9-25-08, 9:35 am

Should the Cuban counterrevolution lose its long-standing political value to the US neoconservative right-wing extremists, their strong position in Southern Florida would no longer have any meaning, purpose or future.

'Cubans in the US are already fed up with the usual anti-Cuban speech delivered by various Republican administrations and loosing interest in the Cuban issue. In my district, when you ask about the most pressing matters, economics is number one, then the war and health care, followed by education, taxes and, in fifth or sixth position, Cuba.'

Or so said Raúl Martínez, the Democratic congressional candidate for Florida's 21st district – which covers Hialeah and part of the counties Miami-Dade and Broward, where Hispanics account for 70 percent of the population – whose historical task it is to dethrone eight-term Republican Lincoln Díaz Balart. For 24 years Martínez was mayor of Hialeah, a city in Miami's metropolitan area.

That a politician makes such statements a mere three months before the general election defies belief in a social milieu where for half a century Miami-based Cuban-Americans have imposed a sort of extreme right-wing political dictatorship.

'So much has been said about the imminence of a political transition in Cuba that many people in Miami started to think about what's happening now: a political transition in Miami', a local radio commentator remarked. 'After almost 50 years in the grip of nonstop confrontational rhetoric, there's not a single hegemonic Cuban-American voice calling the shots anymore, but a variety of voices which have made the city's atmosphere easier to breathe,' he assured.

More than a few are awaiting the outcome of the coming election with either hope or impatience. However, even if power is still in the hands of the most reactionary wing of the US political spectrum, by no means should an about-face be expected capable of erasing fifty years of hatred and deceit planted by the Empire in grounds fertilized by some who escaped popular justice or others whom the Cuban Revolution took away irritating privileges and properties they had amassed either through embezzlement or inhuman overexploitation of our workers.

All candidates in Miami who oppose the Cuban-American congressmen have defined themselves as critics of the Cuban Revolution and as such advocate no radical change of direction in the US policy on Cuba. Yet, they dare call Washington's five-decade-old stance on the island a failure, an unthinkable statement for any politician with hopes of being elected in Southern Florida.

Until very recently, Republicans in Florida, and probably across the nation, would see to it that any seat to be held by 'pro-Batista' elements was a given in Congress. Their methods to have an 'influence' on voters and control elections led many to think the GOP's positions were all but impregnable.

Still, the fight has been so fierce this year that the Democratic National Congressional Committee, for years resigned to seeing congressional seats invariably go to Florida's pro-Batista Republicans, turned the election into a top strategic priority and vowed to support its own candidates in light of a greater likelihood of victory.

What's certain is that neither the post-1980 émigrés nor the new generations of Cuban-Americans share the views of the old guard from the 1960s whose special links with the Republican Party helped the GOP gain a foothold among Latinos in a state of Florida the Democrats could only dream of having under their belt. According to American publicist Alvaro Fernández, head of the Southwest Voter Registration Educatyion Project (SVREP) –an organization committed to increasing Latino participation in regional elections– 'most new Cuban émigrés who become US citizens choose to register as Democrats or Independents rather than Republicans.'

Beyond question, the generation gap has brought forth a political shift among Cuban-Americans. Those still living in the past are now making room for those who understand the time has come to take on a more 'pragmatic' attitude likely to bear fruit in the near future.

--A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.