By Douglas Montero. New York Post. January 6, 2000
ELOY Gutierrez Menoyo is used to fights.
He fought in the streets and jungles of Cuba at Fidel Castro's side to overthrow the corrupt, American-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Later he formed Alpha 66, a notorious band of Cuban exiles who conducted hundreds of daring commando raids and bombings in Cuba in an attempt to disrupt and instigate the overthrow of Castro's socialist government.
Today, Menoyo, 64, is engaged in a more complicated battle.
The enemy is ignorance -- and Menoyo is trying to convince his fellow Cubans in Miami to end the hostilities with their homeland.
That's why Menoyo views the U.S. government's decision to return 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez to his father as a godsend for Cuba-U.S. relations -- and a sign the once politically powerful exile community in Miami is weakening.
"INS made the right decision, and they [the exiles] don't have the power to fight against it," said Menoyo, who runs an organization called Cuban Change, which aims to peacefully promote democracy and normal relations with Cuba.
"Ten years ago, they were much stronger, and it would've been much more difficult sending the boy back. Now the only thing they could do is kick and scream.
"In this case, logic and law dictate."
Menoyo and other exiles are surprised the U.S. government had to guts to go against the Miami lobby.
Lisandro Perez, a sociologist and director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University, says the power of the hard-core anti-Castro lobby began to diminish after the 1997 death of Jorge Mas Canosa, head of the Cuban American National Foundation, and the passage of the
federal Helms-Burton Law, which strengthened the U.S. embargo.
"There is nothing left to do -- there's an absence of an agenda," Perez said. "The only thing left is to try and score points against Fidel."
Menoyo, who spent 22 years in a Cuban prison when he was captured in a 1965 raid, remembers the ferocious reaction of the exile lobby in 1993, when he formed and began promoting Cuban Change.
"The right-wing groups attacked me, criticized me -- even the media began attacking me," said Menoyo, who returned to Miami after his release.
Menoyo thinks -- and hopes -- the U.S. decision to return Elian to Cuba exposes the negative side-effects of the hard-core campaign to remove Castro.
"In recent years, we have seen all the roads leading to peace have been through dialogue, not war." he said.
"For decades, the right-wing groups have used confrontation and it hasn't resolved anything."
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