By DAMIEN CAVE
Published: June 1, 2008
MIAMI — Baltasar Martin Garrote desperately wants to see his mother turn
86 in August at her home in Cuba. But an American law will not let him.
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chris livingston for the new york times
Baltasar Martin Garrote, whose mother in Cuba has cancer, says federal
travel restrictions do not "make any sense."
Cuban-Americans can visit the island of Cuba only once every three
years, so because he spent 12 days there last October, he must wait,
hoping and praying that his mother, who has cancer, lives until 2010.
"It doesn't make any sense," Mr. Garrote said. "If you have sick
relatives, you should have a right to see them. That's not political."
Miami being Miami, however, the policy is political and always has been.
President Bush tightened the travel rules just months before the 2004
election at the behest of Cuban-American hard-liners, and this year,
Democrats are trying hard to exploit growing frustration with the law's
impact.
It has become a centerpiece of the campaigns challenging South Florida's
three leading Republican Cuban-American members of Congress. And on May
23, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, who brought his campaign for the
Democratic presidential nomination here, received a swell of cheers when
he told a gathering of Cuban exiles here that he would immediately allow
"unlimited family travel and remittances to the island."
The Democrats are essentially testing the theory that Miami politics
have changed. Voters will ultimately decide — and local hard-liners show
few signs of insecurity — but at the very least, the debate over travel
has sparked what many here describe as the liveliest, most open debate
about Cuba that Miami has seen in decades.
"Newer voices are being heard," said Lisandro Pérez, former director of
the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University and a
supporter of looser travel restrictions. "There's a general sense that
we're not in a straitjacket anymore in terms of the discourse, and we're
no longer just a monolith."
The Democrats are mainly relying on a generational shift among
Cuban-Americans. The so-called historicos or historic exiles who arrived
immediately after Cuba's 1959 revolution have been dying off, even as
their children move beyond a narrow focus on Cuba and as fresh waves of
Cubans have poured in.
Polls of the community have confirmed a tilt toward engagement,
especially through travel. A survey in April 2007 by Florida
International University found that 55.2 percent said they favored
"unrestricted" travel to Cuba for all Americans — a reversal from three
years earlier, when 53.7 percent said they opposed it.
An even larger proportion, 64 percent, said they wanted a return to
pre-2004 rules, which allowed one trip per year.
Many Cubans, it seems, feel like Mr. Martin, 53, an engineer who left
Cuba in 1994. He tried to return for a visit in 2002 only to have the
Cuban government deny his visa request for five years. Now after finally
visiting in 2007, he cannot go back until 2010 because of American law.
"The Cuban people are like a ping-pong ball," said Mr. Martin, who
recently lent his support to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties
Union that seeks to overturn the law. "The Cuban government hits us hard
one way, then the American government hits us back just as hard."
Among some Cuban-Americans, there are also signs of fatigue with a
47-year-old policy that has emphasized isolating the island.
No one here seems to expect much from the current Cuban president, Raúl
Castro, whom even the most moderate exiles see as an extension of his
brother Fidel, but there is a sense that Cuba today might be more
pliable politically and that Cuban-Americans need to get involved.
The warm reception Mr. Obama received at the Cuban American National
Foundation's luncheon on May 23 — even as he pushed for more engagement
with Cuba — made public what scholars like Mr. Pérez have described as a
sea change in approach. After years of bellicosity, contact has come to
be seen by some as a political weapon.
After Mr. Obama's speech, Jorge Mas Santos, chairman of the foundation
and the son of its founder, stood under a palm frond and explained. "We
see travel as our only vehicle of changing things in Cuba," Mr. Santos
said. "Cuban-Americans are our foot soldiers."
And yet, some scholars and pollsters say, a focus on Cuba comes with
risks. Demographics are not necessarily destiny in Miami because the
Cuban-Americans most likely to vote favor a more conservative stance.
The Florida International University poll found that the 55.2 percent
majority favoring unrestricted travel was the product of a sharp divide
— 74 percent of nonregistered voters supported the idea, while 58
percent of the registered voters opposed it. "You want to know how the
Cuban-American community feels, look at the last election," said Frank
Calzon, executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba. "Every time
some of these clowns come out, the elections demonstrate — time and
again — that if there is a generational shift, it has been greatly
overestimated."
In fact, Democrats may be missing the bigger picture. Sergio Bendixen,
who has spent years conducting polls in South Florida, said that Cubans
now made up only about 45 percent of Florida's Hispanic registered
voters, down from 75 percent eight years ago.
Even as the overall Hispanic vote continues to grow, Mr. Bendixen said,
the Democrats seem stuck in the past, looking primarily for victory
among the Cubans.
"What do you gain by focusing your campaign on travel restrictions and
remittance restrictions?" Mr. Bendixen said. "I don't get it. It's
turning off more than half the electorate that's not Cuban, and the
people who would benefit from a change are a very small slice of the
Cuban electorate. It's a mistaken strategy."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/us/01florida.html?em&ex=1212465600&en=d772d68d7f69a648&ei=5087%0A
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