Obama 2.0, Cuba and CANF

(Note: These were the words offered by Progreso Weekly editor Alvaro Fernandez on Dec. 17, in Havana, Cuba, during the program offered by the University of Havana titled: “Projections, Tendencies and Perspectives in the Cuba-U.S. relations in the context of presidential mandate 2013 – 2017.”)

On Nov. 6, 2012, after two previous failed tries for a spot in the U.S. Congress, Joe Garcia was elected to represent Florida’s 26th congressional district. The night of his victory party, the son of Cuban parents and the former executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation celebrated in Kendall’s Casa Vieja Restaurant, a Colombian establishment…

Garcia’s campaign was centered around the problems of the whole community – the economy, poverty, unemployment, Miamians without health insurance, a downward spiraling public education system, immigration, crime – but he never backed down from his stand on the right of Cuban families, on both sides of the straits, to visit and help each other, including economically. After receiving 47% and 44% respectively in 2008 and 2010, Garcia managed to garner almost 54% of the Miami vote to beat David Rivera last month. 

More surprisingly, in my opinion, was President Obama’s huge victory in Miami. The president received 61.5% of the vote there – three percentage points higher than his first election in 2008. As for the Latino or Hispanic vote in South Florida, Obama won it receiving 60%. Also a jump of three percentage points as compared to his first election.

What stunned many around the country, and around the world, though, was the Bendixen & Amandi exit poll which spewed out a 48% Cuban American vote for the President. Some have denied the number as too high. Latino Decisions, a national pollster specializing on the Latino vote, for example, initially put the Cuban American vote for president at under 40 percent, but since then has removed its exit poll findings from their website possibly confirming the higher than 40 percent figure.

But as I have written in Progreso Weekly, the actual number is insignificant. What is important is the fact that in presidential elections since 1988, Cuban Americans have steadily trended towards the Democrats as demonstrated by their 15% in 1988, growing to 25% in 2000, 29% in 2004, 35% in 2008 and the staggering somewhere between 40 and 50 percent in 2012.

I don’t doubt a suicide watch at Versailles Restaurant occurred the day after the Obama victory last month. Miami’s Calle Ocho headquarters for everything that is anti-Castro Cuba, which has steadily lost many of its café con leche guerrilleros due to father time, may be coming to the realization that even its customer base has changed. Note that Mitt Romney decided to visit El Palacio de los Jugos instead of the traditional Versailles pilgrimage when he campaigned in Cuban Miami.

The candidate was right in seeking a new and burgeoning population of Miami Cubans. But he seemed to ignore that these people have much closer ties to their homeland than what is now referred to as the “historical exiles” – those who arrived before 1980 and are now facing life’s one true and unchangeable reality: we all die.

The fact is that those he went looking for at el Palacio de los Jugos, which he needed in order to win Miami’s Cuban community with the traditional at least 70% of their vote, were fearful of a candidate who promised to return to the days of George W. Bush when dealing with Cuba…

********

What might these results tell us about the Cuban American vote in the future? I’ve shared these thoughts in writing before:

1. Nature is taking care of the elderly who still vote religiously for republicans, oftentimes against their own interest.
2. Younger Cuban Americans (most born in the U.S.) tend to be lining up more with the Democratic Party.
3. New Cuban arrivals, many who are now U.S. citizens, are finally registering and voting their interests – which lean more towards the democrats. Among those interests, they want to be assured that they can visit, help and participate with family on the island.

Future elections will give us a better idea. But there’s no denying there is a growing trend among Cuban Americans to side with what are often termed Democratic Party values – whatever those may be…

********

Cuban American republicans have reason to be worried.

A 2011 report and poll issued by Guillermo Grenier and Hugh Gladwin, both Florida International University professors, I believe allows me the right to make that statement. Grenier/Gladwin show several interesting developments in the Cuban Miami phenomenon:

• The decade with the largest Cuban migration to the U.S. happens to have been the last one (from 2000 to 2009). The U.S. saw an influx of 305,114 Cubans – if you include the year 2010.
• When you add Cubans who have arrived in the U.S. since 1990, that figure swells to 464,151. A very large number of these Cubans are currently in Miami, and if they are not, will probably end up there sooner or later.
• Miami currently has a Cuban population of approximately 860,000. Of those, more than 300,000 arrived after 1994.

And here are a few more facts that should scare the wits out of republicans if this voting trend continues. First, 59% of Cuban arrivals after 1994 are still NOT U.S. citizens. And of those who have already become citizens, only 35% are registered to vote.

Then consider that in 1991, 70% of Cuban Americans were registered republican. By 2011, that figure had decreased to 56%.

********

But there’s one more factor that must be considered when discussing the control that has been wielded by Cuban-Americans when it comes to Hispanic politics in the state of Florida.

I’ve called it the giant that roared in this past election. And that giant should only grow bigger as the years progress. I am referring to the non-Cuban Latino vote in Florida.

