Miami exiles pressure US govt to loosen policy on Cuba

Reuters/Miami

Arriola, 67, said a week-long trip to the island last year had opened his eyes to what he now believes is a failed US policy of trying to isolate Cuba.

“The number one weapon we have is capitalism and we are not using it,” he said over breakfast at the Riviera Country Club in Coral Gables, a bastion of older, conservative-minded exiles in Miami-Dade County.  “We should be flooding the place with tourists and commerce.”

Tired of waiting for the end of communism in Cuba, more and more Cuban-Americans have concluded that it is time for the US to allow more engagement with the island they left behind, polls show.

“Our president has not had the guts to do the right thing,” said Arriola, who helped raise funds for Barack Obama’s campaign and whose son, Ricky, sits on the president’s committee on the arts and the humanities.

Advocates of policy change say the administration’s caution stems less these days from concerns about a Miami backlash than from the hard-line stance of lawmakers like senator Robert Menendez, a Cuban-American and the influential chair of the senate foreign relations committee.

The New Jersey Democrat and other members of Congress, including senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican who is also of Cuban descent, say exiles who favour lifting a five-decade-old trade embargo against Cuba are undermining the cause of democracy and putting money in the pockets of the Castro dictatorship.

But a poll released yesterday by Florida International University shows the exile community is tilting in favour of change, with a majority favouring closer ties with the communist-run island.

The poll found that 52% of Cuban-Americans surveyed in Miami-Dade County oppose continuing the embargo. An even greater majority – 68% - favour diplomatic relations with Cuba, while 69% favour lifting travel restrictions to Cuba for all Americans.

Such widespread sentiment could ease the way for the Obama administration to revise US-Cuba policy by permitting greater travel and commercial activity to help an emerging private sector on the island.

“The old understanding was that you could not do anything in Cuba without causing a tempest among the exiles,” said Peter Schechter, director of the Latin America Center at the Atlantic Council think tank.

“Now it’s clear there really isn’t a political price to pay.”

The poll is the latest in a series of developments seemingly destined to undo the last vestiges of US-Cuba policy crafted during the height of the Cold War. Many Cuban exiles are letting their feet do the talking, taking advantage of relaxed travel restrictions Obama introduced in 2009.

Between January and June, there were 2,345 flights to Cuba from the US, and about 82% of the 282,450 passengers were Cuban-Americans visiting family, according to Emilio Morales, president of the Miami-based Havana Consulting Group. He calculates that 650,000 people, mostly Cuban-Americans, will travel between Cuba and the US this year. The exiles will also send $3bn in cash remittances.

George Feldenkreis, owner of Miami-based fashion company Perry Ellis, led a group of 12 family members back to Cuba in 2011 for the first time. “I wanted to make a trip to show my grandchildren what I came from, how poor I was,” he said, describing how he took the family to see his humble home near Havana’s train station. For Feldenkreis, 78, age was also a factor. “I didn’t want to go while he (former Cuban President Fidel Castro) was still alive, but I am getting old,” he said.

Feldenkreis is frustrated with Cuba policy, but remains a staunch opponent of loosening US sanctions. A chorus of voices from Hillary Clinton, former secretary of state under Obama, to John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence under president George W Bush, have recently spoken in favour of rethinking Cuba policy.

The head of the US Chamber of Commerce visited Cuba last month and praised Havana’s free-market reforms, saying the US trade embargo was an impediment for American companies.