Not Your Father's Cuba - Rubio, La Loba and the new Cuban-Americans

[flamingdem]

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/11/05/not_your_fathers_cuba

More at link -


Marco Rubio, Ros-Lehtinen's former intern who was elected as Florida's Republican junior senator on Tuesday, shares her background in the exile community and much of her outlook on Cuba policy. In his victory speech, he described Castro's revolution, in a well-worn exile phrase, as "an accident of history." As a member of the Florida legislature seven years ago, he signed a letter to President George W. Bush calling for the end of the "wet foot/dry foot" immigration policy towards Cubans and more funding for the anti-Castro radio and television stations the U.S. government broadcasts into Cuba.

These positions are emblematic of the Cuban exile community in Miami, a voting bloc whose enormous political heft belies its size. The 838,000 exiles in the Miami area -- less than five percent of Florida's population -- have been a pillar of Republican support in presidential elections since 1980, and over the subsequent years have sent two Cuban-American Republican senators and four Republican congressmen to Washington. (New Jersey is represented in the Senate and House by the Cuban-American Democrats Bob Menendez and Albio Sires, respectively, both of whom typically vote with the Florida Republicans on Cuba issues.) The lawmakers have fought tooth and nail against even the Obama administration's minimal attempts to reform Cuba policy; Menendez threatened to hold the nominations of presidential appointees -- science advisers whose jobs were completely unrelated to Cuba policy -- hostage over Cuba travel concerns. Even modest goodwill gestures, such as cooperation with the Cuban government to provide medical services in post-earthquake Haiti, have drawn letters of protest from the Cuban-American legislators.

-------snip
Throughout the Special Period, Cubans suffered on account of Castro's ideological stubbornness, his defense of the old flag of communism at all costs. But they were also wronged by the exile leadership in Miami, whose own ideological blindness trumped any feelings of solidarity with Cubans still on the island. At the 1993-1994 nadir of the crisis, when Cubans were fleeing the island in the midst of food shortages, exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa and his Cuban American National Foundation, the powerful lobbying group on the other side of the Straits of Florida, were obsessed with blocking family remittances and travel to Cuba. They pressured Congress to pass a law addressing exiles' property claims on the island and reinforcing the embargo. (Congress passed it in 1996 as the Helms-Burton Act.) What Cubans -- even those who were just as disenchanted with the communist regime as the first-generation exiles -- saw when they looked at Miami was a group fixated on punishing Castro, even if it came at the expense of the Cuban people.

If the new Cuban-Americans arrived in the United States already disenchanted with the old guard, they also had a different vision for how change will eventually come to the island: from the bottom up, opening markets first and democratizing second, rather than by ending the current leadership's rule. These recent arrivals travel to Cuba frequently, reject the all-or-nothing political polarization of the older generation, and maintain links with their relatives and social groups -- particularly religious ones -- on the island. Two months after the U.S. Congress eased travel restrictions on Cuban Americans in March 2009, the number of exiles traveling to the island rose 20 percent; by the end of the year, the number had more than doubled from the previous year to close to 200,000 travelers. Cuban tour operators say this group consists mostly of exiles who arrived in the United States in the last two decades and the American-born children of exiles.

The new exiles are chiefly interested in economic reform, which could increase business opportunities for those living abroad while speeding up the process of reconciliation. When the Cuban government unveiled plans to massively reduce the public sector in August, many Cuban émigrés of the last wave criticized the leaders for not tapping the economic development potential of the diaspora by opening the country to their investment. They are convinced that Cubans on the island, not exile leaders abroad, will be the driving force of change, and want to promote openness and liberalization on the part of the regime in order to help them. In the Florida International University poll, the difference of views from generation to generation is striking: Just 35 percent of exiles who emigrated before 1980 oppose the embargo. Seventy-one percent of those who left after 1998 do.
------snip

[dipsydoodle]

1. Interesting re-definition

of the word "accident" quite aside from which the reduction in the public sector is to be replaced by small private enterprise with the emphasis on small.

With regard to the expectations of the Miami brigade regarding restoration of land and factories , which on the whole may no longer exist anyway , to their ownership I'll leave then to dream on. They really should get a life.

[Judi Lynn]

2. The "accident of history" was the belief Spain could invade an insland,

and force everyone on it to become slaves, torturing and murdering those who wouldn't, and eventually killing through abuse, exploitation, disease almost ALL of the population, although a tiny number lives on in the highest mountain area, then importing new slaves from Africa, and treating them like trash, as well, keeping them living in desperate conditions from one painful day to the next, never expecting they would ever be strong enough to fight back.

