50 Years, 90 Miles

50 years ago today, as 1958 came to a close, so did one unpopular Cuban dictatorship, only to be replaced by a significantly more oppressive and longer-lived one. I fall squarely into the camp that believes that U.S. policy toward Cuba, particularly our mystifyingly anti-capitalist trade embargo in addition to restrictions on travel and currency exchange, has to at least a small extent exacerbated an awful situation and emboldened what ought to have been a weak regime, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union.

On this bleak anniversary I'm heartened somewhat by the fact that Barack Obama is making at least some motions toward easing some of the more ridiculous restrictions. To be sure, I'm less than thrilled by the fact that Obama has backed off his previous support of full trade normalization in order to, just like nearly every other mainstream presidential candidate in recent history, kiss some Floridian ass. However, were Obama to at least reopen travel for Cuban Americans (who, as per a George W. Bush-imposed limit that had a fairly decent level of support within the Cuban community, can currently visit Cuba once every three years) and remove the $300 limit on sending money to family in Cuba, that itself would be far more progress than any post-Cold War president has overseen. And that's not for nothing:

“U.S. Cuba policy has not been a foreign policy,” explained Shannon O’Neil, the Douglas Dillon Fellow for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “It’s been a domestic policy, based on the Cuban vote in Florida.” In 2000 and 2004, George W. Bush relied on the Cuban vote to carry Florida by narrow margins. Without the Sunshine State, he would not have won either election.

In 2008, however, the equation changed, as Obama won while carrying just 35 percent of the Cuban-American vote in Florida. “The Cubans voted overwhelmingly against Obama,” said Daniel Erikson, director of Caribbean programs at the Inter-American Dialogue and author of The Cuba Wars. “So what the November election shows is that he did not need the Cuban vote to win Florida, and he did not need the Florida vote to win the presidential election.”

While I take the point that Cuba policy for the last few decades has really been little more than thinly veiled electoral strategy (a tendency that Bill Clinton and other Democrats are as guilty of perpetuating as the Republicans who tend to benefit more from it), this is misleading. Erikson fails to mention that 35% is the largest proportion any Democrat has won from Cuban Americans in quite a long time: compare this with George Bush's haul of up to 76% of Cubans' votes in Florida in 2004, a year that Republicans experienced relative success up and down the ticket, including the election of the first Cuban to the U.S. Senate. Despite all that 2004 was was still a substantial improvement for Democrats as compared to 2000, when Bush picked up 81% (a figure that may be somewhat inflated due to lingering resentment toward the Clinton administration over the Elian Gonzalez ordeal in addition to Bush's particularly strong courtship that year of Cuban voters.) The fact is, if Cubans were to begin to split their votes any closer to down the middle (let alone joining other Hispanics' increasingly overwhelming break toward Democrats), Florida would be a fairly solidly blue state every time.

The purpose of bringing up Cubans' electoral history is to point out that these really is as good as circumstances will get for would-be Cuba policy reformers. Obama brings with him an unprecedented level of support (for a Democrat) from Cubans, particularly from the ever-growing, less ideologically monolithic group of younger, pragmatic Cuban Americans. And not only that, but, as my handful of loyal readers might recall, Cuban American support for an end to the embargo is at an all-time high.

With the Castros' time undoubtedly coming to its end, at this point an end to the embargo is very close to "too little, too late" territory. If Obama is serious enough about reform to salvage some semblance of American dignity in this area after 50 years' worth of embarrassing failed policy--not to mention the added bonus of garnering favor among a rising Cuban generation by encouraging American investment in a country that will face dramatic change soon--now's the time.

Photo by DCvision2006, released under Creative Commons.

change some people might have trouble believing in

Sean Quinn:

After the rally, we witnessed a near-street riot involving the exiting McCain crowd and two Cuban-American Obama supporters. Tony Garcia, 63, and Raul Sorando, 31, were suddenly surrounded by an angry mob. There is a moment in a crowd when something goes from mere yelling to a feeling of danger, and that's what we witnessed. As photographers and police raced to the scene, the crowd elevated from stable to fast-moving scrum, and the two men were surrounded on all sides as we raced to the circle.

The event maybe lasted a minute, two at the most, before police competently managed to hustle the two away from the scene and out of the danger zone. Only FiveThirtyEight tracked the two men down for comment, a quarter mile down the street.

"People were screaming 'Terrorist!' 'Communist!' 'Socialist!'" Sorando said when we caught up with him. "I had a guy tell me he was gonna kill me."

Asked what had precipitated the event, "We were just chanting 'Obama!' and holding our signs. That was it. And the crowd suddenly got crazy."

Garcia told us that the man who originally had warned the two it was his property when they had first tried to attend the rally with Obama T-shirts was one of the agitators. Coming up just before the scene started getting out of hand, the man whispered in Garcia's ear, "I'm gonna beat you up the next time I see you." Garcia described him for us: "a big stocky man wearing a tweed jacket." He used hand motions to emphasize this was a large guy. We went back to look for the gentleman twenty minutes after the incident but didn't find him.

