In Cuba, Castro has publicly praised the new president. Privately, he had a friend ask
Jimmy Carter to relay the message to Clinton that he would refrain from
making provocative comments about the new president for at least his first year in
office and hoped that Carter would advise Clinton to do likewise.
What the President doesn’t want to hear,” a
White House insider confided on the con-
dition that I not name him, “are the words
Cuba and Castro, because they ring with the sound of
low-priority dilemma.” The adviser was quick to point
out that “Clinton has strong ideas on the issue, but it’s
far from his priority.”‘
“The embargo itself makes no sense,” said a
National Security official, also on condition of
anonymity, “but the fact is that the possible reward for dropping it doesn’t correspond with the political risk.
Carter tried to open up with Castro and got burned by the boat lift,” he said, referring to Castro’s opening of
the port of Mariel in April, 1980. Although Castro
claimed his decision to allow Cubans-including
many “undesirables”-to emigrate to the United
States was the result of U.S. provocations, the U.S.
policy team saw it as a mean trick to pull during an
election year against the first U.S. president to behave
decently toward Cuba.
A young Arkansas governor was also stung by the Mariel ploy. Lacking facilities to process all the
incoming Cubans, President Carter sent thousands of them to Fort Chafee, Arkansas, where they subse-
quently rioted, demanding to be released. Bill Clinton
was embarrassed by the confrontation between the Marielitos and the local population who insisted he act to control these “foreigners” who were occupying
Ozark mountain village streets and screaming in an alien language. Clinton did restore order, but the inci-
dent damaged him as much as Carter. Indeed, it may have been a contributing factor in both of their elec- toral defeats in 1980.
Thirteen years have elapsed since the Mariel exo- dus, but the old wounds still smart in the State
Saul Landau is a senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. His most recent book is Guerrilla Wars in Central America (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993).
Department and White House. Secretary of State
Warren Christopher, who was Under Secretary in
1980, told a Meet the Press panel in February that he
foresaw no improvement in relations with Cuba so
long as Castro remains in power.
Since his electoral victory, Clinton has said little
publicly about Cuba, but on February 19 he reiterated
a hard line in response to a letter from Congressman
Charles Rangel (D-NY) who questioned the appropri- ateness of the U.S. embargo. Stressing “support for
democracy” as the guiding principle for policy “not only to Cuba, but to Haiti, Peru and to our relationship
with all other countries throughout the hemisphere and
the world,” Clinton declared that “I do not believe the
United States can have a normal relationship with any country that has abandoned democracy, including
Cuba.”
In Cuba, Castro has publicly praised the new presi-
dent. Privately he had a friend ask Jimmy Carter to relay the message to Clinton that he would refrain
from making provocative comments about the new
president for at least his first year in office and hoped that Carter would advise Clinton to do likewise. 2 He
told the friend that he thought Clinton was a responsi-
ble politician and consequently would not see action
against Cuba as a priority. 3 Despite the tough tone of
the Clinton letter to Rangel, Fidel’s appraisal of the
president’s agenda seems accurate.
he Clinton transition advisors inadvertently
sparked a controversy around the Cuba issue
when they floated the name of Mario Baeza, a
black Cuban American, to be Assistant Secretary of
State for Inter-American Affairs. Baeza was an ideal
“diversity” candidate, a Harvard Law School graduate
and a New York lawyer with a leading Wall Street
firm. He was practically unknown in the Latin
American policy world, but the Clinton insiders who
VOL XXVI, No 5 MAY 199335 VOL XXVI, No 5 MAY 1993 35REPORT ON US POLICY
knew him called him a Renaissance man, brilliant of
intellect, talented as an artist, and a whiz at corporate
takeovers. More important, but unseen by most ana-
lysts, Baeza represented a different paradigm for U.S.
Cuba policy. He was a candidate of the anti-Castro
Cubans who were registered Democrats, and who
abhorred the hard-line CIA infiltration tactics of the
past. Baeza did not buy into the language, or indeed
the very epistemology of the 30-plus-year-old war
against Castro.
The Baeza nomination antagonized Jorge Mils
Canosa and his Miami-based Cuban American
National Foundation (CANF) cohorts. Baeza was not
one of them; neither his skin color nor politics
matched the interests of CANF board members. “Soft
on Castro,” said callers
on Spanish-language
radio stations in South
Florida, citing as proof
Baeza’s attendance at a
1992 conference in
Havana to look at busi-
ness opportunities in
Cuba. In response to this
opposition, the Ivy
League set and people on
the Left began to rally to
Baeza’s cause.
