have arrived in the United States, and most have settled in South Florida. The newcomers are people with parents, siblings or children in Cuba, who hate Castro but do not see their loved ones back home as enemies. Rather, they see them as what they once were themselves: victims of an oppressive regime, who are doing what they can to survive without getting in trouble. In addition, the 1999 crisis over young Cuban rafter Elián González led key Cuban-American exile leaders to reassess their strategy. Depictions of Miami Cuban exiles as irrational fanatics in U.S. and international media led them to conclude that, if anything, they had an image problem. ''If we come across as a group of fanatics, as we did in the Elián crisis, we fall in a trap,'' says Joe Garcia, spokesman for CANF. The Herald survey shows that 60 percent of Cuban exiles still support the U.S. embargo against Cuba, but that does not contradict their growing pro-dialogue stand, pollsters say. Rather than drop the embargo unilaterally, many of them want to use it as a negotiating chip in future talks with Cuban officials, pollsters say. Things are changing, indeed. The once hard-line CANF has moved significantly to the center since Mas Canosa's death and the appointment of his son Jorge Mas Santos as his successor. Mas Santos is advocating talks with Cuban government officials, except the Castro brothers, to start a gradual and peaceful political opening of the island. ''We can't live in a time capsule,'' Mas Santos said in a telephone interview. ``The transition has to happen on the island, with the Cubans on the island, led by the opposition on the island, and by the members of the current government who want things to change. They are the ones who will initiate change.'' I couldn't resist asking him whether he, like his father, wants to become president of Cuba. ''No, I don't,'' he said. ``I want to help as much as I can to free Cuba. To aspire to something else would be madness, ridiculous.'' LESSONS OF HISTORY Moderate views prevailed in Chile and Nicaragua Fortunately, growing numbers of Cuban exile leaders are not only reading the polls, but are also learning some lessons from Latin America's recent history. As shown in the 1988 referendum against Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and the 1990 elections that toppled Nicaragua's Sandinista regime, hard-liners are often wrong. It was moderate pro-democracy activists within those countries who, with their strategy of taking advantage of whatever legal avenues they had at their disposal, succeeded in toppling oppressive regimes. Granted, hard-liners who oppose any kind of negotiated settlement to the Cuban drama remain a political force in South Florida. They have three Cuban Americans in Congress who share their views. They dismiss the latest polls, arguing that the real polls take place in the voting booths, and Cuban Americans as recently as November elected hard-liner Mario Díaz-Balart over anti-embargo candidate Annie Betancourt. I don't buy it. First, Díaz-Balart had the name recognition, the money and a long record in the state Legislature, while his opponent was a relative unknown who may have used her anti-embargo stance to get some name recognition for the next election. I'm not convinced that Díaz-Balart won the election on the Cuba issue rather than on his record on education, health or other local issues. More important, the fact that South Florida's three elected Cuban Americans in the U.S. House -- also including Reps. Lincoln Díaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen -- are hard-liners on the Cuba issue may not reflect the thinking of the entire Cuban-American community. This is because hundreds of thousands of Cuban newcomers are not yet voting, while those who arrived in the 1960s and 1970s tend to vote in big numbers. This will change. EXPLORING NEW WAYS The objective is still to achieve Castro's removal Does all of this mean that Cuban exiles are giving up on their hopes to get rid of the Castro regime? Not at all. But, according to the pollsters, it means that the new generations of Cuban exiles, as well as growing numbers of the first waves of exiles, are exploring new -- peaceful -- ways of bringing about fundamental freedoms on the island. The new polls are good news. Depriving Castro of his key propaganda tool -- the fear of exiles -- will accelerate democratic change on the island. It would be great if the world came to see the Miami exiles as a force of moderation, and Castro's regime as an intransigent ``Havana mafia.''