Even within my own family I've been called a Communist, a traitor, a disgrace to my heritage, a liberal motherfucker, and many others. Okay, those are mostly just this one uncle I have when he gets drunk, but still. Usually "naive" is the term used in polite company.

If the election, Florida in particular, goes the way it seems now that it probably will, the Cuban community in SoFla will be in for what could be a painful reckoning. We have to deal with the influx of non-Cuban Hispanics in Florida which will mean suddenly losing the status of Most Favored Demographic--brown people who hate Democrats. The fading of the Castros within the next few years. The loss of any or all of the Cuban Mafia in Congress (not to mention the possible upcoming rejection of Mel Martinez in 2010.) The rise of a newer, less politically monolithic generation, as exemplified by Joe Garcia, and generational clash that may only begin to materialize this Tuesday. The questioning of priorities of single-issue anti-communist voters in the face of wars and the economy pretty much exploding and God knows what else.

Cubans need to get their act together. If Quinn's story and my hunches are even the slightest indication, we're in for some nasty stuff, the likes of which we're not quite used to.

coconuts

A while back my mom came and looked over my shoulder while I was filling out college applications online. "Hispanic?" she asked, noting that the little box under "race/ethnicity" ws checked.

"Yeah," I answered. "What else would I be?"

"Jon, we're white."

Which is technically true, I guess, even if I don't self-identify as such. Not that that really means anything: for every fellow Spanish-speaking guy whose skin is darker than mine, there's another two or three people who make conversation by correctly assuming I speak the language just by looking at me. Maybe I'm white, but I'm probably not white white.

My mom's reaction to "Hispanic" isn't unusual. As Richard Rodriguez notes, it was more or less invented by the Nixon administration and it has no real historical basis, so I consider resistance to such an imposition to be perfectly valid.

I don't mind "Hispanic." I'm aware that it was basically invented for people like me (not connected enough with Latin America that a foreign sounding word like "Latino" seems perfect, but not quite able to get away without a modifier for "American") but whatever sense of authenticity it might lack, it's still about as accurate as you're gonna get, precisely because it was invented for me. Not any less American, but something else, too.

Against our parents

Here's a post yesterday over at Daily Kos. I've appreciated the hell out of Kos lending his considerable voice and influence to the three SoFla congressional races and his enthusiasm for the candidates there, Annette Taddeo, Raul Martinez, and Joe Garcia. He seems to get the frustration over the fact that my beloved hometown is represented by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart.

(And, I note paranthetically, it's a great post. Garcia deserves the recognition he's gotten from all the lefty blogs. He's a Cuban Democrat who's had the unenviable task of reforming the Cuban American National Foundation, which had been basically a local arm of the GOP for most of my life, when they put Garcia in charge. He's got solid name ID and good fundraising. I look forward to him wiping the floor with Mario D-B in November.)

So Kos's heart is in the right place, but I still had a moment there where I reacted just like when some stoner or college freshman or Michael Moore takes time to tell me why Castro's not such a bad guy and that he does a lot of really cool things for his people, dude, like give them awesome awesome health care and education and the fascist American government really has a thing or two to learn from guys like him. (I'm paraphrasing.) Whenever someone brings up

the corrupt Cuban exile community

I have to pause for a second. Obviously Kos was really referring to that one extremely active and right-wing minority of a minority of a minority; he's not trying to slur Cubans and Cuban-Americans. I also know that Kos will recall that younger generations, recent exiles included, of Cuban Americans are not as reflexively Republican as their parents are and that Florida's Cuban population is decreasing in proportion to other Hispanics. That terminology wouldn't have given me the slightest pause had he worded it just a bit differently, but written as it was I cringed. These may be extreme, radical, frequently racist malcontents we're talking about, but fuck it, man, these are still mi gente. Why, even though I know better, do I keep getting the nagging feeling that liberals are scapegoating Cubans?

I'm pretty sure it's just me. It's the same reason that the phrase "non-Cuban Hispanic" is fairly prevalent. It's why, every election season, pollsters take the time to separate Cuban respondents from Hispanic voting stats when they're polling Florida. Kos can say this, and it's not wrong even if it does aggravate me, because the definition of the Cuban In America is so intrinsically political in nature that it's become unnecessary to even bother acknowledging details and small contradictions. "Cuban exile" is as loaded a term as "NASCAR Dad"--somewhere, sure, there exists a prototypical one of those that prays to the holy trinity of Christ, Reagan, and Junior. But for the sake of convenience, we can ignore everyone else who shares the experience but not the perspective, since the sample we have is at least somewhat representative.

We can lump the Cuban exile community together because for decades they've lumped themselves together as such a reliable voting bloc. I guess what bugs me is circumstantial: it happens to be that at this historical moment "the corrupt Cuban exile community" is slowly ceasing to be a meaningful descriptor. I want to be able to love the Cuban exile and hate the corrupt community, but it's tough when the words are jumbled all the wrong way.

You can probably tell how conflicted I am by all this. By our very nature many of my generation combat the common wisdom, which is to say we can embrace our Cubanness as loudly as we reject our grandparents' politics. Of course, many of them would reply that I can't have it both ways, and I find myself too often unsure whether or not they might be right.