Now THAT was an accident in history. It was also an accident in history that powerful people in the US believed they could buy off the corrupt maggots running Cuba and perpetually own and control over seventy per cent of the land in Cuba, and run the island through a puppet government. It was also an accident in history that the Mafia became the second power in Cuba, working jointly with the bloody maggot Batista who moved and controlled things behind the scenes after 1935 before taking his second overt time at the wheel in the 1950's.

Big, BIG accidents in history. Cuba overthrew both parasitic, vicious forces due to the people fighting back.

Both continue to deteriorate and eviscerate the quality of life in the US but Cuba at least is free of them.

[HS News]

3. Cultural Exchanges Continue Between U.S. and Cuba In Spite of Embargo

The American Ballet Theater, performed in Cuba twice last week as part of the 22nd International Ballet Festival and in spite of stalled Congressional debate regarding lifting the 40 year old embargo. The Ballet Theater last visited Cuba as a company in 1960, shortly before the United States severed ties with this Communist country.
http://www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com/notitas-de-noticias/details/cultural-exchanges-continue-between-u.s.-and-cuba-in-spite-of-embargo/2851/

[flamingdem]

4. The NYT has a great story on this as well nt

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. Interesting that these "exiles" keep going back and forth without

getting into trouble in Cuba.

I used to know a lot of Latvian emigres, and they were afraid to go back as long as the Soviets were in control, especially since asserting one's Latvian ethnicity too strongly brought charges of "bourgeois nationalism."

So the back-and-forth traffic of "exiles" between the U.S. and Cuba strikes me as odd. These aren't real "refugees." They're just plain immigrants.

[Judi Lynn]

6. It's been happening far more than people outside Florida realize.

This interesting small comment appeared in a book written by former New York Times journalist, and author, Ann Louise Bardach, who has been back and forth to Havana many times doing research for her writing:

In Cuba, one used to be either a revolucionario or a contrarevolucionario, while those who decided to leave were gusanos (worms) or escoria (scum). In Miami, the rhetoric has also been harsh. Exiles who do not endorse a confrontational policy with Cuba, seeking instead a negotiated settlement, have often been excoriated as traidores (traitors) and sometimes espías (spies). Cubans, notably cultural stars, who visit Miami but choose to return to their homeland have been routinely denounced. One either defects or is repudiated.

But there has been a slow but steady shift in the last decade-a nod to the clear majority of Cubans en exilio and on the island who crave family reunification. Since 1978, more than one million airline tickets have been sold for flights from Miami to Havana. Faced with the brisk and continuous traffic between Miami and Havana, hard-liners on both sides have opted to deny the new reality. Anomalies such as the phenomenon of reverse balseros, Cubans who, unable to adapt to the pressures and bustle of entrepreneurial Miami, return to the island, or gusañeros, expatriots who send a portion of their earnings home in exchange for unfettered travel back and forth to Cuba (the term is a curious Cuban hybrid of gusano and compañero, or comrade), are unacknowledged by both sides, as are those who live in semi-exilio, returning home to Cuba for long holidays.


