By Juan O. Tamayo. jtamayo@herald.com. Posted on Thu, Mar.
28, 2002 in the
The Miami
Herald
Joe García, executive director of the Cuban American National
Foundation, tried to sound jaded when a journalist asked for an interview
recently.
''Are you writing the 20th-something obituary of the foundation?'' he joked.
Not at all. CANF remains a muscular force, especially with a Republican in
the White House who wants to tighten U.S. policies toward Cuba and two Cuban
Americans running those policies in Washington.
But CANF does face a drove of financial, political and administrative
problems that independent observers say are eroding the powerful influence, some
would even say fear, that it once cast over Washington.
Its money is less abundant, and its ranks are split -- between unabashed
hard-liners and almost-embarrassed moderates, between GOP supporters and
bet-on-all-sides advocates -- and it remains a bit dispirited after the Elián
González affair.
Its management is allegedly in disarray, and U.S. congressional officials
say that while its young new leaders are just as politically savvy as the old
ones, they lack their predecessors' sharp-edged wallop.
Worse still, CANF faces a growing wave of antiembargo sentiments across the
United States, driven by rich agribusinesses and heartland farmers once viewed
as natural allies of the anticommunist exiles.
CANF President Jorge Mas insists the foundation remains financially and
politically strong, with broad access to the halls of power and plans to push
the Bush administration to tighten the screws on President Fidel Castro.
''It's time we go on the offensive and put the Castro regime on the
defensive,'' Mas said recently from Washington after two days of meetings. He
spoke to senior officials at the White House, the National Security Council and
the State Department, as well as Republican leaders of the House of
Representatives.
CANF's top priorities, even before the administration announced a review of
Cuba policies with an eye to tightening them: push for a U.S. indictment of
Castro for the 1996 shoot-downs of the Brothers to the Rescue planes and expand
assistance to dissidents on the island.
But critics insist that problems do exist.
OUTSPOKEN CRITIC
''The foundation once had a clear strategy. Now I don't know what they're
doing or if they know what they're doing,'' said former CANF spokeswoman Ninoska
Pérez Castellón, today an outspoken critic of the foundation.
At the root of CANF's problems is the plunge in the price of MasTec stock,
which makes up the lion's share of the endowment that helps finance the
activities of CANF as well as the Jorge Mas Canosa Freedom Foundation,
established by the CANF founder before his death in 1997. From a 1997 high of
$52.68, MasTec traded at $8 on Wednesday.
The plunge led CANF to close the Voz de la Fundación radio station, a
$400,000- to $600,000-a-year operation, dismiss six of its 21 Miami staffers and
put off plans to hire six new staffers for its Washington office.
García denied rumors that CANF may completely close the Washington
office, which is headed by Dennis Hays, former head of the State Department's
Cuba Desk, and is already down from five staffers last year to three this year.
REAL ESTATE DEALS
But García confirmed the foundation is seeking paying tenants for the
Mas-owned Freedom Tower in downtown Miami and is taking out a mortgage on its
Washington office townhouse, bought in 2000 for $2 million in cash.
''We are allocating our resources to where we think they are effective,''
García said, adding that membership remains steady with 170 directors,
trustees and associates each paying from $1,000 to $6,500 a year and about
55,000 regular members paying anywhere from $1 to $100 per year.
Two former CANF employees said, however, that income from memberships plus
other donations -- CANF regularly seeks additional donations for special
projects -- dropped from $80,000 a month in 2000 to about $60,000 this year.
''Show me someone who's not belt-tightening after Sept. 11,'' García
said, insisting that money is not a problem. ''We had one -- exactly one --
staffer in Washington when we were named the most effective lobby'' by the
Center for Public Integrity in 1997.
DIFFERENT OPINION
García's arguments don't wash with Pérez Castellón, one
of a dozen CANF members who defected and founded the rival Cuban Liberty
Council.
''Yes, there was one staffer, but there was also a Jorge Mas Canosa and a
board of directors that constantly went to Washington to lobby,'' she said.
''But now their presence in Washington is not so visible or powerful as it
was under Mas Canosa,'' she added.
Several current and former CANF members and staffers also complained of poor
management.
''The foundation now is just a phone number where journalists can get
reaction to events,'' one disgruntled former employee said.
Money is only part of the problem, however. CANF also faces strong political
challenges, within the Cuban exile community and in its battle to maintain the
40-year-old U.S. trade and travel embargo on the island.
García admits CANF has faced some rough going in recent years.
''We had to bring the Cuba debate back from the dead after Elián,''
he said of the negative image created by exile hard-liners who fiercely opposed
the boy's return to his father in Cuba in 2000.
CLINTON INFLUENCE
They also faced eight years of a Clinton administration viewed by many in
Miami as too friendly to Cuba and an increasingly effective campaign by American
agrilobbyists to poke holes in the embargo.
'For a long time, there was no significant economic power working against
the embargo. Now the mantra is 'market, market, market,' '' Hays said.
García says the embargo debate should not monopolize CANF's
attention.
''Let's stop fighting over ground we've already won,'' he said. "We
need to move policy beyond that, to take a proactive role.''
But the debate has deeply and bitterly fractured Cuban exile ranks along
policy and political lines, say foundation insiders who asked for anonymity,
saying they did not want to fuel the fires of internal dissent.
On one side are exiles, usually older hard-liners close to the GOP, who want
to fight any concessions, from weakening the embargo to allowing Cuban musicians
to perform at the aborted Latin Grammy awards in Miami.
INSIDE APPROACH
''We are continuing to make known the truth inside Cuba -- that the embargo
is not the cause of the hunger and misery,'' said businessman Horacio García,
one of the CANF directors who bolted last year to the Cuban Liberty Council.
On the other side are usually younger exile activists, almost chagrined to
be called moderates, who, like Jorge Mas, rejected a recent call by hard-liners
for a boycott of Mexican goods after the Mexican government asked Cuban police
to evict 21 men who broke into its embassy in Havana.
''If people in this community want to shoot themselves, go ahead. But we
have an opportunity to work with the [President Vicente] Fox government to
effect change in Cuba, and we're not going to miss it,'' a CANF member said.
The debate over U.S. policies on Cuba has also spilled over into a bitter
split over partisan politics, CANF insiders say.
Most CANF members favor working with Republicans and Democrats, recalling
that Mas Canosa recruited Democratic Sens. Robert Torricelli of New Jersey and
Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut for the fight against Castro, CANF insiders
said.
But another group advocates working more closely with President Bush, a
Republican who has named several Cuban Americans to senior posts at the National
Security Council and State Department.
BUSH AS AN ALLY
''All the steps taken so far by this administration have been positive,''
Horacio García said. "This administration has shown nothing but an
interest in backing our cause.''
A third group complains that Bush has paid only lip service to the Cuba
issue so far and advocates prodding him strongly, even threatening better links
to the Democratic Party, to adopt more anti-Castro policies.
''We're now in the ninth year of the Clinton administration,'' Joe García
sniped before the Bush administration announced its Cuba policy review earlier
this month.
CANF officials say they are not distracted by all of the infighting and are
focusing their lobbying efforts on pushing the Bush administration on several
critical fronts:
Indicting Castro for ordering the deaths of the four Brothers to the
Rescue fliers.
Increasing aid to and contacts with dissidents on the island.
Revising the Clinton administration's ''wet foot/dry foot'' Cuban
immigration policy and pressing allegations that Castro still retains ties with
terrorist groups such as Spain's ETA Basque separatists.
''Jorge Mas Canosa would have loved the day when he had as few problems as
we have today,'' Joe García said. |