United States should deal with Cuba through third parties*** For three black Cubans who hijack a Havana ferry in a desperate attempt to reach U.S. shores, it's death by firing squad, but we don't hear a peep from civil-rights activist Jesse Jackson or any other black U.S. leaders who would normally cry racism. Cuba predictably blames its carnage on Uncle Sam. There are protests the world over, even from several of Castro's old commie friends. The U.S. government weighs its options. It expels 14 Cuban diplomats - a record - for spying. Round and round we go in this tit-for-tat diplomacy. Will Cuba kick out James Cason, our man in Havana?
Will the United States keep selling any Cuba assets that arrive on our shores? It's another subplot in this 44-year-old power play. The U.S. government has been auctioning off hijacked planes that arrive in Miami to pay a Cuban-American woman who, by court decree, is entitled to big bucks from the Cuban government for having been jilted by her husband, who turned out to be a Cuban spy who infiltrated exile groups. Talk about government policy wrapped in the wrath of a woman scorned.
Will there be another rafter crisis as Cuba's bankrupt communist economy continues to struggle? Will Cuba's dissident movement be revived after this latest crackdown? Will Europe and Latin America make Cuba accountable for its human-rights violations?***
Not their fathers' Cuban-American politics*** "We do not need the 101st Airborne in Havana," Mr. Mas tells a group of the best and brightest young Cuban-Americans who've gathered for drinks and crudités. "We have to change the debate, talk about the violations of human rights, the need for elections, the enslaving of the Cuban people. That's what we need to show the world, that's a compelling argument that cannot be debated." With Cuban-American relations more strained than at any time since the missile crisis 40 years ago, Mr. Mas Santos's words are particularly salient. But what makes them still more striking - and revealing - is that Mas Santos's father was Jorge Mas Canosa, powerful founder of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), which over the last 20 years has shaped the hard-line US policy toward Cuba as well as more than one presidential election in Florida.
Now, as the Bush administration prepares its response to Fidel Castro's recent crackdown on dissidents and emigrants, it's confronted by a new dilemma: Cuban-Americans, a key political constituency, are split between the traditional hard-liners and a new generation of moderates like Mas Santos, who has taken over the chairmanship of the CANF. The old guard is lobbying to have the US cut off the funds - more than a billion dollars annually - that Cuban-Americans send to their families on the Caribbean island, and to ban all travel there. The moderates, made up of younger Cuban-Americans and newer migrants from the island, object to both those aims, and would prefer the administration to champion human rights and free speech - and indict Castro as a war criminal.***