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Kerry courting Cuban community
By Alan Freeman. The
Globe and Mail, Canada, October 12,
2004.
MIAMI -- Ralph Benidez has no doubt where
his vote will go Nov. 2.
George W. Bush "is the best president
for the world," said Mr. Benidez, a
45-year-old construction worker. "The
Republicans are 100 per cent Americans.
The Democrats are full of communists. Jesse
Jackson and Michael Moore are communists.
So is Jimmy Carter."
Mr. Benidez represents the classic Cuban-American
voter who lives in South Florida.
Ferociously anti-communist and enthusiastically
pro-Republican, the state's estimated 800,000
Cuban Americans were a major element in
Mr. Bush's successful run for the presidency
in 2000.
But there is a new wrinkle in the community:
voters such as William Valdez, a 21-year-old
handyman who was born in the United States
of parents who are Cuban émigrés.
"I'm not going to vote for Bush,"
he said as he sat with a friend outside
a Cuban café near Miami Dade College,
where he is studying part time to get a
high-school diploma. "We need jobs,
education and medicine," said Mr. Valdez,
who dropped out of school at 16 after his
girlfriend had a baby.
What angers Mr. Valdez most is the Republican
crackdown last summer on family contacts
with Cuba aimed at strangling President
Fidel Castro's regime.
The measure sets strict limits on visits
to Cuba and restricts remittances to family
members.
It was instituted to please the traditional
Cuban-U.S. leadership, which is opposed
to any thawing of relations with the Communist
island and has provided bedrock support
to the Republicans.
In the 2000 election, 82 per cent of the
Cuban community voted Republican, many of
them angry at the Democrats because of President
Bill Clinton's decision to send castaway
Elian Gonzalez back to Cuba. Damian Fernandez,
director of the Cuban Research Institute
at Florida International University, said
he still expects a strong majority to back
Mr. Bush, but he sees an erosion of support
that could benefit Democratic challenger
John Kerry.
Last spring, as the campaign was getting
under way, a poll taken by his institute
showed that as many as 36 per cent of respondents
in the Miami area favoured Mr. Kerry or
were undecided.
The community still is made up predominantly
of the immigrants who left Cuba en masse
more than 40 years ago and want nothing
to do with Mr. Castro's regime for ideological
and emotional reasons. This group, known
as los historicos, are motivated by what
Mr. Fernandez calls "the politics of
passion."
"Cuba is represented as something
totally out of bounds. You never go back
and your whole purpose is to undermine the
regime," he said. In the same poll,
60 per cent of respondents told his institute
they still back a U.S. military invasion
to liberate the island, although 29 per
cent want to see more open relations.
Mr. Benidez, the Miami construction worker,
has not set foot in Cuba since he left in
1971. "I don't want to go to Cuba as
long as Castro is there. He is a criminal,"
he said.
But a newer wave of immigrants that began
with the Mariel boat people in the 1980s
is less ideological and has more in common
with the economic migrants from Haiti and
Latin America who have flooded into Florida.
They are eager to send help to relatives
at home and travel back as soon as they
can.
Mr. Fernandez says these newcomers are
motivated by the "politics of affection."
The restrictions imposed by the Bush administration
hit them hard: They can now visit family
in Cuba only once every three years rather
than annually, and cash remittances are
now limited to immediate family members
-- parents, siblings and children.
"We should be able to send money if
we have family in Cuba. They are poor,"
said Mr. Valdez, who worries that he will
not be allowed to visit his grandfather,
who is ill with cancer. "I think it's
wrong. If Bush had family over there, he
would feel different."
Luis Zuniga, executive of the hard-line
Cuban Liberty Council, speaks with disdain
about the newer immigrants who can't wait
to take a plane back to Havana as soon as
they become permanent U.S. residents.
"The community rejects the attitude
of people who want to go back as soon as
they can," he said.
Mr. Zuniga, who arrived in Miami in 1988
after spending 18 years in Cuban jails as
a dissident, denied that the community is
split, accusing the Democrats of manufacturing
"the myth of a rift."
On the wall above his desk at his office
in Miami's Little Havana are a row of photos
showing him with heroes of the Cuban-American
community: Mr. Bush; his brother, Florida
Governor Jeb Bush; and Mel Martinez, the
former U.S. housing secretary.
"There is a coupling between the President
and Mel Martinez. Mel is an incentive for
Cuban-Americans to vote," Mr. Zuniga
said of the popular politician, who is running
for the U.S. Senate in Florida.
To counter the Martinez factor, the Democrats
are courting the community as never before,
spending $100,000 (U.S.) a week on Spanish
television ads aimed specifically at the
Cuban community and opening a Kerry campaign
office in Little Havana across from the
Versailles Bakery and Café, a bustling
restaurant with tiled floors that is the
community's epicentre.
Joe Garcia, a local lawyer and community
leader, is actively campaigning for Mr.
Kerry. He insists that despite all the rhetoric,
Mr. Bush has done nothing to help free Cuba.
"He's the Liberace of Cuban politics.
He plays every note to perfection but when
it's all done, there's lots of glitter and
nothing to show for it," he said.
Mr. Garcia said the restrictions on family
visits and remittances are meaningless,
noting that Mr. Bush has permitted Cuba
to import U.S. foodstuffs and drugs. That
has helped make Cuba the third-largest single
market for U.S.-grown rice.
"Twisting my grandmother's arm doesn't
hurt Fidel Castro," he said.
Mr. Garcia turned to the young waiter and
struck up a conversation. Yasser arrived
from Cuba just 18 months ago; under the
new rules, he will not be able to visit
his father until he has been in the United
States for three years.
Yasser is not a U.S. citizen yet and cannot
vote, and Mr. Garcia readily acknowledged
that the newer arrivals are less likely
to vote than los historicos.
Yet Mr. Bush's margin of victory in Florida
was just 537 votes in 2000, and every vote
counts. Mr. Garcia said he is hopeful that
as many as 25 per cent of Cubans will end
up voting for Mr. Kerry.
"If one-half of 1 per cent of the
Cuban-American vote would have stayed home
in 2000, we'd be talking about Al Gore's
re-election right now," he said.
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2004 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All
Rights Reserved.
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