Chronicle on Cuba - May 2004

Exile Community

May 5: A survey recently conducted by the Latin America Working Group Education Fund (LAWGEF) points out that 70 percent of Cuban Americans feel misled by politicians on Cuba policy, and 55 percent want a change toward a more moderate strategy. These moderate voices are being ignored by politicians with a different agenda--one created by hardliners.The majority of the Cuban-American community is in favor of dialogue between Cuba and the United States, in favor of easing travel restrictions, and in favor of rethinking the failed strategy of the embargo. (Prensa Latina, 5/5/04)

May 6: The Center for a Free Cuba, headed by Frank Calzón, welcomed the report issued to the US president by the Commission for the Assistance to a Free Cuba. “We urge the American people, the Congress, and the international community to support the President’s initiatives. We are delighted that several of the suggestions advanced by a policy paper recently released by the Center for a Free Cuba are reflected in today’s announcement,” a press release states. (Netfor Cuba, 6/5/04)

May 6: In Miami, the reaction to Bush's announcement of new measures against the Castro regime generated varied responses. ''He's forcing and reinforcing the same failed policy, but this time you are really punishing the Cuban family,'' said Silvia Wilhelm, an activist who favors closer ties to Cuba. She said the new restrictions will ban her from continuing to send money to three cousins in Cuba. Under the new rules, remittances can go only to grandparents, parents, siblings, spouses, children and grandchildren. Ninoska Perez-Castellon, spokeswoman for the conservative Cuban Liberty Council, said Cuban Americans who send remittances are helping to prop up President Fidel Castro's government. Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, said the group was especially supportive of Bush's pledge to spend $36 million to support the dissident movement in Cuba and buy an aircraft for Radio and TV Marti. Carlos Saladrigas, chairman of the moderate Cuba Study Group, called the president's new policies ''a mixed bag'' and said that politicizing the issue does little to help Cubans on the island. (The Miami Herald, 7/5/04)

May 11: Four days after President Bush's announcement, leaders of five organizations said at a press conference they will encourage exiles to work against the president's reelection -- putting them at odds with other exiles who support Bush's new policy. ''Some 140,000 Cuban exiles visited the island last year; 100,000 of those lived in South Florida,'' said Andrés Gómez, head of the Antonio Maceo Brigade. "This will mean many of those who can't travel to the island will vote against Bush -- and for a candidate who allows travel to Cuba.'' The group of exiles called the new restrictions ''a violation of their civil rights.'' The restrictions will be a blow to the Cuban people who depend on money from relatives in Miami-Dade and elsewhere in the United States to get by, they said. Without their ragtag humanitarian aid, their relatives, not Fidel Castro's government, will suffer, they said. “This is a political mistake and it's inhumane,'' said Max Lesnick of the Alianza Martiana. ''This will boomerang'' on the administration. (The Miami Herald, 11/5/04)

May 11: The Unión Liberal Cubana, a Cuban exile political party based in Madrid, delivered a statement supporting the new US measures against the Cuban government, except the limitation of remittances to the island. The statement is signed by Cuban exiles, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Eduardo Zayas Bazán and others. [Declaración de la Unión Liberal Cubana] (NotiCubaInternacional, 11/5/04)

May 13: Cuban Americans who planned to attend a Havana conference on migration issues may be forced to stay home because of new travel restrictions imposed by the Bush administration. The conference on 'The Nation and Emigration was expected to draw scores of Cubans living abroad, most of them in the United States, who favor easing the US embargo on the island. The conference, the third of its type since the early 1990s, is sponsored by the Cuban government and participants attend at the invitation of the Cuban Foreign Ministry to discuss issues affecting Cubans who live abroad. Under US sanctions on Cuba, all US residents are required to get special permission to travel to Cuba. (The Miami Herald, 13/5/04)

May 17: President of the Cuban Parliament, Ricardo Alarcon, highlighted the diverse nature of Cuban emigration in the United States, opposed to what is usually said about its monolythic projection as a conservative and Republican group. In an interview appearing in the last number of magazine Correo de Cuba on the Third Conference The Nation and the Emigration, Alarcon affirmed that already Miami has alternative media with an increasing public, in spite of not having the favor of those who control the city. The Cuban official, one of the protagonists of the first meeting with the emigration 25 years ago, accused "what we so rightly call the annexionist mob" of controlling the media to impose concepts alien to reality. (Prensa Latina, 17/5/04)

