Jorge Mas Canosa, RIP

National Review, Dec 31, 1997 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

NEW YORK, DECEMBER 2

Last week the most prominent Cuban refugee died at 58, and it is likely that, after a decent interval, his special strain of anti-Castro politics will go with him. Jorge Mas Canosa was an unyielding enemy of Fidel Castro. Mas (that is his proper surname, under Spanish usage) went briefly to college in North Carolina, returned to Cuba, where his father was a veterinarian, pitched into anti-Castro activity, fled the country in 1960, and went to work in Miami. There he did blue-collar jobs, working as a milkman, stevedore, and shoe salesman, and was an individual voice in the anti-Castro chorus of a swelling body of Cuban-Americans. Some years later he was the head of a $475-million telecommunications company and head also of the Cuban-American National Foundation. In that capacity he backed every conceivable anti-Castro measure ever developed, although conceivably he didn't know about, or didn't back, that one of the Kennedys' ventures that called for destroying Castro by having one of his cigars explode.

By all accounts Senor Mas was a prickly gentleman. He was imperious in manner and unrelenting in seeking what he sought. The obituarist for the New York Times wrote that he "repeatedly questioned the patriotism of those who disagreed with him and threatened in some cases to ruin their lives or careers." The Washington Times modified this charge: ". . . a separate investigation by the State Department's inspector general said there was no evidence he [Mas] arranged reprisals against staffers who disagreed with him." But there isn't any arguing on the first point: anyone who disagreed with him on the imperative of unseating Castro was a defective patriot.

One recalls that the description above almost exactly characterizes the behavior and manner of Charles de Gaulle after the fall of France in 1940. General de Gaulle had only the single objective, which was the liberation of France. His manners were so abrupt and his demands so adamant as to cause Winston Churchill to reflect that many people had crosses to bear, but that his special burden was "the Cross of Lorraine." It is arresting to wonder what would be the memory of Charles de Gaulle if the Nazis, like the Communists in Cuba, had stayed in power 38 years, causing the large community of fatalists to shrink from de Gaulle as that grumpy old general who wants us to boycott French commerce.

Mr. Mas was the spearhead of the Helms - Burton Act, which holds legally responsible anyone who transacts commerce that originated in property in Cuba once owned by, and later confiscated from, Americans. Under the aspect of the heavens, that's a pretty good idea, to say that anybody who deals in stolen property is going to get into trouble with American law. But there is the problem that it does not seem to weaken Castro: nothing weakens Castro save mighty economic blows such as the end of Soviet subsidies on the close of the Cold War. With the death of Mas Canosa it is likely that Cuban-Americans will edge over toward the position that bluster isn't paying off. Mas egged on the Radio Marti enterprise, one part of which makes television transmissions to Havana -- a bright idea, except that the jamming facilities of Fidel, as far as we know, have succeeded in shielding every Cuban with a television set from any shard of truth coming in from the United States.

There is a symbolic reciprocity in the whole scene: The decades-long campaign to unseat Castro fails, and Mas Canosa dies. But Mas's cause was strategically triumphant, if tactically a failure. Communism worldwide is dead. It skulks along in Havana, Hanoi, and Pyongyang.

We have diplomatic relations with Hanoi, and commercial traffic there is perfectly legal. The great architectural scaffolding of the anti-Castro cause is gone. Fidel is now simply one more power-mad, sadistic caudillo, not the Caribbean salient of a global threat to human freedom. The difference between him and the successors to Ho Chi Minh is that two million Cuban-Americans exercise an important political margin in two critical states, Florida and New Jersey.

The Cuban patriots encouraged and egged on by Jorge Mas Canosa will need to acknowledge that the anti-Castro case cannot convincingly survive the end of the worldwide Communist enterprise. It becomes, instead, a vendetta. Americans in general do well to despise Castro and his ways, but on the matter of liberty, J. Q. Adams was correct when he said that we are friends of it everywhere but custodians only of our own. Jorge Mas Canosa did everything he could while alive to bring down Castro. Maybe now he can rest in peace.