Not their fathers' Cuban-American politics

MIAMI - Jorge Mas Santos stands in an elegant Coral Gables living room espousing what, until very recently, was heresy here - moderation toward Cuba.

"We do not need the 101st Airborne in Havana," Mr. Mas tells a group of the best and brightest young Cuban-Americans who've gathered for drinks and crudités. "We have to change the debate, talk about the violations of human rights, the need for elections, the enslaving of the Cuban people. That's what we need to show the world, that's a compelling argument that cannot be debated."

With Cuban-American relations more strained than at any time since the missile crisis 40 years ago, Mr. Mas Santos's words are particularly salient. But what makes them still more striking - and revealing - is that Mas Santos's father was Jorge Mas Canosa, powerful founder of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), which over the last 20 years has shaped the hard-line US policy toward Cuba as well as more than one presidential election in Florida.

Now, as the Bush administration prepares its response to Fidel Castro's recent crackdown on dissidents and emigrants, it's confronted by a new dilemma: Cuban-Americans, a key political constituency, are split between the traditional hard-liners and a new generation of moderates like Mas Santos, who has taken over the chairmanship of the CANF. The old guard is lobbying to have the US cut off the funds - more than a billion dollars annually - that Cuban-Americans send to their families on the Caribbean island, and to ban all travel there.

The moderates, made up of younger Cuban-Americans and newer migrants from the island, object to both those aims, and would prefer the administration to champion human rights and free speech - and indict Castro as a war criminal.More complex politics

To come up with a policy that satisfies both sides, says Sergio Bendixen, a Florida pollster and political analyst, "is not going to be easy."

For a generation, presidential contenders have come to Miami to court the powerful Cuban-American lobby here in Little Havana. Their goal: to win the blessings of the senior Mas Canosa, who often met with them at the Versailles Restaurant on 8th Street, where the staples are beans and rice and fried plantains, and the politics were fairly simple. Pledge a crackdown on Castro, and Mas Canosa could deliver 85 to 90 percent of the crucial Cuban-American vote - and potentially swing Florida in your favor.

But even before he died in 1997, Mas Canosa had grown more moderate, in part because of the hard-line policy's failure to bring on Castro's downfall, and in part because the demographics of Miami's Cuban-American community were already changing.

It's estimated that as many as 20,000 Cubans migrate to the US each year. Unlike those who came in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s - who were fleeing political persecution - many of the newer arrivals are economic refugees. And most, like Sulima Reyes, end up in Miami. She works selling items wholesale to the "dollar stores" around Little Havana.

She arrived six and a half years ago, leaving her father and sisters back home, and now, when she can, she sends them money for medicine and food. While she's no fan of Castro, she wants to maintain that contact with her family, and keep the option to visit.

"I don't know about politics," she says, a clipboard in hand and cellphone wire dangling from her ear. "I'm here to work."How perspectives change

A recent poll by Mr. Bendixen for a group of businessmen called the Cuba Study Group found that more than 50 percent of Miami's Cuban-American population comprises these newer, more moderate migrants. That's been key in changing the community's political tenor.

And then, in 2000, there was Elian Gonzalez, the little boy who survived the trip from Cuba to Florida, though his mother perished in the ordeal. The furor raised by the Cuban-American community when the US sent the little boy back to his father in Cuba alienated many in the US, including key political allies in Washington.

"It was an embarrassment to all of us," says Joe Garcia, CANF executive director. "It was a collective archetypal event that we all reacted to through emotion and not with the cold calculation that politics requires."

Mr. Garcia doesn't judge the community, noting that many identified deeply with Elian's plight. But Garcia does consider the event a lynchpin in the transformation of the Cuban-American community's mind-set, a prompt for soul searching and a political spur to younger Cuban-Americans.

"It's the responsibility of our generation to continue the battle and struggle that our parents and grandparents led," says Fred Balsera, a political consultant and trustee of the CANF whose father was one of the founders. "But obviously, being American born and raised, and not having the direct scars that an exile has, our perspective is different."

But these demographic and attitudinal shifts have taken a toll on Cuban-American unity. Two years ago, a group that held to the traditional line broke off from the CANF and created the Cuban Liberty Council (CLC) It continues to oppose dialogue with Cuba and advocates cutting off remittances and banning travel.

"The weakest link in Castro's column is the economy," says Luis Zúñiga, executive director of the CLC. "If you cut it off, it collapses."

Mr. Zúñiga believes the original foundation has "lost direction" and the new leaders' underlying goals are economic. Garcia dismisses that notion and counters that the hard line has not worked for the past 40 years, so it's time for an alternative.

The larger political impact is unclear. While polls show the community split, the traditional conservatives vote in far larger numbers than the newer migrants and younger Cuban-Americans. That disparity could be a critical factor when Washington weighs its response to the Cuban crackdown.

Many analysts, like William Leogrande at American University, doubt the administration will cut off remittances. But others also doubt this administration will expand commercial, economic, and political ties to the country as President Nixon did in opening up relations with Communist China.

"Those who surmise that President Bush is likely to emulate President Nixon on China have the courage of their ignorance," says John Kavulich, president of the US-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, a nonpartisan business group. "It's not likely the administration will risk what they know to be a certain voting block for an unknown."

Think about this response from another thread.