The opposition from Cubans from the Mariel boa
the Right was successful. ansas in 1980. The incide
In 1993 Jorge Mds Can- Clinton’s defeat in the guber
osa is the most powerful Cuban American. Mdis
Canosa was among the half a million Cuban property
owners, professionals and Batista supporters and func-
tionaries (his father was a Batista official) who were
welcomed by U.S. authorities in 1959 and 1960. He
controls CANF, and 16 lobbying groups and PACs all
directed at shaping a U.S. policy that tightens a noose
around the economic neck of Cuba.
CANF’s passion to overturn Castro is reflected by
some Democrats in the Clinton camp, including
Congressman Robert Torricelli, author of the 1992 so-
called Cuba Democracy Act, which penalized U.S.
subsidiaries trading with Cuba as well as other nations
who engage in commerce with the island. The New
Jersey Democrat, also Chair of the Western
Hemisphere Subcommittee, is liberal on domestic
issues, but assumes a missionary posture when he
hears Castro’s name. “Castro will fall in months, not
years,” he predicted. 4 Torricelli believes that by clos-
ing loopholes in the embargo while Cubans live under
extreme austerity, the bill will catalyze existing anger
and the populace will rise up and throw Castro and
company out–i la Rumania.
Torricelli led the congressional chorus against
Baeza. Faced with the level of negative publicity that
Mis Canosa promised should Clinton persist with
Baeza, the Administration withdrew his name.
Nevertheless, the Baeza nomination startled CANF
leaders. They had anticipated that the Clinton people
would have consulted them before announcing a candi-
date. CANF proposed its own nominee, Simon Ferro, a
man whose views on Cuba policy closely parallel those
of Mds Canosa. The Foundation also let it be known
that it would accept other candidates provided that they
agreed with the policy of tightening the embargo.
The Clinton Latin America policy team formulated
a new short list designed to avoid Mis Canosa’s ire,
and chose Alexander Watson to be the point man on
policy south of the border. Watson, a career diplomat
who served as ambassador to Peru and was number
two at the United
Nations until February,
1993, was described by
the anonymous national
security official as a
“decent chap who will
bring a proper Latin
American perspective to
the job-not a Cuba
focus.”
The conflict over the
Baeza nomination dra-
matized to the entire for-
rift riot at Fort Chaffee, Ark- eign-policy community
t may have contributed to that the battle over Cuba atorial election that year. policy was being waged
largely outside of government circles. That Mgs
Canosa’s objection could derail Baeza’s appointment
brought reactions from sectors that had not been
focused on Cuban or Latin American policy. The 42-
member House Congressional Black Caucus voiced
its support for Baeza, declaring that the opposition to
him was racially based. Charles Rangel drafted a bill,
now being circulated for support, to “drop the embar-
go.” While the bill is unlikely to gain wide backing, it
indicates that the anger sparked by the Baeza incident
has led to increased attention to CANF’s “undue influ-
ence” on policy.
Editorial writers and pundits also began to question
the unwarranted authority of this Cuba lobby. Richard
Cohen, a syndicated columnist with the Washington
Post raised questions about the race factor in CANF’s
opposition to Baeza and about the foundation’s undue
influence. “One knowledgeable senator put it to me
this way,” wrote Cohen, “‘Granting M~is Canosa a
veto power of the entire hemisphere is a very danger-
ous move.’ He understated matters. It’s repugnant.” 5
Cohen’s column was reprinted in the Miami Herald
and brought forth a furious op-ed piece by Mdis
Canosa, who stopped just short of overtly threatening
that he would reopen his battle with the Herald.
36 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 36REPORT ON US POLICY
he logic of Rangel’s approach-drop the embar-
go, restore relations, and allow natural events to
take their course-is embraced by a group of
anti-Castro Cubans who oppose Mis Canosa’s self-
declared monopoly on opinions in the Cuban-
American community. Cambio Cubano, a group head-
ed by Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo and backed by business
and professional sectors, took issue with CANF poli-
cies at a National Press Club conference in January.
Gutierrez Menoyo accused Mis Canosa and his fol-
lowers of being interested in making money from a
new Cuba, not in patriotic ideals.
Menoyo stressed “a peaceful politics of love, not
revenge.” If the current policy prevails, Menoyo said,
“we fear civil war, a blood bath and
foreign intervention. We want to
avoid this. The people of Cuba don’t
want the U.S. marines again deter-
mining our destiny.” At the press
conference, Menoyo backed the eas-
ing of the blockade in return for
democratic openings in Cuba.
Menoyo also told the media that
unlike CANF supporters, the mem-
bers of Cambio Cubano had voted
Democrat and that President Clinton
ought to listen to them as representa-
tives of the community. 6
As anti-CANF elements lobbied in
February against the embargo and
other harsh anti-Cuba measures, Mis The “Friendshi
Canosa-controlled legislators urged Pastors for Peace
President Clinton to take the 30- nomic embargo I
year-old U.S. trade embargo against
Cuba to the United Nations, making it international.
