A strange gathering in Havana

By Jesús Arboleya Cervera

HAVANA – On Feb. 1, a group of friends, among them some who live in various U.S. cities, decided to gather at my house in Havana. After we decided on the date, one of them commented: “How nice; that way we can talk about the results of the Republican primary in Florida.”

It occurred to me that in few other places in the world would someone take advantage of a social gathering to discuss such a topic and I feared that, if the prediction came true, that strange reunion would be a boring flop.

In truth, the results of the primary in Florida were not very exciting. As expected, the winner was Mitt Romney, the multimillionaire preferred by the “establishment,” leaving the others grumbling in his wake. As of now, the most they can hope for is to bollix the race enough to make their withdrawal more costly.

Then we shall see them praising the man they have mercilessly reviled. But that’s what U.S. electoral politics is and nobody will remember the insults. “It’s just business,” old godfather Corleone would say.

About Cuba nothing new was said, except for some intelligent and charming comments by Ron Paul, an old-fashioned conservative who, though a reactionary in many a sense, embodies the only autochthonous and consistent ideological movement in U.S. history.

Romney couldn’t think of anything more intelligent than a morbid wish for Fidel Castro’s death, and Gingrich resorted to the usual blustering of those who try to please an interventionist electorate. According to the defenestrated Speaker of the House of Representatives, if he were elected, he would be the promoter of the “Cuban spring.” Not original at all. George W. Bush invented plans for that, which have continued to exist during the Obama administration.

Some analysts have pointed out how wrong a Cuba-centered strategy could be to attract the Hispanic vote in Florida, because of the increase in other Latin minorities in the state. Also, how out of sync such a strategy would be with the changes that have occurred in the Cuban-American electorate, where Obama obtained more than 40 percent of the votes in 2008.

However, it doesn’t seem that a massive capture of the Hispanic vote is the Republican strategy, judging from its position on the matter. The demands of Hispanics, as a social group, are in opposition to the political claims and ideological budgets of the conservative Republicans, so it’s difficult to conceive an agenda that conciliates the interests of both groups.

Even in Florida, where the concentration of middle-class Latinos is greater than in other states, Hispanics constitute 11 percent of the Republican electorate and 60 percent of them (mostly Cuban-Americans) are concentrated in Miami.

Considering that the new Cuban immigrants, those who arrived in that country after 1980, constitute barely 20 percent of the Cuban-American electorate and that the majority of those born in the U.S. are registered as Democrats or Independents, it is obvious that the Republican Cuban-American voters are mainly those who arrived in the U.S. in the 1960s and ’70s.

They constitute the social base of the political machinery of the Cuban-American far right, which makes sure that they show up at the polls and, if they can’t, vote through the mail. That’s the machine that, through Spanish-language radio and other means of information, wages media terror and creates the impression of a political monolith that is based less and less on reality.

It’s hard to believe that the Republican politicians don’t know this, but for now they’re not aspiring to more, particularly because the contributions of the Cuban-American right mobilize other segments of the U.S. electorate. It is a fact that, for Republican politicians at this time, the political machinery of the Cuban-American far right has no substitute in South Florida – and therein lies its importance.

It is also a sure bloc, which votes Republican “on principle.” They don’t even consider themselves “Hispanic,” a group they consider inferior. Their fates do not depend on immigration reform; rather, they feel threatened by it. They are the children of a state of belligerence against Cuba that has been the source of extraordinary benefits. They have received an exceptional treatment from Washington that no other immigrant group has received. It is therefore not hollow to promise them the “liberation of Cuba.” The thing is not to win the war but to keep it going; the effort is enough to satisfy concrete interests.

For the Republican politicians, then, it is worthwhile to chomp on a greasy slice of fried pork in a noisy Little Havana restaurant and assure the voters that “now we WILL put an end to Castro,” just as long as they seem “the Cubans’ friends.” Clearly, it’s a bet toward the past – and the chips are running out – but U.S. politicians are not known for their long-range commitments.

That’s what we talked about in the quasi-exotic gathering at my house. Nevertheless, because us Cubans are curious but not masochists, we dealt quickly with the topic and turned to other, truly interesting subjects. So the meeting was more entertaining than we initially expected.

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