In Miami, a new vision of Cuba
The
Díaz-Balart years will end at the polls; a Democratic
opposition rises
By
David Brooks Read Spanish Version
From
La Jornada
MIAMI,
Aug. 19 — Demographic and generational changes in Miami, along with
a political juncture that no longer favors the Republican Party,
create an unprecedented opportunity for Democratic candidates to
defeat the political hegemony of the conservative Cuban-American wing
headed by the brothers Lincoln and Mario Díaz-Balart and
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.
The
latest polls done by Sergio Bendixen of Bendixen & Associates,
specialists in the Latin vote, show that the Díaz-Balarts’
challengers trail them by 4 or 5 percentage points, a virtual tie. In
addition, during the recent quarters, the Democratic candidates have
collected more donations than the three Republican legislators.
Although
it is said that in the past decade there was a generational and
demographic transformation in Miami, "those changes have not
manifested themselves politically." Outside the state, many
people say that the three Cuban-American representatives from Miami
remain in power in Washington.
In
an interview with La
Jornada,
Bendixen, one of the most outstanding analysts in the Latin
community, warns: "That change is coming."
The
Diaz-Balarts’ rivals have political heft. Both are figures with long
trajectories in the institutions that represent the Cuban-American
community in South Florida.
Raúl
Martínez, who seeks to overthrow Lincoln Díaz-Balart
(now in his eighth term), was mayor of Hialeah for 22 years. Joe
García, Mario Díaz-Balart’s opponent, was Jorge Mas
Canosa’s right-hand man and inherited the direction of the powerful
Cuban American National Foundation.
This
electoral dispute is so significant in the United States that the
Democratic National Committee designated it as one of its strategic
priorities nationwide. It also offered its support to Martínez
and García because it believes that the possibility that they
will defeat the Republicans is quite real. In the past, the
Díaz-Balarts were practically guaranteed reelection.
In
separate interviews, both Democratic candidates stressed two key
factors in their likely triumph: the generational change in the Cuban
community, which shelters two very different visions about U.S.-Cuba
relations, and the demographic change, which reveals that Cubans are
no longer a majority among Latinos in Florida.
In
sum, the challengers say that the Díaz-Balarts and their
supporters have become mired in their vision of the past, while
Martínez and García define themselves as expressions of
a vision to the future that reflects the social and political changes
in Miami and, with that, a change in national and international
politics.
Martínez,
a young old man
In
his campaign headquarters, Martínez says that a political
transition is taking place in South Florida. "Whenever people
talk about Latinos, they separate them from the Cubans. They say the
Latinos vote Democratic […] but they identify the Cubans as another
type of Hispanic: Republican, recalcitrant, conservative […] and
that was based on their position against Fidel Castro, against
relations with Cuba. What is happening? They’re stuck in old
history."
"One
of the fundamental factors at present is that the Cuban national who
arrived here 15 years ago and maintains links with his relatives in
Cuba and wants to visit them, to send money to Cuba, has become a
naturalized U.S. citizen." In other words, those who reject the
policies that prevent them from maintaining relations with the island
are beginning to vote.
As
Martínez sees it, the Cubans who arrived here recently, or
were born here, are most concerned about the price of gasoline, the
economy, the failed war in Iraq, health insurance, public housing,
education — in other words, their situation here in Florida. "They
say, wait a minute, they have deceived me with their recalcitrant
Republican policy on Cuba. Nothing has happened in Cuba, and look at
the economic situation we have here. So, Lincoln Díaz-Balart
and his brother have been unaware of this change. And that’s where
people like me, like Joe García come into the picture, and
we’re going to carry the message to all the voters about the problems
right here, and we’re not going to separate the Cubans from the
others because in the long run we all suffer. When it rains, we all
get wet."
At
the same time, the Díaz-Balarts "have lost power in
Washington within their own party, because they’re not respected,"
Martínez says. "Their own colleagues tell them they are
clowns." According to Martínez, Díaz-Balart is now
afraid, after years of intimidating his opponents. The legislator
refuses to debate him and accuses Martínez of being part of a
"left-wing conspiracy to remove him from his post." In the
Miami debate, Díaz-Balart "always has been someone who,
when he’s not doing well, stands up and says: ‘I won’t debate you any
longer because you are a communist,’ and that’s the end of the
debate. They can’t say that about me. I came here in 1960."
Martínez
stresses that attention must be focused on the priorities of the
communities here and that such attention helps others in turn. "I
have to be strong in my country in order to help others. You can’t be
good to Mexico if you’re going hungry here. If a Mexican is here and
has a job and earns good money, he sends more money in remittances to
his family. The same is true with Cubans."
Cuban-Americans
must integrate into the national Latino community, he says. "We,
as Hispanics, have a responsibility to this country. But we also have
an emotional responsibility to our country of origin, the place where
we were born."