Rep. Lincoln Diaz Balart (R-Fla.), who wrote the reso-
lution, was joined by Sen. Connie Mack (R-Fla.), Rep.
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), and Rep. Robert
Torricelli (D-NJ). They are asking President Clinton
to tighten the trade embargo because of alleged Cuban
human-rights violations. Such gestures keep the Cuba
issue hot even though such a resolution is unlikely to
receive much support at a United Nations that in 1992
voted overwhelmingly to condemn the U.S. embargo
against Cuba.
Members of Congress, White House staff and expe-
rienced reporters generally agree that to change Cuba
policy, alternative domestic constituencies need to
materialize to challenge CANF on the issues and show
they can exercise some political clout. “They’ve got
about a year to get their act together, I would say,” my
confidant, the Clinton insider said, “or else we’ll prob-
ably be stuck with the same old policy that on the one
hand has failed to produce the desired results and that
on the other hand works to shut down political space
in Cuba.”
p c as
As governments in the hemisphere move toward
new levels of economic integration, following the path
of transnational business and banking, U.S.-Cuban
relations remain stuck in the past. The obsession that
began with President Eisenhower shortly after Castro
and the guerrillas marched triumphantly into Havana
in January, 1959 has endured for over 34 years and
nine successive U.S. presidents. The Cuban
Revolution looms as a pernicious challenge to U.S.
power. Given the legacy of imperial hubris as a guid-
ing principle for behavior in the Caribbean and Latin
America, it is as if the Cuba fixation is somehow
indelibly etched in the oval-office chairs and absorbed
osmotically by each successive president, since none
seems to escape its dictates.
In 1964 the United States suc-
ceeded in twisting the arms of
Latin American governments to
eject Cuba from the Organization
of American States and most other
hemispheric organizations. And
Washington convinced these less-
than-courageous governments to
break diplomatic relations with the
Communist island. There was of
course a Cold-War pretext for
these actions in the 1960s. Since
then, almost all of Latin America
and the Caribbean has restored
relations with Cuba, and the
nent” caravan of region’s foreign ministers routine-
hallenged the eco- ly try to persuade Washington to
t year. let go of its obsession and accept
Cuba as another Third World
nation, albeit one that distinguished itself from the rest
by playing a significant role on the world stage for 30
years.
The international community, says Michael Manley,
former prime minister of Jamaica, has “separated the
Cuba issue into two parts. Whatever one thinks of the
Cuban regime is one issue, but the U.S. embargo is an
anachronism from the past which impedes rational
economic development for the region. The embargo
has neither international support nor respect. Its main-
tenance is seen as an extension of the political interest
of a right-wing Cuban business group, a kind of tail
wagging the dog.” 7
Despite such articulate arguments for a rethinking of
Cuba policy, change is not in the offing. “There are
some things that might force the Cuba issue back into
rationality,” the national security official offered. “If
the foreign drilling companies locate a large oil
reserve we might be forced to reevaluate. Short of
that, or the outbreak of civil war in Cuba, don’t look
for lots of changes, or for that matter much mention of
Cuba in the headlines for the next few years.”
Clinton’s Cuba Policy: A Low-Priority Dilemma
1. Conversation with author, January 31, 1993. In July, 1992,
Clinton criticized Bush for not putting “the hammer to Fidel
Castro.” On October 11, 1992, Clinton sent a letter to Congress-
man Torricelli and Florida Senator Bob Graham (R-Fla) congratu-
lating them for the passage of the Cuban Democracy Act. “1
want to reaffirm my support for the Cuban Democracy Act,” he
wrote. “Fidel Castro remains one of the world’s most ruthless
dictators, and the Cuban people are deprived of their most basic
human rights.” In an interview by Diane Sawyer on Prime Time
on March 4, when asked what he would like to say to Castro if
he walked into the room, Clinton replied, “Haven’t you learned
that your system is no good? Give the Cubans their freedom.
2. Conversation with George McGovern, December, 1992.
3. Conversation between author and former head of state who
spoke with Castro in January, 1993.
4. Bergen County Record, February 24, 1993.
5. Washington Post, February 4, 1993.
6. Among Menoyo’s supporters are Max Lesnick, publisher of the
liberal anti-Castro magazine Replica, Bernardo Benes, a banker
who backed Jimmy Carter’s human-rights policies, and Alfredo
Duran, a successful Miami lawyer.
7. Conversation with author, March 18, 1993.
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