May 18: Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque announced in Havana that the 3rd Nation and its Emigration Conference will get underway. The minister said that dissident leader Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo has been invited to the event. “Menoyo has been invited, but still there isn’t a decision about his legal status in Cuba”, the minister added. One year ago, Menoyo, former leader of the exile organization, Cambio Cubano, decided to return to Cuba where he has stayed. (El País, Radio Habana Cuba, 19/5/04)

May 20: It will be Cuba's dissidents who spark significant political change on the island, not White House policies or South Florida exiles, the chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation told about 700 people at a luncheon marking Cuba's Independence Day. ''Today, we have to help Cubans help themselves (…) That's where our focus will be,'' Jorge Mas Santos said in speech showcasing a shift in the influential group's philosophy. Mas added that in November, exiles should vote for the presidential candidate who includes the plight ''of the dissidents and a free Cuba'' in his platform. His statement illustrated CANF's growing political independence in an election year when the Cuban exile vote will be heavily courted. ''In the past, CANF has been aligned to a political party. We're independent and nonpartisan in our ideology,'' Mas said to loud cheers, on the day that Cubans celebrate their 1902 independence from Spanish rule. (CANF, 20/5/04)

May 22: New US policies limiting Cuban-Americans' ability to help their families may hurt President Bush's chances of winning the crucial state of Florida in the November elections, some experts say. "Even losing a small segment of the Cuban-American community could have an impact," said Sergio Bendixen, an expert in Hispanic public opinion research in the United States and Latin America. Mr. Bush won about 80 percent of the Cuban-American vote in 2000 and still has many supporters in South Florida, Mr. Bendixen said. But if his share of the Cuban-American vote drops by just 10 percent, that could mean the loss of some 100,000 votes. And that could be the deciding factor in a state he won by just 536 votes in 2000, Mr. Bendixen said. "It's dangerous for him to alienate those voters," said the pollster, who is based in Coral Gables, Florida. (The Dallas Morning News, 22/5/04)

May 22: Cuban government officials and some 450 representatives of the more moderate factions of the Cuban exile community are attending the 3 rd Conference on Nation and Emigration. "Who said that the Exile is not part of the Nation? We are all one nation," affirmed Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo. While speaking on the issue of Cuban diaspora investment and business on the island, Menoyo said that local residents should be allowed to invest. (El País, 22/5/04)   

May 23: Wrapping up a major immigration conference with moderate Cuban exiles, Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque blamed aggressive US policies for the island's remaining restrictions on Cubans living abroad. Perez Roque said that a US trade embargo against the island for more than four decades, as well as new restrictions and increased hostility from Washington, have made it necessary to maintain policies such as stripping the property rights of emigrating Cubans. "These are defensive measures to protect the country from aggressive measures," Perez Roque told a news conference. Emigrating Cubans also lose their inheritance rights and cannot return later to retire on the island. Much of the three-day discussions in Havana dealt with the US restrictions on Cuban-born people living in the United States, who number about 1.3 million. (AP, 23/5/04)

May 24: A Cuban writer who for decades was a favorite of Fidel Castro before becoming a dissident exile says the longtime communist leader "is fascinated with power and is the best snake charmer I know." Norberto Fuentes commented while presenting in Madrid a new biography of the Cuban leader. Divided into two volumes, "The Paradise of Others" and "Absolute and Insufficient Power," Fuentes' book, "The Autobiography of Fidel Castro," is a first-person account of Fidel's life and the author hopes it becomes the definitive biography of Castro. Fuentes presents private revelations from each stage in the life of the man he calls "perhaps the most important Latin American figure in the history of the 20th century." (EFE, 24/5/04)

May 30: US Representative Lincoln Díaz-Balart praised president George W. Bush as “Cuban exiles’ best friend” when the White House launched its electoral year strategy to withdraw Fidel Castro from power. Parts of this plan –those that aim to support dissidents in the island and Radio and TV transmissions—received wide approval from the Cuban American community. But, Bush’s policy includes recommendations made by the Cuban American National Foundation that its president, Francisco ''Pepe'' Hernández, has said are not those the Foundation proposed. The CANF’s president said that his organization does not want more restrictions to travel nor to remittances, because they may damage family reunification plans, and may take back all efforts to promote democracy in the island. Carlos Saladrigas, president of the moderate Cuba Study Group based in Miami, said that Bush strategy towards Cuba “is opposed to family reunification”. (El Nuevo Herald, 31/5/04)