Death Probably Saved Mas From Forces Threatening To Undo Him

‘Jorge Mas Canosa lives,” said Sen. Robert G. Torricelli (D-N.J.) Tuesday at the funeral of the Cuban exile leader.

No, he doesn’t.

The death of the fiery, hard-line leader of the Cuban American National Foundation comes at a time when Mas’ control over U.S. policy toward Cuba, over Miami politics and over the increasingly diverse million-plus Cuban American community all faced unprecedented strains. His early death, at 58, from lung cancer, accelerates a process of change in Miami and Washington that will transform politics on both sides of the Florida Straits, but not in a direction Mas would have wanted.

Even his bitterest foes must admit that Mas embodied the American dream. Arriving young and penniless as a refugee from Fidel Castro’s communist revolution in Cuba, Mas flung himself into the economic and political life of the United and is writing a book about U.S. foreign policy.

States. At his death he had it all: a multimillion-dollar construction empire, and the Cuban American National Foundation, perhaps the most potent single foreign-policy lobby in U.S. history.

This was success on the grand scale, but Mas, and the embittered exile faction he so ably represented, never fully understood or accepted the values of the society in which he prospered. Mas’ Miami was anti-communist, but it was not pro-democratic. Ostracism, economic ruin, fire bombs, beatings and even murder were the fates that befell those who dissented from hard-line views on Cuba. South Florida became a base for terrorists--they called themselves “freedom fighters”--who planned and carried out terror attacks against political opponents and other targets in both the United States and Cuba.

Whatever Mas’ personal involvement in terrorist activities, and he was never indicted for any crimes, in the years of his power, South Florida came to resemble a banana republic. Criticism of the leader was treated like treason. A tightly knit elite gathered all political and economic power into its hands and the rich and powerful operated in a climate of impunity beyond the rule of law.

When he died, Mas had already outlived the peak of his power. Powerful forces in both Washington and Miami were putting him increasingly on the defensive. Death spared him from watching the continued erosion of his power, possibly even from the indignity of an indictment on corruption charges. His greatest legislative triumph was the Helms-Burton bill. This law, passed hurriedly by Congress in the emotional reaction after Cuba’s destruction of two unarmed aircraft over international waters, significantly tightened the U.S. embargo against Cuba while imposing sanctions on certain non-U.S. companies investing in or trading with the embattled island.

Since the law was passed, the Clinton administration has found itself bogged down in controversies with its North American Free Trade Agreement and European Union partners. More significantly, the law has attracted the opposition of U.S. corporations concerned about the proliferation of unilateral U.S. economic sanctions. With strong backing from blue-chip corporations and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, bipartisan bills have been introduced in both houses of Congress to exempt food and medicine from the embargo.

Pressure for change in U.S. policy will grow with the papal visit to Cuba, now scheduled for January 1998. Both the U.S. and Cuban conferences of Catholic bishops have denounced the embargo as immoral, and the pope is expected to reinforce that opposition on his visit. Vatican support also will embolden those in the U.S. business community who want to open trade.

Meanwhile, Mas’ power base among Cuban Americans was weaker than it looked. Whatever their political beliefs, Cuban Americans, in large numbers, continue to defy the hard-liners and send money to friends and relatives in Cuba. In fact, the Cuban government’s most important source of hard currency has nothing to do with tourists, sugar or even cigars: Remittances from Cuban Americans supply Castro with the hard currency his economy needs to survive.

Recently, the Cuban American political machine in South Florida has been dented by a series of high-profile corruption scandals. Regional governments have been rocked by scandals in which Cuban American politicians linked to the Cuban American National Foundation and other emigre institutions have prominently figured. Church and Tower, the construction company built by Mas, was the focus of an investigative report by the Miami Herald detailing fraudulent bills to Dade County for repairs and other work never performed. As journalists and grand juries dig deeper into what appears to be massive corruption in metropolitan Miami, a number of key figures in the Cuban American hard-line establishment may face disgrace and even prison.

Less dramatic but ultimately more important are the changes taking place within Florida’s Cuban American community. As “first wave” exiles like Mas--those who fled Cuba in the early ‘60s--retire and die, more recent immigrants appear with different attitudes and perspectives. Cuban Americans who arrived since the Mariel boat lift, and the 20,000 immigrants permitted each year under the U.S.-Cuban immigration accord, have more complicated feelings than earlier immigrants about the system under which they grew up and relatives and friends still live. Polling data consistently show major gaps in attitudes between the earlier and later waves of Cuban immigrants and, as time goes by, power shifts inexorably toward the younger, more moderate group.

The daughters and sons of the old immigrants also are divided. Even when they agree with the old guard about their goal, the overthrow of Castro, they are likely to disagree profoundly with the old generation about the methods used.

Largely born in the U.S. and educated in U.S. schools, younger Cuban Americans share the commitment to democratic values and free speech that some of their elders so conspicuously lack. Tolerant of diversity, accustomed to debate, many younger Cuban Americans are embarrassed by the reputation for violence and intolerance that clings to some older hard-liners in the community. Like many other second- and third-generation immigrant communities, younger Cuban Americans tend to celebrate and cherish their cultural heritage while accepting the basic political values of the broader society.

Mas’ failure to fully understand and embrace democratic values may have been understandable--the procession of politicians willing to pander to the Cuba lobby in exchange for donations might make anyone a cynic about U.S. democracy--but it was tragic. It was the absence of free speech and the rule of law in Fulgencio Batista’s Cuba that paved the way for revolution, and it was the absence of these values in Mas’ Miami that undermined whatever political support the exile community might otherwise have had in Cuba itself.

Mas was a talented, energetic and patriotic man. Had he also been a democratic one, he might have been a great figure in Cuban history. As it is, freedom in Cuba will never come from men like Mas and the hard-line Cuban exiles who survive him. It will come instead from the younger generations, Cuban and Cuban American alike, who value free speech and the rule of law.*