The American embargo against Cuba will not topple Fidel, sakic. The rest of the world trades with Castro so it deprives him of nothing that can't be bought on the open market.
The one argument that I have heard in favor of the embargo is that it deprives Castro of the opportunity to forge an unholy alliance with American Big Business.
As it is right now, Castro offers Canadian and European businesses in Cuba workers for $400 U.S. per month. Castro pockets that money and pays the Cuban worker 400 worthless Cuban Pesos a month that are worth about 8 U.S. Dollars. In Cuba, the only stores that are adequately stocked are called "Diplotiendas". They are more expensive than American supermarkets and accept only.....U.S. Dollars.
So, Castro is essentially running a "Rent-A-Serf" opperation down in Cuba.
Castro earns a $392 U.S. profit for every Cuban worker he hires out to a foreign company.
In return, the foreign company will get a good worker that will show up on time (or else), will do a good job (or else), will not be unionized and will require no payment for benefits.
Once Castro's "Rent-A-Serf" business becomes bed partners with American Big Business, the status quo in Cuba will be engraved in granite.
That would be "an unsuccessful policy ".
The bottom line about regimes that are heavilly armed and not squeamish about using those arms against their own people is that such regimes can only be toppled by force of arms.

Let's not forget how much more effective the Eisenhower CIA was in getting rid of Arbenz in Guatemala and Mossadeq in Iran.

Don't forget the Huks in the Philippines. Don't forget the Tibetan Army trained and fielded by Eisenhower. Don't forget that the team that beat the Huks was transferred to Saigon and had started to work there. Don't forget the Eisenhower Cubans, all trained, dressed up, and ready to go.

Don't forget that Kennedy fired the Eisenhower team in Saigon, cut off the Tibetans and left them to be slaughtered, and dumped the Cubans onto the beach into the waiting arms of the Cuban Army. Assassinated Diem ("Oh, did I do that?"). Kennedy was a disaster, and got many, many people killed. And I no longer believe it was simple fecklessness. Eisenhower left three major military operations entrusted to Kennedy's hands. Within a year or so two of them were wiped out and the third handed over to his cronies to run.

Yes, had Nixon been elected rather than Kennedy, the Cubans would have been free in 1961. Character matters, as they say.

BTW: I still would tolerate an invasion of Cuba. Fidel would be gone in three days. Nevertheless, we had our chance in 1960-61 but failed because Kennedy choked. IN defense of JFK, however, I'm willing to believe that he regretted his decision. Any Kennedy scholars out there willing to shed some light on this?

I recall reading an article, I believe it was in the "Quarterly Journal of Military History" that, after the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy had Ike over to Camp David to discuss the matter.

As a POTUS Emeritus and in the privacy of Camp David, Ike put on his General's hat and dressed down Kennedy who shut up and listened while wearing his Lieutenant's hat. Ike essentially told Kennedy that he had taken a plan with a possible chance of success and then changed it so that it was F.U.B.A.R.

The bottom line was that "Modern Warfare 101" mandates that you cannot, under any circumstances, mount a seaborne invasion when you have willingly allowed the enemy complete air superiority over the invasion beach. Before D-Day, Allied forces spents months establishing total air superiority over northern France.

The original Bay of Pigs invasion plan called for air strikes to take out Castro's few jet trainers that constituted his air force. When the initial strikes only took out only some of Castro's jet trainers, the original plan called for follow up strikes until Castro's airpower was totally destroyed.

The invasion beach was in a swampy area with only three roads leading to it. Those consisted of a coastal road that provided an eastern and western approach and a north-south road that provided a northern approach. With air superiority, any Castro counter-attack would result in a "Highway of Death" scenario with Castro's vehicles being forced to stay on the road and die or drive into the swamp and die.

This is where Kennedy lost his nerve. He was afraid to press the air strikes lest U.S. involvement would be apparent but he was also afraid to cancel the invasion as the planning had gone so far.

The result was totally predictable to anyone with a minimum understanding of modern warfare.

When I was in the Navy, I met a Nurse whose father was a Naval aviator aboard the USS Essex that was off the invasion beach at the time. Her father had told her of how Naval aviators were landing on the carrier with tears in their eyes because invasion force World War II era B-26 bombers were pleading with them to get Castro's jet trainer aircraft off their tails and those U.S. Naval aviators had no option except to do nothing as those were the orders they had from their Commander-in-Chief, John F. Kennedy.

As a result, the plan for a Castro "Highway of Death" was turned into Brigade 2506 "Bay of Death" as Castro's jet trainers easily shot down ancient B-26's and sunk the defenseless invasion ships in the Bay along with their ammunition and supplies.

Imagine D-Day with the Luftwaffe being spotted complete air superiority over the Normandy invasion beaches and allowed to sink the entire D-Day invasion fleet without any U.S. Army Air Corps or R.A.F. interference whatsoever.

That was the situation that Kennedy's loss of nerve created on the invasion beach at Playa Giron.

Two of my uncles landed on that invasion beach.

Kennedy had the responsibility to either carry out the original invasion plan in a responsible manner or cancel the plan entirely. Kennedy lost his nerve and chose the worst of all options which was to proceed with a fatally altered plan.

I'm sure that Kennedy was sorry as he did allow Ike to take him to the woodshed, albeit in the Presidential privacy of Camp David.

Ike never criticised the new Democrat President in public as Clinton and Carter now criticise President George W. Bush in public. The times were different back then.

Of course, the Politically Correct version of all this is, "It was the CIA's fault for giving Kennedy a faulty plan".

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	YOUNGER SET: Fred and Chandra Balsera in Florida. ALEXANDRA MARKS