Anthony P. Maingot. Published Monday, May 29, 2000, in the Miami Herald
Anthony P. Maingot is a professor of sociology at Florida International University.
It is quite evident that after 40 years of antagonism toward the rulers of their island, Cuban exiles have not persuaded the majority of the international community to join them in their crusade for a victorious return. Americans appear less convinced than ever that there are sufficient moral
and/or material reasons to warrant a serious confrontation with Fidel Castro.
The reasons for hesitancy vis-a-vis Cuba are complex, but one that rings with plausibility is this: Americans demand that the cause for which they fight be ``just,'' and they have not been convinced that the Cuban-American cause meets that criteria. This was expressed in no uncertain terms by an
Army colonel at one of my lectures: ``I'll be darned if I will lead American boys into harm's way just to restore some property to Miami Cubans!''
Frustrated by their inability to convince most Americans of their just cause, exile leaders have turned inward. This communal insularity is made all the more psychically comforting, but politically self-defeating, by the exclusive use of Spanish.
This propensity can be explained historically and sociologically. Historically, Cuban Americans keep harping back to President John F. Kennedy's ``betrayal'' at the Bay of Pigs. It is a very real, understandable, even justified, resentment.
The problem is that this resentment governs and overwhelms the Cuban-American response to every attempt by American presidents to deal strategically, and in America's national interest, with Castro. That engenders an increasingly bitter response from more and more sectors of the majority.
Because exiles share much with the rest of American society, the tension is kept largely under control. It reveals itself during crises such as Mariel or when Cuban rafters where pepper-sprayed on Miami Beach. It has been revealed in full during the Elián González affair.
While most Americans see the case as one of child custody, the exile leadership has turned it into a moral and revolutionary crusade against Castro. It is not difficult to see why, given Castro's demagoguery.
TACTICAL MISTAKES
The Cuban-American leaders, however, made two tactical mistakes:
They took a very public, strident and combative stand against the federal government, its agencies and resolutions. To witness the local mayors (many of them Cuban American) challenging the president, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the attorney general was to relive the federal
confrontations with white supremacists in the South and the gun-totting militias more recently.
They completely underestimated the emotional power of certain symbols of the American sense of nation. They mistakenly assumed that because Americans don't demonstrate much nationalism, they lack patriotism.
Cubans are supremely nationalist. The Cuban Constitution defines ``nationality'' as a birthright. That is why Cubans who become U.S. citizens remain Cuban ``nationals.''
Americans have no such concept of nationality. A society composed of many ethnic groups and nationalities is loathe to talk about one nationality. What America has is an ideology about the nation -- its foundation is the Constitution, and its most visible and emotion-driven symbol the flag.
When Cuban Americans fly only their "national'' flag and, worse, when they fly the flag of their new citizenship upside down, the response may be slow, but when it comes, it carries the force of a swollen river flooding with emotion.
The most successful strategy that any minority can adopt is to use the best values and symbols of the majority to promote its goals and agenda. This is what black Americans have always done.
The Cuban-American leadership should do the same.
Copyright 2000 Miami Herald |