Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Among exile elite, a shift over Cuba-US policy

http://news.yahoo.com/among-exile-elite-shift-over-cuba-us-policy-160227929.html?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed
 
 
Among exile elite, a shift over Cuba-US policy
 
Associated Press By LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ
 
MIAMI (AP) — 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.
 
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.
 
View galleryFILE- In this In this Dec. 11, 2013 file photo, 
developer&nbsp;&hellip;
FILE- In this In this Dec. 11, 2013 file photo, developer and art 
collector Jorge Perez, poses for a …
"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 Republican Party 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. 
Miami's Felipe Valls, owner of the famed exile gathering spot Versailles 
Restaurant, also owns the property across the street where salsa bands 
from the island have headlined. Valls did not respond to messages left 
by The Associated Press.
 
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.
-- 
Namib
.....
Sherif of Wazan: Great Raisuli, we have lost everything. All is drifting 
on the wind as you said. We have lost everything.
Raisuli: Sherif, is there not one thing in your life that is worth 
losing everything for?
[they both begin to laugh]

 Among exile elite, a shift over Cuba-US policy
 
Dai retta a uno che a Cuba c'è stato: se finisce l'embargo, finisce anche il 
regime.
I Cubani non aspettano altro che arrivino i dollari per mandare al diavolo 
il comunismo una volta per tutte.
Scommetterei che appena tira le cuoia Fidel (patrimonio di 900 milioni di 
dollari, fonte Forbes) succede.
 
Carlo "Jurassic Park"
 

 anche il regime.
 
Ne sono convinto anch'io. Paradossalmente, la lunga vita del comunismo 
cubano deve quasi tutto all'astuzia strategica statunitense.


 cubano deve quasi tutto all'astuzia strategica statunitense.
 
per la politica USA, Cuba non e´ un nemico da sconfiggere, ma un punto nei programmi elettorali di alcune provincie della Florida.

 per la politica USA, Cuba non eŽ un nemico da sconfiggere, ma un punto nei programmi elettorali di alcune provincie della Florida.
 
E invece potrebbe essere un'opportunità di profitto.



fonte al di sotto di ogni sospetto, eh..

 Ne sono convinto anch'io
 
hai notato che sei sempre convinto anche te di quello che scrivono i reazionari?

 E invece potrebbe essere un'opportunità di profitto.
 
e´ la democrazia: devi massimizzare i voti, non il profitto.


E tu saresti quello che si lamenta sempre dell'argomento ad hominem?!


non vedo l'ad hominem nel constatare che qualsiasi cazzata reazionaria sparata da chicchessia vede sempre il tuo entusiasta appoggio.