T V. MARTI IS A CLASSIC POLITICAL PORK BAR- . rel. Despite all the high-minded rhetoric about bring- ing the truth to the Cuban people, T.V. Marti is primarily a payoff to right-wing Cuban exiles who delivered Florida to the Bush campaign and made sizeable contributions to friendly candidates for Congress. After hatching Radio Marti in the early 1980s, the Na- tional Security Council of the Reagan White House encour- aged the creation of a front organization that would sell the plan to the press, Congress and the public. That organization is the Cuban American National Foundation. Under the leadership of veteran Castro-hater Jorge Mis Canosa, CANF has since taken on a life of its own and become one of the most effective lobbies on Capitol Hill. Radio and T.V. Marti are the showpieces of the foundation’s efforts. Through its political action committee, CANF has do- nated generously to allies on Capitol Hill and severely punished detractors, using voting records on Radio and T.V. Marti as the litmus test. Along with the foundation, Mds Canosa himself has grown into a political powerhouse. The former broadcaster on the CIA’s Radio Swan has become the patron of the most conservative faction of the Cuban exile community, and now aspires to replace Fidel Castro as president of Cuba. Mis was appointed the first and only chair of the presidential advisory board that overseas Radio and T.V. Marti, and his tight-knit group of right-wing exiles exercises great influence over the operation of the stations. The Radio and T.V. Marti offices are a microcosm of the Byzantine politics of the South Florida exile community. They are perpetually embroiled in intrigue, personalism and the mentality that the ends justify the means. They have had not a few brushes with the law, and anyone considered soft on Castro or hard on Mis is purged. For example, Ernesto Betancourt, the longtime director of Radio Marti, was ousted this spring after he implied that Mis was using the station to further his own political ambitions. Key positions at the stations are held by trusted insiders, who administer in an authoritarian style, according to an unpublished report by the Voice of America, the station’s During the Reagan years, a new, more sophisticated form of right-wing politics arose in the community.” The Republicans elevated Cuban-Americans to high ranks within the foreign policy establishment and the party hierarchy. Though also an effort to forge a winning electoral strategy in Florida (a traditionally Democratic state), it became a way of guaranteeing the Republicans a “minority” constituency. Influential in this process was a powerful lobbying organization, the Cuban American National Foundation, founded in Washington in 1980. The Foundation lobbied Congress in favor of Radio and T.V. Marti, aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, and even aid to Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA of Angola. It managed to get a contract from the Immigration i`id Naturalization Service to process Cu- bans in third countries en route to the United States. The The Cuban American Foundation’s Jorge Mas Canosa: a powerbroker who has made anti-Castro politics a litmus test of conservatism parent within USIA. Annual turnover among the Radio Marti staff is in excess of 25%, and morale among those who remain is low. VOA veterans grumble that Radio Marti’s low journalistic standards tarnish the image of the traditionally responsible VOA international service. Spanish-language stations and other program producers in Miami have the inside track on Radio Marti contracts, and frequent internal financial irregularities have been uncovered. The pervasive involvement of right-wing exiles in the operation of Radio Marti is a major source of aggravation to the Cuban government. “In whose hands is [T.V. Marti] going to be?” asked Carlos Aldana, of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party and Cuba’s point-man on the issue. If the Cuban leadership concludes that T.V. Marti is controlled by the Cuban-American National Foundation, its opposition to the station will be all the more severe and unyielding. JSN
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