WASHINGTON’S SOUTH FLORIDA POLICY
By Jack A. Smith
The Bush political dynasty of Texas owes a great debt to the right-wing Cuban-American community of southern Florida.
George W. Bush may be said to owe his convoluted election to the presidency to this solid bloc of conservative voters which -- with assistance from the U.S. Supreme Court -- handed him a ballot box triumph in the state and, as it turned out, the country. And he’s counting on Florida’s electoral votes to help reelect him in 2004 in order to pursue his war on terrorism, possibly -- the government has been hinting lately -- to the beaches of Cuba itself.
Gov. Jeb Bush, the president’s brother, owes his first election to these fanatical opponents of Cuban President Fidel Castro’s socialist government, and he expects this loyal constituency to put him over the top next November.
The Bush brothers made a down payment on their political debt two years ago when they opposed returning the kidnapped child Elian Gonzalez to his family in Cuba. On May 20 they made full restitution, at least for now.
“Nearly a half century ago,” President Bush told an enraptured crowd of thousands in Miami, “Cuba’s independence and the hopes for democracy were hijacked by a brutal dictator who cares everything for his own power and nada [nothing] for the Cuban people. In an era where markets have brought prosperity and empowerment, this leader clings to a bankrupt ideology that has brought Cuba’s workers and farmers and families nothing -- nothing -- but isolation and misery.”
With these words, and following in the tradition of President Bush the First, the current resident of the White House declared he would not lift the Yankee superpower’s four-decade economic and trade blockade of Cuba, or end travel constraints on American citizens who wish to visit the island, or eliminate any of the multitude of obstacles Washington has thrust into the Havana government’s path of economic, political and social development since the last U.S. puppet dictator, Fulgencio Batista, was deposed by the power of the people on Jan. 1, 1959.
The crowd was ecstatic, roaring approval at Bush’s every theatrical bully-boy challenge to the Cuban government. Later that day, the Bush brothers received $2 million in contributions from the Cuban-American community in a $25,000-per-couple Republican Party fund raiser. And they probably were given Florida as well, at least for the next two elections.
It has long been known in Washington that the State Department does not have a Cuba Policy, but what has been termed a South Florida Policy instead. This is doubly true for the Brothers Bush because they owe their political power directly to the state’s concentration of Cuban counter-revolutionary expatriates. Upon assuming office, Bush populated the higher ranks of the State Department with anticommunist Cold Warriors such as Otto Reich, who spend their days concocting schemes to replace President Castro and socialism with a free-market client regime which would restore Havana to its glory days as a dependent, corrupt playground for rich Americans. Most recently, the Bush administration has absurdly depicted Cuba as a terrorist state deeply enmeshed in creating biological weapons of mass destruction intended for use against innocent civilians in the Land of the Free. As such, Cuba is now a legitimate target for trigger-finger Bush's war on terrorism.
Outside of the United States, however, virtually every other country in the world has gone on record opposing the crippling sanctions against Cuba and the demonization of its government and 12 million people. A broad movement to end both sanctions and the travel ban and to remove the Cold War barricades is also growing within the U.S. -- including sectors of the business and agricultural communities anxious to market goods and services to Cuba -- although this is rarely reflected by the average opportunist politician. President Jimmy Carter’s recent visit to Cuba is an example of this new mood.
Unfortunately, every time it appears Washington is finally prepared to take some steps toward rapprochement, some reactionary windbag of a political leader invokes the South Florida Policy and the initiative dissipates in a farrago of Cold War platitudes. To which we can only reply with heartfelt conviction, Cuba si, bloqueo no! Hasta la victoria siempre!