Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
TAMARA LUSH and DAVID ADAMSHe won 81 percent of the group's vote in South Florida in 2000, but some are switching sides because of tighter travel restrictions.
MIAMI - Standing in line Thursday for her charter flight to Havana, Zaida Fuentes fumed as she thought about President Bush's tougher restrictions on travel to Cuba.
"It's not right," she said of the new rule allowing Cuban-Americans to visit their families on the island once every three years instead of once a year. "Everybody has the right to see their family."
The tighter restrictions have created cracks in the once rock-solid support among Cuban-American voters for President Bush, who will hold a campaign rally today in Miami.
Most Cuban-American voters still back Bush, but polls indicate his support has slipped since he won 81 percent of South Florida's Cuban-American vote in 2000.
The president has lost Fuentes. A lifelong Republican, the 57-year-old retiree has changed her party affiliation to Democrat. She plans to vote for Democratic U.S. Sen. John Kerry in November.
"Before I liked him," Fuentes said of Bush. "But now - forget about it."
If the presidential race is as tight in Florida as it was four years ago, peeling even a few more Cuban-American voters away from Bush could prove crucial.
"Florida is so divided, even losing half a percentage point of the Cuban electorate could tip this election one way or another," said Dan Erikson, director of Caribbean projects at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank.
In May, Bush followed the recommendations of hard-line Miami Cuban exiles and tightened restrictions on Cuba, hoping to strangle President Fidel Castro's fragile economy.
But many Cuban-Americans don't agree with the changes. They say limiting travel, restricting the amount of goods people can bring to their relatives and cracking down on money sent there only hurts their poor relatives in Cuba.
Bush's support in Florida's Cuban-American community has fallen to 66 percent, according to a poll of 812 Cuban-American voters conducted in July by the William C. Velasquez Institute-Mirram Global.
The poll underscores that the new Cuba policy has turned some former critics of the Clinton administration into Bush critics. Jose Basulto, head of Brothers to the Rescue, and Ramon Raul Sanchez, head of the anti-Castro Democracy Movement, have come out against the policy.
"We believe that the government is utilizing the Cuban people to harass Castro, and that is unacceptable," Basulto said.
After Hurricane Charley hit Cuba, Sanchez wrote to Bush asking for a moratorium on the policy so that Cuban exiles could help their families rebuild. He has not received an answer.
Miami's influential Cuban American National Foundation also has expressed doubts about the new measures, while welcoming Bush's efforts to boost transmission of TV Marti, the federal government's broadcast directed at Cuba. In letters to Bush and Kerry Wednesday, the foundation said Miami Cuban-Americans were "most impatient" for tougher measures against Castro.
Other influential Cuban-American Republicans also have rejected the new measures. Miami beverage company owner and art collector Carlos de la Cruz called for the White House to reconsider the restrictions on family travel and remittances. He said those are important to building bridges for a future political transition.
De la Cruz won't say how he plans to vote in November, but he has met with Kerry more than once. "I support what he's saying on Cuba," de la Cruz said.
Another lifelong Cuban-American Republican, Fernando Amandi, switched his voter registration to become vice chairman of Kerry's campaign finance committee. The 55-year-old retiree and former New York-based Fortune 500 executive recently returned to Miami to campaign for Kerry.
Amandi says Cuban-Americans want Castro out but disagree on how to help make that happen.
"What these people have is a preconceived notion about the senator," he said, describing how Kerry's critics have claimed Castro would be walking the streets of Miami if he is elected.
Kerry pledges to keep the four decades-old embargo but advocates expanding travel to the island and lifting restrictions on remittances.
Kerry has been to Miami twice and will return Sept. 30 for a presidential debate at the University of Miami.
Amandi's hopes for Kerry center on what analysts describe as the generational shift in Miami over the last decade, as older, hard-line Cuban-Americans die.
But analysts say that while older exiles make up 40 percent of Miami's Cuban-American population, they still represent 67 percent of registered Cuban-American voters.
Among the most affected by the new regulations are travel companies doing business with Cuba.
"I'm losing money like you wouldn't believe," said ABC Charters vice president Tessie Aral, who plans to vote for Kerry.
The company used to fly eight planes a week to Cuba, with a maximum of 900 passengers and an 80 percent occupancy rate. Now it has three flights and an occupancy rate of 20 percent.
Other Cuban-Americans in South Florida say Bush is the only candidate who will bring down Castro. They say the new measures will help Bush win re-election.
"They were significant steps in the right direction," said state Rep. David Rivera, R-Miami. "And they are greatly appreciated by the Cuban-American community."
This week, Rivera proposed a bill for the 2005 legislative session that would penalize Floridians who travel to Cuba legally by stripping them of food stamps, state health insurance and housing assistance.
Hialeah schoolteacher Lizbet Martinez left Cuba on a raft in 1994 at age 11. She made headlines when she pulled out a violin aboard the Coast Guard cutter that rescued her family and started playing The Star Spangled Banner.
She recently went back to Cuba for the first time to visit relatives. Even so, she supports the president's greater restrictions. "We have to accept there are sacrifices for the greater good," she said.
Ninoska Perez, a radio host on one of Miami's most popular Cuban stations, said the only people protesting the changes were making money by ferrying Cuban-Americans to and from the island.
"It really has nothing to do with whether you came in 1959 or 1999," she said. "The main goal of everybody should be to end the suffering of the 12-million people in Cuba, not of your own personal family."
For Lester Palma, a 31-year-old respiratory therapist in Miami, the situation is clear: Bush's policy will help dethrone Castro, and that's why Palma will vote for Bush.
"Everyone has family over there," Palma said. "But we need to support (the measures) for the greater good. In order for the government to fall, we need to restrict Castro."
Palma talked admiringly about Bush and the evils of Cuba's communist system just before he said goodbye to his parents at the airport.
They were boarding Thursday's charter flight to Havana to visit family.
Tamara Lush can be reached at 727 893-8612 or at lush@sptimes.com David Adams can be reached at adams@sptimes.com