Email this storyPrint this story Wednesday February 07, 2007
By David Usborne
There is a dirty secret circulating in Little Havana, Miami, and Mario
Perez has heard.
After almost 50 years of Cuban Americans successfully lobbying
presidents from Eisenhower to Bush to maintain a crippling embargo on
their homeland, some in the community are daring to speak out against it.
"There are two kinds of Cubans here," growls Perez, who fled Cuba 30
years ago and is lingering outside the Versailles Bakery on Calle Ocho,
Eighth Street, a haunt of hardliners who would sooner die than see the
embargo lifted.
"There are people my age or older and the ones who were brought up under
communism and came here later. Stupid sons of bitches - communism has
infected their blood."
It is to Calle Ocho that prospective candidates for next year's
presidential race will one by one make their pilgrimages. Arguably more
than any other single constituency, the million-odd Cuban Americans in
Miami can make or break their chances, if only because of the state they
are in. In 2000 George W. Bush eventually won - and took the White House
- by a margin of barely 500 votes.
But Perez, 74, is right on two counts: at a time when at least light
breezes of change are blowing in Cuba as an ailing Castro withdraws from
view, so too in Miami the once near-monolithic voice of Cuban Americans
is showing cracks. And indeed it partly has to do with their changing
demographics.
To feel it, you only need drive a few blocks east to Tinta y Cafe (Ink
and Coffee), dubbed a hangout for "Cuban Yuppies" by the Miami Herald
and nowadays a hub for younger Cuban intellectuals who see things
differently from their elders. To them the embargo has been a cruel failure.
Sleek and modern compared to the faux grandeur of Versailles, the place
is strewn with nightclub fliers and copies of weekly American magazines
like the left-leaning Nation. Look carefully and you will even spy a
tattered art book with the iconic picture of Che Guevara, Castro's
comrade in arms, on its cover.
"There is no single view any more," says its owner, Neli Santamarina,
52, who will soon hold meetings at the cafe for friends to discuss
alternatives to the embargo.
"I would love to see change in US policy, it's long overdue. Things are
going to change but the changes in Cuba have to come from within.
"It's kind of arrogant on our part to say we have the right solutions
and right answers for Cuba."
Hers is a position, she admits, that hasn't been heard much before in
Miami and especially on Calle Ocho - the scene of chaotic celebrations
the night that Castro's illness first became public last summer -
because "people are afraid of being called communists and of reprisals".
And it is also because the hard-line Cubans here shout louder.
Divining just how many Cuban-Americans are now ready to question the
embargo remains difficult.
When Fidel finally passes, most experts now think that when Fidel
finally passes, it is likely that Cuba will go through a "soft-landing"
transition with his brother Raul cementing his leadership.
The best hope for the moderates in Miami will be that Raul makes some
early gestures, at least, towards political reform.
As for the picture of Che, Santamarina admits that more than a few
people have noticed, including one gentleman customer who, each time he
came in, would turn the book cover to the wall and turn it face out
again when he left. Recently, he has been ignoring the book, however.
Is he coming round to her way of thinking? More likely he just can't be
bothered any more, she admits. But even that is change.
- INDEPENDENT
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10422706
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