Funding Dissidents: 2000 and before

MIAMI – The leading institution of this city's Cuban exile community plans to quadruple the amount of money it sends to dissident leaders on the island in a modest shift away from its Washington-oriented strategy to bring democratic change in Cuba.

The move, described by Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, is a tacit acknowledgment that the Cuba lobby has recently lost some footing in the halls of Congress, and it could increase tension between Cuban dissidents and the island's communist government.

Garcia said in an interview that a portion of the group's $10 million annual budget – he declined to say how much – will begin flowing to the island through sympathetic dissidents by the end of the year. At the same time, Garcia said the foundation is broadening its Washington strategy, which has long focused on Congress. The foundation plans to raise its profile by opening a "Free Cuba Embassy" in a town house on Jefferson Place NW.

In recent years, Garcia said, the foundation has worked almost solely on blocking attempts to weaken the 40-year-old U.S. trade embargo on Cuba, particularly since the Elian Gonzalez case brought that policy to the attention of more Americans than ever. Now, he said, the foundation will step up lobbying for initiatives that include expanding U.S. aid to fight hunger in Cuba, increasing funds to buy books for its independent libraries and improving telephone links.

All the money would be distributed outside Cuban government channels. With that shift will likely come increased tension and confrontation on the island, as the Cuban government opposes outside help to its critics.

The Cuban government recently jailed a Chicago man for 20 days after he passed out small sums of money to Cuban dissidents during his visit. Douglas Schimmel, 70, had met with Frank Calzon of the Washington-based Center for a Free Cuba before leaving the United States and said he was asked to pass out $1,000 to dissidents. An opponent of the U.S. trade embargo, Schimmel refused, saying he would use his own money. The Cuban government charged him with "rebellion."

"What was most important that we get done has already been done," said Garcia, who took day-to-day control of the group a few months ago and was a prote»ge» of the foundation's late founder, Jorge Mas Canosa. "We needed to take the foreign policy novices on. Suddenly, people discovered that Cuba was a small island in the Caribbean we don't do business with. We needed to make sure Congress didn't overreact."

With less than a month before Congress adjourns, Garcia said he is confident that no legislation weakening the embargo will emerge this year. A conference committee is considering a bill that would allow food and medicine sales to Cuba, but without a push from Republican leaders it will likely languish.

"I'm happy either way," Garcia said. "Neither [the bill or its failure] is what the [Cuban] regime wants."

Garcia and others say the business and farming interests that have joined to fight the embargo pose perhaps the biggest challenge to the foundation's program in the months ahead. Garcia said its focus on hunger and human rights is designed to blunt that mercantile push for new markets.

"We're going to try to reengage America's conscience," he said.

The assessment offered by Garcia and other exile leaders here comes almost three months after the community's most public and humiliating defeat: the return of 6-year-old Elian to his father in Cuba. The eight-month ordeal left this city more divided than ever and a majority of Americans favoring a change in U.S. policy toward the island of 11 million residents.

Garcia, whose parents left Cuba before he was born, acknowledges that "no doubt about it, they [the Cuban government] scored a short-term public relations victory" with Elian's return. But since then, he said, the foundation has hired an outside public relations firm for help. He said membership has risen 15 percent to almost 60,000 and the community has come back together.

As proof, Garcia and others hold up last week's reelection of Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas, who famously declared during the Elian case that the local police would not assist federal agents if asked to take the child from his Miami relatives. Penelas emerged with 52 percent of the vote from a largely inexperienced 10-member field after spending $1.4 million.

"After Elian we were like the scum of the earth," said Ninoska Perez, a foundation director. "I can tell you that, without thinking twice, people would do the same thing again."

The exile community is still somewhat divided over the best course to take to achieve its long-stated goal of ending President Fidel Castro's four decades in power and bringing democracy to Cuba. The foundation is formulating an international lobbying effort to enlist conservative European and Latin American leaders such Mexico's President-elect Vicente Fox to help their cause. But another exile faction is advocating an approach that would send even more money to the Cubans themselves.

In a recent article for the Miami Herald, Calzon of Center for a Free Cuba wrote that "freedom in Cuba will be determined by events inside, not outside, the island. Exile leaders must not usurp the internal opposition's role."

"There is a growing consensus that we should be looking toward Cuba and the dissidents, as opposed to Washington," said Carlos de la Cruz, a wealthy Cuban exile here who helps fund opposition efforts. "Clearly the exiles aren't going to overthrow anything. It has to come from inside Cuba."

© 2000 The Washington Post Company