The Cuba Thaw : With the end of the Cold War and the removal of Cuban-American opposition, Washington is running out of excuses for avoiding new ties with Castro.

With the breakup of the Soviet empire, the major geopolitical obstacle to direct talks between Havana and Washington collapsed. But there remained a problem in the United States--until now. The chief domestic constraint on constructive engagement with Fidel Castro, the presumed monolithic opposition of Cuban-Americans, has gone the way of the Berlin Wall. Like their island counterparts, Miami’s Cubans are ready for dialogue.

President George Bush is tentatively beginning to explore this new political space. In contrast to his argument that business dealings with the United States will hasten the demise of totalitarianism in China, he still wants to keep the 30-year-old trade embargo on Cuba.

But in a taped speech broadcast two weeks ago to Havana and to a Miami gathering of the Cuban American National Foundation, the President seemed to deliberately recast U.S. policy in a non-confrontational light. He even hinted at a prospect once considered taboo: the possibility of meaningful reform, and a consequent relaxation of the embargo, with Castro still in power.

If Cuba holds free elections, improves its human-rights record and stops aiding insurgents abroad, Bush said, “we can expect relations between our two countries to improve significantly.” The staunchly anti-Castro foundation audience enthusiastically applauded.

More striking still was the address by Jorge Mas Canosa, the foundation’s chairman. Mas is the Cuban-American community’s proudly intransigent point man in Miami and Washington. He is also chairman of the supervisory board of the federally funded Radio and TV Marti.

All of which made his address the more startling. Mas proclaimed what he had been whispering privately for several weeks: He has regularly been meeting with “high-ranking officials” of the Cuban government for the past two years. “We favor dialogue with everyone in Cuba, except for Castro himself,” Mas declared. Foundation officials said the contacts in Havana ranged from senior Cuban military officers to functionaries “close to the Politburo.”

Indicative of his new philosophical flexibility, Mas said he agreed with his unnamed Havana interlocutors that Cuba “cannot go backward” to the days of the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship. Cubans on and off the island must “forget the past” and “bury everything that divides us.”

Mas’ motives are not entirely selfless. He would like to be president of Cuba when Castro is gone and is now promoting an after-the-fall recovery plan for the island, featuring a draft constitution and foundation-led peace corps. What is heartening, though, is that Mas is playing catch-up with his own constituency.

A new poll, conducted by Florida International University in Dade County, confirms what has been apparent in Miami for some time: Cuban-Americans are increasingly willing to hold talks with Castro’s government on a wide range of sensitive issues. Fifty-nine percent said they support negotiations with Havana to “facilitate peaceful democratic change by means of a free elections or plebiscite.” A surprisingly large 36% backed formal talks among exiles, internal dissidents and representatives of the Castro government; 27% supported a negotiated end to the U.S. trade embargo. And 73% want bilateral discussions on Cuba’s emigration and travel restrictions.

This openness to dialogue is not an abstraction. During the past year, Miami’s Cuban intelligentsia--artists, writers, architects, academics--has been talking to their Havana counterparts. Most of the contacts--some formal, some social--have occurred locally, due to Havana’s relaxed travel rules. Extended visits to Miami by Cuban painters and filmmakers are now commonplace. Last week, a delegation of Cuban-American scholars participated in a Havana-hosted conference on Caribbean studies, marking for many their first visit since they left the island as children 30 years ago.

Other Miami-Havana encounters, in a post-Cold War irony, have been arranged by Eastern Europeans. In a world where Aeroflot refuels in Miami and Pravda is banned in Havana, it is no longer unusual to see Soviet Latin Americanists discussing U.S. foreign policy with Cuban emissaries at Miami universities.

Soviets criticize U.S. Cuba policy because it reinforces rather than erodes Castro’s hold on the country. As evidence, they point to events in Eastern Europe. Some prominent Miamians share their view. A group of local leaders, who call themselves the Cuban Democratic Platform, has been attacked by Mas’ organization for urging democratization talks with Havana. Now they feel vindicated by Bush’s more conciliatory position, characterized by Bernard Aronson, the assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, as a deliberate “opening of the door” to the Havana regime.

Many Miamians are skeptical of the Cuban American National Foundation’s reported meetings with members of Castro’s “inner circle.” Cuban government spokesmen dismissed the claim as a product “of Mr. Mas’ fevered imagination.” In response, the foundation says it cannot reveal the officials’ names. Even so, some of Mas’ severest critics believe his reports of talks with Cuban functionaries, if not necessarily his account of their secret opposition to Castro and pleas for economic help.

Until recently, the foundation’s position that it would meet with “anybody except Castro” was a distinction without a difference. The presumption in Miami was that Politburo members and senior military men were loyal cadres in a disciplined Stalinist state--talking to a “high-level” Cuban was tantamount to speaking to Castro himself. Now the peaceful, if uneasy, coexistence of the Soviet Communists with dissidents like Boris N. Yeltsin enables the foundation to argue that Havana’s power elite has similar reformist factions.

Miami Cubans have long been caricatured by the left as myopically reactionary gusanos --literally, “worms,” in Castro’s enduring epithet. The American right reinforced the stereotype by treating Cuban Miami as a single-issue voting bloc. The community’s political, racial and socioeconomic complexity has always belied these offensively simplistic perceptions. But Cuban-American ideological diversity is broader and more visible today than ever before.

The most important change is generational. The Florida International University poll showed that Cubans who left the island as children are more inclined toward dialogue than their parents. The Mariel influx also altered community demographics. Nearly 13% of Cuban-born Dade County residents arrived in the 1980 boat lift; another 4% have immigrated since then. The complaints of the recent refugees about stifling authoritarianism are tempered by pride in Cuban achievements in education and health.

Cuban-American willingness to talk to the Castro regime should not be misread as a desire for rapprochement. The majority of those polled also advocate tightened economic pressure on Havana and U.S. support for armed rebellion.

But the local political calculus has changed. Once Mas and the foundation prospered from an unbending hard line. They now astutely see that it is time to be perceived as flexible. In Cuban Miami, recalcitrance is no longer good politics.

State Department officials acknowledge that several friendly foreign governments have offered to serve as intermediaries in preliminary discussions between the United States and Cuba. The new ideological climate in Miami means that Washington can no longer use domestic politics as an excuse to avoid exploring its real opportunities to effect constructive change in Cuba and in Cuban-American relations.