As the FIU study demonstrates, Cuban Americans should continue to be the largest voting group in Miami for years to come. They comprise 35% of the population, while other Latinos together make up 31%. But it’s in other parts of the state where the giant will dominate. And in the Miami area, other Latino groups are learning to form alliances with other groups and (why not?) even moderate and progressive Cuban Americans to achieve political standing in South Florida.

An example of a growing and powerful Hispanic group in Florida is the Puerto Ricans. There are currently more than 800,000 in Florida. The brunt of their numbers found in the middle of the state, an area referred to as the I-4 Corridor, a highway that connects Orlando and Tampa and cuts Florida in half.

Their numbers are politically staggering there. And not faced with the problems of citizenship, in Orlando alone, for example, there are currently more than 160,000 young Puerto Ricans who have yet to turn 18… when they will be able to vote. Statisticians are telling us that by 2016, the next presidential election, there will be more registered Puerto Rican voters in Florida than Cuban Americans…

Add to that the rapid growth in numbers of other Latin American and Caribbean communities, and Florida’s Latino face will very quickly look different than what many think we resemble. The fact is that between 25,000 and 50,000 Hispanic citizens turn 18 every month in the U.S. Finally, based on census figures some predict that by 2030, 17.5 million new Latino voters will have been added to the rolls in the U.S.

Compare that to the more than 12 million that cast votes in this year’s presidential election and you start to understand the giant’s power. And the 17-plus million will settle in the south and the west with Florida receiving a fair share of their numbers.

Now listen to the words written by Dr. Silvio Torres-Saillant, a Dominican-American and Syracuse University professor, after Obama’s victory in Florida:

“Obama prevailed in the state again … both among Latinos and voters overall. The Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balart confederacy has shown itself incapable of delivering neither the Florida electorate nor its Latino portion. Most devastatingly still, they have shown they cannot even fully deliver the Cuban vote. …

“Now that the mirage has cleared … the Republican leadership in Washington will have to realize how little return their investment in the ideological aberrations of Florida’s tropical conservatism has yielded and will have to think twice about sustaining such an infertile and costly relationship. … As the extreme right … loses its tight grip on Florida’s Latino politics, Dominicans and other Latinos will be able to join moderate and liberal Cubans, to help bring to the fore the diverse visage that has long existed but has long been silenced in the state.”

********

So what can we expect?

Initially, little from the White House… maybe the loosening of travel restrictions for non-Cubans. And I would hope that both governments would find a way to set free the Cuban Five and Alan Gross.

So why do I overwhelm you with all these numbers then?

Time and nature have a way of solving problems that politicians seem unable to figure out. And I believe that time – and the numbers – is on our side.

Although, like many of my brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles and friends at Versailles in Miami, we may not all see the fruits of this convergence of groups, ideas and situations…

One solution, I foresee, to the U.S.-Cuba dilemma is the coalition of U.S. citizens I’ve spoken about – most coming from Latin America and the Caribbean (which includes Cuba, of course): The day they start electing (and it’s already begun) a new breed of politician in Florida, and especially Miami, political positions from city councils to school boards and congress… That’s when we can expect real change to occur.

Couple that with Florida’s black vote and you have a powerful alliance with the capacity to dominate politics in Florida for years to come. Bringing to the fore, as I quoted earlier, a new mentality of what many of us want for Florida in the foreseeable future. And that includes a more reasonable and advantageous relationship with Cuba.

It is why I believe that in the long term the Joe Garcia victory was not the most important one this past November. There was, for example, a young Cuban American democrat who came out of nowhere to defeat a very established republican family brand in South Florida. He will now be serving in Tallahassee. Also, at the end of November, in a runoff election in Doral, a Miami-Dade municipality, a Venezuelan defeated a well-known Cuban American republican and former school board member who’s had the backing of Jeb Bush in the past. And in that same city a Mexican woman married to a Colombian defeated a Cuban republican in a runoff for a council seat. And Miami-Dade elected a Colombian republican to a commission seat last month.

In the Orlando area what was once a state delegation with a republican majority will now be sending eight democrats and six republicans (with two Puerto Ricans in the mix) to Florida’s capital, Tallahassee.

This, after one election.

********

I am often reminded of a study conducted by a friend of mine and retired FIU economics professor, Dr. Kenneth Lipner, who in 1999 wrote that the embargo was hurting Miami to the tune of $1 billion a year lost to the economy and potentially 40,000 new jobs. That study was quickly disappeared more than a decade ago. But I still have a copy.

Then I carefully observe the economic changes rapidly occurring right here in my homeland and I remember my dead father’s words when he said that Cuba would one day become the “Springtime of the World.”

If all sides of this mess can somehow find ways to coalesce, then I believe that his words may one day be deemed prophetic.

Alvaro F. Fernandez