Most Cuban republicans have dabbled in cocaine trade, FEW survey shows

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Al’s
Loupe                                                                              Read Spanish Version 

Most
Cuban republicans have dabbled in cocaine trade, FEW survey shows

By
Alvaro F. Fernandez

alfernandez@the-beach.net

My
friend Dr. Rolando Bravo called recently to inform me he was opening
a research center dedicated to measuring opinions of the exile
community. He told me of his just completed survey of Cuban-Americans
living in South Florida who have become rich via the drug trade.

“I
named it the FEW Center,” he told me. “Some people may read it
quickly and think it has something to do with Pew.”

“You’ve
got to be kidding,” I told him. “No, no,” he insisted.
“Perception is half the battle. The other half is how you word the
survey questions, and who you ask,” he continued, “…Then you
have to sell your results.”

Let
me back up for a second. I have done polling in the past. It’s a
very exact science. And when a survey is conducted correctly, it is
amazing how accurate they can be. It’s why I wondered about Dr.
Bravo’s crazy idea. And the fact that Rolando is a medical doctor
— not a pollster. He also happens to loathe republicans —
especially fanatical Cuban exile republicans.

“So,
what were your results?” I asked.

“You
won’t believe them,” he answered.

It
turns out that over a four day period, my friend Dr. Bravo had made
more than 400 telephone calls here in Miami. The results were
shocking. The persons he called believed that more than 65% of Cubans
who owned successful businesses in Miami before 1990 had been
involved in the drug trade. And they were also of the opinion that
85% of Cuban republicans had dabbled in the cocaine trade at some
point in their lives.

Stunned?
You should be. It’s not true. Or at least, the study was never
conducted. There is no Dr. Bravo — at least not this
Dr. Bravo.

What’s
my point?

Well,
for once I wanted to emulate The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald and
practice irresponsible journalism. Some of the finest columns ever
written for Progreso Weekly have dealt with manipulated Miami Herald
and El Nuevo Herald stories. At one time we used to run a weekly B.S.
Detector that described this bilingual scam which offered differing
information from the same article by way of the translation and
omission of key paragraphs. It demonstrated how Miami’s only
newspaper massaged the news to please certain segments of our South
Florida population. Over time the practice has helped to deteriorate
the prestige of what used to be considered an excellent newspaper.

That
prestige took another giant step downward this past week when El
Nuevo Herald published a front page story (The Miami Herald had it on
page 6A) whose headline read “Differences about race found in Cuban
survey.” The story deals with a Cuban dissident (not identified as
such in The Herald article), a medical doctor (they just referred to
him as Dr. in the article), by the name of Darsi Ferrer. It was based
on the Ferrer study conducted by an “independent academic project
known as Cubabarometro”
which came to conclusions based on what Cubans “believe” and what
they “observed.” (Was there a plus/minus margin of error?) The
conclusion reached by the survey, according to The Herald story, is
that “despite 50 years of the revolution, racism continues to
exist…”

How
scientific was this survey? I wonder. Who were the 425 people
surveyed? And how did Dr. Ferrer choose them? Finally, if you check
out the questions, they can easily be applied right here in the U.S.

I
tested my theory on Jason, an African-American friend from Miami. I
offered several of the conclusions reached by the Cubarometro
study, but without telling him it had anything to do with Cuba. They
included:

• Blacks
  believe that whites benefit most from the most competitive jobs.

• Blacks
  believe that whites usually end up with jobs that offer the best
  economic opportunities.

• A
  great majority of blacks believe that whites predominate in the
  movies and television.

• A
  large majority also believe that police raids and harassment are
  racially motivated toward black people.

“So
what’s so interesting about what we already know?” asked Jason. I
then told him the truth, where the survey came from and its
peculiarities. He smiled.

Jason
holds a position of power here in Miami. He knows how politics is
played here. We’ve known each other for a long time.

“It’s
a set up,” he said.

“What
do you mean?” I asked.

“Cubans
in Miami never give up,” he told me. “And Obama’s a black
president.”