Among exile elite, a shift over Cuba-US policy

Posted on Saturday, 02.08.14

Among exile elite, a shift over Cuba-US policy
BY LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ
ASSOCIATED PRESS

MIAMI -- When Miami's new art museum opened in December, namesake Jorge
Perez spoke easily about a once-taboo topic among Cuban-American
powerbrokers: his desire to increase artistic exchanges with those on
the communist island.

Then, this week, billionaire sugar baron Alfonso Fanjul — whose family's
business was seized by Fidel Castro in 1959 — spoke publicly for the
first time about investing back in Cuba.

Both men are among a growing number of powerful South Florida
Cuban-American business, civic and political leaders breaking the
long-held public line on U.S. relations with Cuba and the Castro
government. For all the talk of changing attitudes among
second-generation Cuban-Americans and newer Cuban arrivals, older
powerbrokers have remained the guardians of the U.S government's
five-decade economic and travel embargo against Cuba and have for years
used their political influence to block any major changes.

"If you set a policy in place to seek a certain set of objectives. After
a while, if those objectives are not achieved, you either changed your
policies or you change your objectives, "said businessman and former
Ambassador to Belgium, Paul Cejas, who also left Cuba shortly after the
revolution. "Diplomacy is a tool of policy. It's a tool of engagement.
It's used with even the most bitter of our enemies,"

Fanjul's comments were a bombshell among the elite Cuban exiles in South
Florida, even though he did not advocate an end to the decades old U.S.
Embargo. In an interview with The Washington Post, the CEO of Fanjul
Corp., who has long opposed the Cuban government, spoke of his recent
trips to the island and his interest in bringing the family's vast sugar
holdings back there. He wouldn't say whether that would be contingent on
the deaths of President Raul Castro and brother Fidel Castro or on the
end of the island nation's communist system. Fanjul declined to be
interviewed by The Associated Press.

For his part, Perez, an avowed capitalist and a major force behind
Miami's revitalization, is unapologetic about his desire to see Cuban
art in the Perez Art Museum Miami. Perez acknowledged that some artists
may have ties to the Castro government but said the exchanges do more
good than a unilateral policy against the island.

"Just like I am really anti-communist, I am also really
anti-imperialist," he said.

On Friday, former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who is running for the
office again, this time as a Democrat, said on Bill Maher's HBO show
that he doesn't think the embargo has worked and agreed with Maher that
Cuban Americans need to stand up to the Cuban regime.

Current Republican Gov. Rick Scott said Crist's statements were insulting.

He said: "Our Cuban community needs to be stood up for...The importance
of maintaining the embargo is that it stands for the Cuban people's
right to be free."

Pepe Hernandez is head of the Cuban American National Foundation, once
the leading exile lobby against dialogue with those on the island. In
recent years it has encouraged more exchanges, creating something of a
rift in the community, but the group is now expanding and will soon open
new offices in the heart of Little Havana.

"We are finally bridging the generation gap — a gap that all exile
communities have," Hernandez said.

Despite some support for Fanjul after his Post interview, the response
from several Cuban exile political leaders was swift and harsh: "I am
outraged by reports that a fellow Cuban-American, who has witnessed the
atrocities inflicted by the Castro regime, has apparently chosen
short-term profit over standing with the Cuban people," said South
Florida Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, whose family also fled the
revolution.

Fellow GOP representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen posted on Twitter: "Talked
about #Fanjul's pathetic idea of investing in the #Castro regime while
#Cubans suffer."

But U.S. Rep. Joe Garcia, a Democrat and the son of Cuban exiles, said
Fanjul was simply voicing the issues many Cuban-Americans wrestle with.

Since the embargo's imposition in the early 1960s, shortly after Fidel
Castro's communist revolution overthrew a pro-U.S. military
dictatorship, the policy has prohibited U.S. companies and citizens from
conducting most trade with the island and, with some exceptions,
visiting it. Until recently, politicians and business leaders who
advocated for the embargo's elimination, or even loosening, incurred the
wrath of the Cuban-American community, which had the money and power to
make its views stick.

In 2000, a small bipartisan group of Cuban exile business leaders,
including Cejas, began to rethink their position. Their ranks have grown
as they've pushed for shifts in U.S. policy that, with changes in
Havana, now allow hundreds of thousands of Cuban-Americans to visit the
island annually and send money to relatives there. Travel restrictions
also have been loosened, making visits easier for Americans not of Cuban
descent.

Although Congress is unlikely to eliminate the embargo anytime soon, the
Obama administration or its successor could go further and allow Cuba to
buy U.S. imports with cash, let non-Cubans invest in businesses on the
island, and ease travel even more for non-Cubans, ideas that Fanjul
appears to support.

Still, South Florida's older exile community largely remained united in
public, even as privately more powerbrokers began to break with the
orthodoxy. Some quietly visited the island, such as during Pope Benedict
XVI's 2012 trip to Cuba. Others became open to business opportunities.

In the Post interview, Fanjul said his primary desire was to reconnect
with his roots. But he also seemed to be appealing to the U.S.
government. Fanjul is close to former President Bill Clinton and his
wife, Hillary, who is considering a White House run in 2016.

"Right now there's no way for us to consider investing in Cuba. How can
you work a deal if you're not legally allowed to do it?" he told the
paper. "If there's an arrangement within Cuba and the United States, and
legally it can be done and there's a proper framework set up and in
place, then we will look at that possibility."

He also sent a note of caution to communist leaders: "Cuba has to
presumably satisfy the requirements that investors need, which are
primarily a return on investment and security of the investment, so they
feel comfortable with what they're doing."

Mauricio Claver-Carone, who serves on the board of the anti-Castro
U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, which opposes people-to-people travel, said he
stills views Fanjul as an exception and suggested any move by Fanjul to
do business with the island would backfire. "Alfy Fanjul needs our
community more than the community needs him," Claver-Carone said.

But the PAC may still need the Fanjuls. In the past five years, the
family and top employees have given the PAC more than $40,000.

Source: MIAMI: Among exile elite, a shift over Cuba-US policy - Business
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http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/02/08/3921346/among-exile-elite-a-shift-over.html