Cuban-Americans: Changes in ideology

HAVANA-In the past 20 years, Prof. Guillermo J. Grenier of Florida International University has conducted the Cuba Poll surveys, which focus on the political and ideological attitudes of Miami’s Cuban-American community.

With the authority vested in him by that work, an obligatory reference to all who are seriously interested in the topic, Grenier has just published an article on the Catalejo (Spyglass) page of the Cuban magazine Temas titled “The Cuban-American Transition: Demographic Changes Impel Ideological Changes,” where he analyzes the evolutionary curve followed by those changes in the past 20 years and sets out his interesting conclusions.

According to Grenier, “Miami’s Cuban community is changing rapidly and this change is propelled by the influx of immigration established by the 1995 accords and the rather abnormal means of reception of these immigrants, facilitated by the Adjustment Act of 1966.”

Such an assertion is based on facts that are clearly incontrovertible. “In the decade of 1990, when the number of Cubans in Miami rose to 650,000, an average of 46 percent supported a dialogue with the Cuban government. In the following decade, the support rose to 60 percent, as the population reached 856,000.”

“In 2011,” the author continues, “approximately 57 percent of Cubans in Miami supported unrestricted travel to Cuba for all U.S. citizens. The recently arrived Cubans who were socialized on the island, along with Cuban-Americans (those born in Cuba, as I understand it) who were socialized in the United States are the groups most interested in the restoration of freedom to travel for all residents of the United States.”

“The newly arrived Cubans send back more remittances than any other category (77 percent) and send the largest amounts of all groups of migrants, an average of more than $1,000 per year. The second generation of Cuban-Americans sends more: $1,311 per year. This commitment to the development of the Cuban economy on a family level is also reflected in the attitudes toward the new possibilities of investment on the island, created by the structural changes now ongoing in Cuba. Cuban-Americans show a desire to support and take advantage of the opportunities for investment on the island.”

“Fifty-eight percent [of the respondents] support the resumption of diplomatic relations with the Cuban government. The young Cubans, as well as the newly arrived and the Cuban-Americans, are most convinced of this change. It is worth pointing out that, on this issue, the resumption of diplomatic relations with the island, the Cubans in Miami are on the same page as the rest of the United States, as shown by the 2009 World Public Opinion survey.”

Even so, Grenier posits, “the voters continue to be dominated by the immigrants who have lived in the United States longest, and also by the Republican Party. Their attitudes are consistent with the characteristics of the classic ‘ideology of exile’ in their resistance to reconciliation.”

In his opinion, this is due to the fact that “the newly arrived are not represented in the voter rolls in numbers sufficient to play an important role in the establishment of policy toward Cuba. Only 40 percent of the newly arrived have become U.S. citizens, and of these only 35 percent have enlisted in the voter rolls […] so the ideological changes will not be reflected in a change of policy until the new waves of immigrants join the second generation of Cuban-Americans to express their wishes in the County’s voting booths.”

So far, I’m basically in agreement with Grenier, so I’m ready to opine on a question that he poses to himself, regarding the political consequences of these ideological transformations.

Says Grenier: “If it’s true that the old ideology of exile has exerted a strong influence not only on the immigrant community but also – to a degree – upon the foreign policy of the United States, it is possible to imagine a new ideology with a similar power.”

As I see it, there’s been a tendency to overestimate the role of the Cuban-American electorate, expressed by the positions of the far right, on the design of U.S. policy toward Cuba, forgetting that its attitudes have been a reflection, rather than the cause of it.

Unquestionably, the activism of the Cuban-American far right has been essential to maintain the climate of hostility that has ruled against the island. But its influence on U.S. policy has not been determined by the importance of the Cuban-American electorate, as shown by the fact that not even in the counties where most of these people are concentrated have they managed to determine the election of a Republican presidential candidate.

In my opinion, more than the number of voters and their concentration in a specific area, their relative economic capacity, or their weight on the local political life (certainly elements to bear in mind), the influence of Cuban-Americans on U.S. policy toward Cuba has been determined by two factors that transcend their endogenous qualities:

• First, because those groups have been functional to a vision (predominant in the U.S.) that does not accept the existence of the Cuban Revolution and from the beginning has vowed to destroy it.

• Second, because the predominance of those sectors has also prevented the emergence of relevant counterweights against that policy, establishing an asymmetric relationship between the costs involved in opposing it and the benefits that might result from that conduct.

It is true that a change in the voting pattern of Cuban-Americans could have a bearing on these variables on a local scale, as Grenier predicts, and extend to other levels of the U.S. system, with an appreciable consequence of depriving U.S. policy toward Cuba of its social base, as well as the pretexts that have helped legitimize it before the U.S. and foreign public opinion.

Even so, I don’t think that this will become the determining factor for a change in policy, at least in its essential elements, given the existence of other, weightier considerations related to the very nature of the conflict between the two countries.

Such a conclusion in no way diminishes the value of the findings in the Cuba Poll surveys, whose principal virtue is to show us a new situation that has particular relevance to the future of Cuba’s relations with the Cuban-American community. This has a strategic importance not only for this community but also for the very future of the Cuban nation, whichever be the policy adopted by the United States.

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