CU CANF
29 March 2002

Miami Herald - Miami - Joe García, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, tried to sound jaded when a journalist asked for an interview recently. ''Are you writing the 20th-something obituary of the foundation?'' he joked. Not at all. CANF remains a muscular force, especially with a Republican in the White House who wants to tighten U.S. policies toward Cuba and two Cuban Americans running those policies in Washington. But CANF does face a drove of financial, political and administrative problems that independent observers say are eroding the powerful influence, some would even say fear, that it once cast over Washington. Its money is less abundant, and its ranks are split -- between unabashed hard-liners and almost-embarrassed moderates, between GOP supporters and bet-on-all-sides advocates -- and it remains a bit dispirited after the Elián González affair. Its management is allegedly in disarray, and U.S. congressional officials say that while its young new leaders are just as politically savvy as the old ones, they lack their predecessors' sharp-edged wallop. Worse still, CANF faces a growing wave of antiembargo sentiments across the United States, driven by rich agribusinesses and heartland farmers once viewed as natural allies of the anticommunist exiles. CANF President Jorge Mas insists the foundation remains financially and politically strong, with broad access to the halls of power and plans to push the Bush administration to tighten the screws on President Fidel Castro. ''It's time we go on the offensive and put the Castro regime on the defensive,'' Mas said recently from Washington after two days of meetings. He spoke to senior officials at the White House, the National Security Council and the State Department, as well as Republican leaders of the House of Representatives. CANF's top priorities, even before the administration announced a review of Cuba policies with an eye to tightening them: push for a U.S. indictment of Castro for the 1996 shoot-downs of the Brothers to the Rescue planes and expand assistance to dissidents on the island. But critics insist that problems do exist. ''The foundation once had a clear strategy. Now I don't know what they're doing or if they know what they're doing,'' said former CANF spokeswoman Ninoska Pérez Castellón, today an outspoken critic of the foundation. At the root of CANF's problems is the plunge in the price of MasTec stock, which makes up the lion's share of the endowment that helps finance the activities of CANF as well as the Jorge Mas Canosa Freedom Foundation, established by the CANF founder before his death in 1997. From a 1997 high of $52.68, MasTec traded at $8 recently. The plunge led CANF to close the Voz de la Fundación radio station, a $400,000- to $600,000-a-year operation, dismiss six of its 21 Miami staffers and put off plans to hire six new staffers for its Washington office. García denied rumors that CANF may completely close the Washington office, which is headed by Dennis Hays, former head of the State Department's Cuba Desk, and is already down from five staffers last year to three this year. But García confirmed the foundation is seeking paying tenants for the Mas-owned Freedom Tower in downtown Miami and is taking out a mortgage on its Washington office townhouse, bought in 2000 for $2 million in cash. ''We are allocating our resources to where we think they are effective,'' García said, adding that membership remains steady with 170 directors, trustees and associates each paying from $1,000 to $6,500 a year and about 55,000 regular members paying anywhere from $1 to $100 per year. Two former CANF employees said, however, that income from memberships plus other donations -- CANF regularly seeks additional donations for special projects -- dropped from $80,000 a month in 2000 to about $60,000 this year. ''Show me someone who's not belt-tightening after Sept. 11,'' García said, insisting that money is not a problem. ''We had one -- exactly one -- staffer in Washington when we were named the most effective lobby'' by the Center for Public Integrity in 1997. García's arguments don't wash with Pérez Castellón, one of a dozen CANF members who defected and founded the rival Cuban Liberty Council. ''Yes, there was one staffer, but there was also a Jorge Mas Canosa and a board of directors that constantly went to Washington to lobby,'' she said. ''But now their presence in Washington is not so visible or powerful as it was under Mas Canosa,'' she added. Several current and former CANF members and staffers also complained of poor management. ''The foundation now is just a phone number where journalists can get reaction to events,'' one disgruntled former employee said. Money is only part of the problem, however. CANF also faces strong political challenges, within the Cuban exile community and in its battle to maintain the 40-year-old U.S. trade and travel embargo on the island. García admits CANF has faced some rough going in recent years. ''We had to bring the Cuba debate back from the dead after Elián,'' he said of the negative image created by exile hard-liners who fiercely opposed the boy's return to his father in Cuba in 2000. They also faced eight years of a Clinton administration viewed by many in Miami as too friendly to Cuba and an increasingly effective campaign by American agrilobbyists to poke holes in the embargo. 'For a long time, there was no significant economic power working against the embargo. Now the mantra is `market, market, market,' '' Hays said. García says the embargo debate should not monopolize CANF's attention. ''Let's stop fighting over ground we've already won,'' he said. ``We need to move policy beyond that, to take a proactive role.'' But the debate has deeply and bitterly fractured Cuban exile ranks along policy and political lines, say foundation insiders who asked for anonymity, saying they did not want to fuel the fires of internal dissent. On one side are exiles, usually older hard-liners close to the GOP, who want to fight any concessions, from weakening the embargo to allowing Cuban musicians to perform at the aborted Latin Grammy awards in Miami. ''We are continuing to make known the truth inside Cuba -- that the embargo is not the cause of the hunger and misery,'' said businessman Horacio García, one of the CANF directors who bolted last year to the Cuban Liberty Council. On the other side are usually younger exile activists, almost chagrined to be called moderates, who, like Jorge Mas, rejected a recent call by hard-liners for a boycott of Mexican goods after the Mexican government asked Cuban police to evict 21 men who broke into its embassy in Havana. ''If people in this community want to shoot themselves, go ahead. But we have an opportunity to work with the [President Vicente] Fox government to effect change in Cuba, and we're not going to miss it,'' a CANF member said. The debate over U.S. policies on Cuba has also spilled over into a bitter split over partisan politics, CANF insiders say. Most CANF members favor working with Republicans and Democrats, recalling that Mas Canosa recruited Democratic Sens. Robert Torricelli of New Jersey and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut for the fight against Castro, CANF insiders said. But another group advocates working more closely with President Bush, a Republican who has named several Cuban Americans to senior posts at the National Security Council and State Department. ''All the steps taken so far by this administration have been positive,'' Horacio García said. ``This administration has shown nothing but an interest in backing our cause.'' A third group complains that Bush has paid only lip service to the Cuba issue so far and advocates prodding him strongly, even threatening better links to the Democratic Party, to adopt more anti-Castro policies. ''We're now in the ninth year of the Clinton administration,'' Joe García sniped before the Bush administration announced its Cuba policy review earlier this month. CANF officials say they are not distracted by all of the infighting and are focusing their lobbying efforts on pushing the Bush administration on several critical fronts:
* Indicting Castro for ordering the deaths of the four Brothers to the Rescue fliers.
* Increasing aid to and contacts with dissidents on the island.
* Revising the Clinton administration's ''wet foot/dry foot'' Cuban immigration policy and pressing allegations that Castro still retains ties with terrorist groups such as Spain's ETA Basque separatists.