Trouble in Miami: If Bush doesn't watch out, he could lose those Cuban- Americans

National Review, Oct 27, 2003 by John J. Miller

A little before midnight on July 14, a dozen Cubans with knives in their hands and black stockings on their heads surprised three sentries near the town of Nuevitas. They disarmed the watchmen and boarded the Gaviota 16, a boat owned by a mapping agency. Then, in the dark hours of early morning, they raced for open waters. Their destination was Miami-and freedom.

They didn't make it, but the Bush administration is probably wishing they had. That's because what happened next inspired Miami congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Republican and normally a strong Bush ally, to launch a blistering attack: "This act of infamy in coordination with the Cuban tyranny is a condemnable monstrosity."

Within hours of the boat thieves' departure from Cuban shores, the U.S. Coast Guard had them under surveillance. On July 16, their vessel was stopped more than a hundred miles from Florida. Under an immigration policy nicknamed "wet foot-dry foot," most Cubans caught at sea are returned to Cuba-the sorry fate of more than a thousand people so far this year. Most of those who make it to the United States (and therefore have "dry feet") are allowed to stay.

The Cubans aboard the Gaviota 16 had wet feet, but that wasn't their biggest problem. Fidel Castro's government insisted they were hijackers. This was not true: They had stolen the boat rather than commandeered it in transit. Yet the Cuban version of events required careful attention. Last April, Castro ordered the execution of three ferryboat hijackers who had sought to reach America but were apprehended by Cuban authorities. The Coast Guard wasn't going to be complicit in new executions, so the people from the Gaviota 16 waited onboard a cutter with their lives in limbo.

After a short standoff, the Castro regime wrote down an offer: It would prosecute the men, but not punish them with anything harsher than ten years in prison. The Bush administration accepted the deal and returned the Cubans to their native island on July 21. Three weeks later, Cuban judges handed out a series of sentences. The most severe was for that decade behind bars.

The episode wasn't much noticed in Washington, but it was all the rage in Miami's Cuban-American community this summer. And "rage" is the word. Callers lined up on the city's talk-radio stations-the central nervous system of Cuban-American politics-to join Rep. Diaz-Balart in denouncing the decision to negotiate with a despot. Even Florida governor Jeb Bush disapproved of what his brother's administration had done: "It's just not right," he said on August 1.

The controversy might have ended there, except that it unleashed a torrent of criticism from Cuban Americans who think the Bush administration hasn't lived up to expectations. On August 10, a group of Cuban-American state representatives-all of them Republicans-signed a letter to the president informing him of "great disappointment and outrage" over current Cuba policy. Without progress, they wrote, "we fear that historic and intense support from Cuban American voters for Republican federal candidates, including yourself, will be jeopardized." One of the signers, David Rivera, wonders how Bush will motivate his supporters in Miami next year. "We may see much less voter turnout unless these problems are addressed," he says. Cuban-American lawmakers in Florida considered boycotting a Bush fundraiser on October 1 to signal their displeasure; in the end, the group decided that one of them would attend while the others stayed away.

Bush and the GOP should take this emerging threat seriously. There are only about one and a half million Cuban Americans, but most of them live in Florida, where they play a crucial role in determining election outcomes. Following the Elian Gonzalez controversy in 2000, when the Clinton administration forcibly returned a refugee boy to Cuba, Bush won about 80 percent of their votes. "This community voted in numbers that make Crawford, Texas, look like enemy territory," says Joe Garcia of the influential Cuban American National Foundation. Bush's 537-vote victory over Al Gore in Florida certainly would not have survived much in the way of lowered turnout.

The Bush administration now seems to appreciate that it has a problem in Miami, and that its public diplomacy there must improve. On August 21, the Department of Justice indicted three Cuban military officers involved in shooting down two airplanes flown by the exile group Brothers to the Rescue in 1996. Officials insist that these indictments had been in the pipeline, but their timing raised eyebrows. The administration also said it will enhance its TV and Radio Marti signals-currently jammed by Castro-so that more Cubans can receive these programs. Other initiatives will be announced in the weeks and months ahead. (Here's an idea: Allow newscasters on TV and Radio Marti to call Castro a dictator; right now, they must describe him as "president.")

One of the most helpful steps may be simply reminding Cuban Americans of what this White House already has done. The most significant policy may be the continued enforcing of the embargo, despite mounting pressure in Congress to loosen it. In a speech honoring Cuban Independence Day two years ago, Bush described the embargo as "not just a policy tool [but] a moral statement," and said that it was an important instrument for goading Cuba toward reform. It may in fact become indispensable during a transition period after Castro is gone.