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Work targets island directly, with less focus on Washington
By Carol Rosenberg. Crosenberg@herald.com. Posted on Mon,
Jul. 22, 2002 in The Miami
Herald.
Using Puerto Rico and Mexico as staging centers, the Cuban American National
Foundation has sent ''about $1 million'' in cash, computers and other aid to
island dissidents and families of political prisoners in the past year, the
powerful lobby's leader said Sunday.
Jorge Mas Santos described the part-clandestine, part-public campaign while
detailing the group's priorities in an interview after his unopposed election
Sunday to a fourth term as chairman of the foundation his father set up. The
election came on the third day of the foundation's annual board of directors'
meeting.
Rather than looking north to Washington, CANF is refocusing its resources
south -- on activities on the island.
''Fidel Castro tried for so many years to keep us apart,'' said Mas Santos,
saying the foundation now has a network of ''hundreds'' of dissidents
representing every province in Cuba.
CANF's focus for years has been on maintaining the U.S. economic embargo
against Cuba and shunning any U.S. political openings with Castro's communist
regime. By shifting its efforts south, Mas Santos said, the organization has
captured simmering Cuban uncertainty over the future caused by Castro's brief
fainting spell last June.
Since then, he said, the foundation has significantly expanded contacts with
"a young generation of civil government members and people in the military
who do want a democratic change.''
PEACEFUL TRANSITION
Their common aim, he said, is "a bloodless, peaceful transition in
Cuba.''
To improve contacts, the Little Havana-based foundation has hired a new,
younger generation of former prisoners, such as human rights activist Ramon
Colas, just seven months in Miami. They keep in touch with island dissidents and
help funnel the material and financial aid.
A cadre of older CANF loyalists defected from the organization about a year
ago and set up the rival Cuban Liberty Council after ideological disputes over
engagement with Cuba. Defectors from CANF have described the young leadership's
approach as nave, in part because the Castro regime continues to control the
Cuban economy and can seize the funds and goods that are sent to the island.
Mas Santos declined to provide a breakdown of the $1 million in assistance
he said has been given to dissidents on the island. ''Cash is not the majority
of it,'' he said. "We've sent a lot of computers, a lot of faxes, a lot of
books for the independent libraries.''
Humanitarian aid and support to dissidents are exempt from the U.S. embargo.
CANF also sends medicine and stipends to the families of political
prisoners, which Mas Santos said has a ripple effect.
Executive Director Joe Garcia added that some CANF members have also visited
dissidents on the island, or have met them in third countries, to train them in
democracy techniques.
Both men revealed that the projects are run from Mexico and Puerto Rico,
which sent about a dozen directors to this year's annual meeting.
REDIRECTING AID
Repeating an old theme, Mas Santos declared the U.S. embargo is secure but
said the foundation has set a new goal of getting Washington to send more
federal aid directly to democracy projects in Cuba.
''A lot of that money gets spent here in Miami -- on offices and
employees,'' he said of the millions of dollars administered for Cuba by the
U.S. Agency for International Development. Now, Mas Santos said, he has
persuaded Adolfo Franco, the administrator of the agency's Latin America and
Caribbean division, "to take that money and those projects to Cuba. That
money is going to be sent to Cuba.''
On Saturday, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., told directors he was advocating
appropriating $1.5 million in addition to the $1 million allocated to the
University of Miami's Transition to Democracy project run by Jaime Suchlicki,
director of UM's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies.
Its activities are U.S. based. Suchlicki employs staff and buys computers
for their work here and pays consultants to write papers that offer tips on the
building blocks for democracy.
Mas Santos, meantime, predicted increased, albeit at times clandestine, CANF
ties with people in Cuba. On Saturday, directors dialed up three island
dissidents -- notable among them the recently freed political prisoner Vladimiro
Roca -- who sent their greetings to the foundation. Chatting with another island
dissident over a speakerphone, one director asked how his recently donated
computer was working. The man replied that it was fine.
''It's important to support those people who are the architects of new
projects in Cuba,'' said Mas Santos, who brought about 150 spectators to their
feet at his speech Sunday at the Freedom Tower by ending it with the slogan of
his father, CANF founder Jorge Mas Canosa: ¡Adelante!, ¡Adelante!, ¡Adelante!
(Forward!)
DAY'S EVENTS
Sunday's event was part political rally, part spiritual and quintessentially
Cuban American. Directors wore trademark pressed guayaberas to the morning Mass.
Worshipers sat in the tower's reception hall, some sipping Cuban coffee served
by a volunteer in the back.
Later, while directors reelected Mas Santos and other members of the board,
the public received free boxed lunches provided by a local cafeteria and
featuring ham sandwiches, guava pastries and croquettes. | 