Page XVIII
Preface
Cuba Confidential
Love and Vengeance
In Miami and Havana

Copyright© 2002 by
Ann Louise Bardach

~~~~~yo
You may have noticed the corporate media which used to call them all "defectors," or "refugees," as you mentioned, tend occassionally, if not often, to refer to immigrant Cubans now as simply "immigrants," and occassionally "economic immigrants."

[Mika]

7. Plus, before W, Cubans used to get travel visas to visit Miami relatives.

It used to be very common for Cuban relatives to visit their loved ones in the US. They'd go to the stores, Disney World, Sawgrass Hills megamall, etc, and stay for a couple of weeks for birthdays, funerals, weddings, etc., and then return to their homes in Cuba, loaded up with goodies and purchases like all other Caribbean visitors who visit the US. Then, the W admin stopped granting travel visas to Cubans. The reason the new admin represented was that these people were too great a risk of overstaying their visas. This policy still stands except for a few emergency visas approved by Ileana Ros and her minions - like the visa given to the Cuban mother who came to Miami for her son's funeral after he was murdered in a Miami school, she then returned to her home in Cuba.

---

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. My church has a "sister church" connection with its counterpart in Cuba

and people from my parish have made about six trips up to this point. (A group is going down next week for the consecration of the new bishop of western Cuba.) We seem to have no trouble getting either a renewal of our license or permission to enter Cuba.

However, a couple of years ago, before the country was split into two dioceses, we invited the man who was then the Episcopal bishop of all of Cuba to visit us. It took INCREDIBLE red tape to allow a visit to Minneapolis by an elderly bishop with his whole family remaining in Cuba. Can they really have thought he was going to overstay? Or did the presence of a bishop who could travel outside the country with no problem belie the Bush administration assertion that there was "no religious freedom" in Cuba?

One of these days when my finances are squared around, I hope to join one of these delegations, because it's not a tourist experience. The participants stay in either private homes or church-owned retreat houses and visit parishes in small towns. The returnees felt sad about the poverty (but the widely traveled group members say that it's better than some other Latin American countries and definitely better in terms of health care and education) but thought that the Cuban people were warm, hospitable, and fun.

[Mika]

9. Its all really screwed up.

Right now my beloved father in law is in the last stages of a terminal cancer. He happens to live in Cuba. So, I can't go. Since my wife passed away I am no longer considered family by the USOFAC, so no go, although I am allowed to send remittances.

Imagine a dearly loved one, lying in hospital dying, asking for you, just a few hours of travel away. But you can't go!

I cannot convey just how torturous this is! :mad: :cry: :mad: :cry:


Typical of repug behavior, the US gov attacks Cuba/Castro for their travel policies but yet fully deprives Americans (w/o blood family in Cuba) of their own travel rights. It makes me sick to my very core.

I cannot wait until the sorrowful day that I'm outta here.

---

[naaman fletcher]

10. It's a travesty

Thanks for sharing. Are you planning on leaving the US for good? I plan to once my kids are grown up.

[Mika]

13. It is.

Thanks.

Geez. An old man seeking loving connection with his daughter though me, and my connection through him- and its just not going to happen. Please remember that this is the kind of situation where the rubber hits the road. The "debate" we have here isn't some esoteric debate. This shit affects many many people. There is a mountain of pain and hurt here in Miami over all of this bullshit. Add mine to the heap.

---

[Judi Lynn]

11. So sorry hearing of your father-in-law, Mika. Emergencies like this should supercede spiteful laws

like the travel ban.

There's no justifiable reason to officially forbid people to try to be with their loved ones in situations like this. None. It's an insult to humanity, to the life experience. Unforgiveable.

At least you do know your father-in-law cares for you because of your relationship with his daughter, and your relationship with him over the years. That will stay with him.

What a shame those in charge of our foreign relations are pandering to the loathesome, racist, right-wing Batista "exiles" and their offspring. We're ALL stuck in the 1950's until our country evolves.

[Mika]

14. Thank you, Judi.

I cannot expand upon your post. :hug:

---

[flamingdem]

16. Mika I think you mentioned this but..

.. can you qualify for a General License? Or can you bring aid down to qualify you?

Out here in California it is quite easy to get a General License, as in, it's on the traveler to be doing the required research and no one follows up in my experience, plus they just xerox you passport and do not notify OFAC, it is on file only if there is some reason to utilize it but they said this doesn't happen in reality. The travel operators in Florida are much more under the microscope so you have to have family. You can do the paperwork with an agent out here. Let me know if you want a contact. I do remember there was a reason this is difficult for you to do but forgive me I forget the details and just wanted to make sure.

[Judi Lynn]

12. I remember that mother. She was remarkable, and held her own so well during her trip.

She had more character in one segment of her smallest finger than the "exile" people have in their whole families.lar

I used to also post at a message board in the Delphi system which was almost ALL "exiles" and one of the worst frenzied, sour, vicious women there was "Marianao," who still yammers on regularly at the Miami Herald exile threads.

She addressed some of her comments to another "exile" as she discussed the fact her sister from Cuba had just returned to Cuba after a vacation in the States, and they had gone all over the place during that time. It was astonishing to me to hear her talking about it like that, knowing there were non-exiles on board taking it all in.

On the turn of a dime, the same shrieking idiot would turn and raise hell charging that Cuba is a monstrous dictatorship. She mentioned that her sister had even been to Spain.

It's almost more than I could take. I can only imagine how wierd it is living right where this has gone on so long while the same Florida reactionaries have told the world Cubans aren't allowed to leave Cuba.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

15. Ah yes, the shrieking reactionaries

I remember them well from the news boards during the Elian Gonzalez incident.

One of them declared, "If Elian returns to Cuba, he'll die!"

One of the fed-up participants shot back: "Why? Are you going to kill him?"

That was the end of that thread.