Martínez
says that he "would like to contribute to Cuba’s reconstruction,
its democratization. But the way in which relations have been
conducted for the past 50 years has not worked. So we have to do
something else. We’re going to create a family-to-family, a
friend-to-friend relationship, and we’re going to foster that
communication, so they may learn what freedom is. First, we have to
establish contact. The attitude that there should be ‘no contact’
[with Cuba] and branding anyone who goes to Cuba as a communist
doesn’t lead anywhere."
The
significance "of my victory is that Lincoln is 53 years old. I
am 59. We’ll go with an older man but later we’ll open the road to
young people. Right now, the incumbent is younger than me but has a
caveman’s mentality." He ends, saying that in Miami and the
nation "a significant change looms ahead, and I want to be at
the table."
García,
the pragmatist
Interviewed
while he dines in Cuban restaurant in Miami, García focuses on
the generational change in the Cuban community, on the vision of
those who remain in the past and those who understand that what is
needed is a pragmatic outlook.
"[U.S.-Cuba]
policy today is designed by a generation that was the victim of
atrocious crimes by the [Castro] regime at the start of the
revolution. So the relationship with Cuba is emotional, not
pragmatic. But starting in 1980 there has been a huge difference,
because those who arrived after 1980 lived through the revolution.
Nobody can fool those people. They suffered the food shortages and
everything else the regime could inflict, but their relationship with
Cuba is pragmatic, practical, direct and real," he says. That
group comprises a majority of the Cubans in exile, he adds.
According
to García, that explains the reaction against the measures
instituted in 2004 by President George W. Bush and the right wing of
the Cuban-American community, when they limited visits to Cuba to one
every three years and reduced the shipment of remittances by many in
the Cuban-American community. "Unfortunately, the policy toward
Cuba is stuck, is completely static. It’s like a game of dominoes,
when the game is stuck, and one player thinks his partner has a
double-nine, and everybody keeps passing. But the game is over."
That’s
about to change, he warns, because the new generations are entering
the electoral process "at the same time that Bush has committed
one of his clumsy errors in foreign policy, guided entirely by the
local Cuban community. For the first time, he did what no other
president had done: he divided the Cuban community against its
historical position."
"No
American politician has made more negative statements about Fidel
Castro than Bush. At the same time, no U.S. administration has done
more business with Castro than Bush’s. When you find out that the
paper for Granma is sent from the United States, you realize that
[the embargo] is more a ritual than a reality."
He
elaborates. "The embargo has a quasi-religious aspect. One
believes in the embargo. One cannot prove that it works because after
50 years that’s quite difficult. It’s more a religion than a policy,
because policy is something one changes to create an effect. How can
you state that we have an embargo on Cuba and at the same time be
Cuba’s number-one partner in agricultural products?" he asks.
"Part of the problem of something that’s static is the fact that
the ceremony assumes more importance than the deeds."
García
speaks about a very diverse civilian society in Cuba and points out
that "unfortunately, what has happened is that we want the
people in Cuba to sound like my grandmother here, and my grandmother
has no relevance in Cuba."
He
criticizes the fact that U.S. initiatives to support Cuba’s civilian
society — he includes himself among one of the move’s initial
promoters — only ended up benefiting the Miami exile community.
"Those millions of dollars have become political prebends. If
the funds were intended to form civilian societies in Miami, they
have been very effective." So, he concludes that "the
policy toward Cuba is simply local policy, with little effect on
Cuba."
In
Miami, "some people use the word ‘intransigence’ with pride,"
García says. "Here, the latest big march was called ‘the
march of intransigence.’ The word ‘dialogue’ in Miami does not mean
what it does in the rest of the world. In Miami, it means to submit,
to surrender. But that has collapsed, little by little, because it
didn’t achieve its basic objective and because of the reality that
the Cuban community is changing its relationship with Cuba."
An
absurd rhetoric
"I
directed the largest Cuban organization outside Cuba. I have never
been to Cuba," García says. "Imagine if U.S. policy
toward Mexico were programmed by a person who left Mexico in the
1950s, and he’s the expert on the reality in that country, yet he has
never returned to Mexico and has no family there. That’s what has
happened to the Cuban policy. The rhetoric scares people because it
is so aggressive, but it is the rhetoric of soccer fanatics who, no
matter what they shout, are impotent with regard to the game being
played. And the more impotent to reality they are, the more
aggressive and absurd their rhetoric."
García
does not downplay the power of the Díaz-Balarts and the
political apparatus they control. But the generational and
demographic changes, particularly the new Latin American immigrants,
imply imminent changes. The Díaz-Balarts "still have an
enormous power, yes, but there’s also a community that’s changing at
an enormous speed. In the district where I’m challenging Mario,
Cubans account for only one half of the Latinos; the rest come from
Latin America," says García, before sharing a Cuban
coffee.
Requests
from La
Jornada to
Lincoln Díaz-Balart for an interview in his Miami offices were
not acknowledged.
This
electoral dispute for a Miami in transition has caught the attention
of the national leaderships of both parties, who have sent support to
both sides. Both Barack Obama and John McCain are in direct contact
with the opponents.
David
Brooks is U.S. correspondent for the Mexican newspaper La Jornada.
