Struggle Among the Cuban Exiles

...Shortly after arriving in the United States in the 1960s, he entered the business world as a building-trades contractor...

...The CANF has done yeoman work publicizing the brutal mockery of human rights and the breakdown of the economy in Cuba, while charting the course of Fidel Castro's political absolutism with merciless accuracy...

...The clash triggered by Television Marti has brought to the surface divisions that have merely been papered over for the past 30 years—between young and old, ideologists and pragmatiste, those with continuing family links to Cuba and those who have gotten out of Cuba lock, stock and barrel...

...It must be remembered, too, that the Cubans are not about to give up their large health and welfare system, even though they are disenchanted with its Communist bureaucracy...

...The Betancourt contingent views the tasks of reconstruction as essentially Cuba's affair, and is not troubled by the prospect that a social democratic administration and mixed economy would in all probability replace the current totalitarian regime...

...At one point he considered securing private funding to make it a reality...

...Besides executing its daily broadcast schedule, Radio Marti has served as a screening and filtering agency for key former officials of the Castro regime who have managed to escape to the United States...

...They, too, are seeing their numbers reduced by the force of nature...

...One finds it hard to imagine that anyone could do a better job...

...Every day that Castro remains in power from here on out will heighten the tensions in the exile community...

...From there he went on to become the founding director of Radio Marti, which, through the VOA, is directly responsible to the United States Information Agency...

...Ernesto Betancourt began his political life as the representative in the United States of Castro's26th of July Movement...

...I do not mean to suggest that talk of invasion is again common, but there has been speculation about assassination as a quick way to solve complex issues...

...In the course of running his business, he got involved with Republican Party affairs at the local and then the state level...

...As might be expected, Betancourt has the bureaucrat's suspicions of the businessman who advances ideas without always understanding them, and Mas Canosa has the entrepreneur's contempt for the intellectual who turned policymaker—especially one with a former high profile in Castro's Revolution...

...Further, although the radio effort has been remarkably successful in reaching large numbers of Cubans daily with everything from soap operas to sports results, TV is the more popular medium...

...Mas Canosa and his sizeable group of supporters are convinced this is the time to prepare Cuba's transition to democracy, and to intensify actions that will hasten the dictator's downfall...

...Surely the rationale for beaming radio signals into Cuba is no less valid for television signals...

...Leaving aside the considerable legal and technological issues involved, I myself think that in policy terms the idea of bringing television into the picture is a good one...

...Following his early break with Castro, Betancourt spent 16 years at the Organization of American States...

...Repeatedly one hears the same anxious questions: How long can Castro continue...

...He made his presence felt on the national scene by advocating Radio Marti and setting up the Cuban-American National Foundation...

...It has prepared quarterly reports that give Congressmen and other public officials a sound basis to assess Castro's activities...

...These include popular music, sports events, talk-shows, and news broadcasts that fairly report what is happening on the island...

...Irving Louis Horowitz is Hannah Arendt Professor of Sociology and Political Science at Rutgers University...

...He was its coordinator of economic affairs in the Alliance for Progress days, then he was named director of budget and finance...

...And the use of televisionin the communications war against Castro has been a dream of his...

...My own reading is that the Betancourt approach is the realistic one...

...Whatever the case, the battle that seems to have developed over Radio Marti and Television Marti actually reflects a much deeper struggle between the Washington and Miami Cuban exile camps...

...Rapprochement between the United States and Cuba is not in the cards...

...In addition, under two able directors, first Frank Calzon (today the Washington representative of Freedom House) and now Jacqueline Tillman, it has brought together diverse individuals interested in the restoration of Cuban democracy...

...As it eagerly anticipates the end of Fidel Castro's regime, it seems to be returning to its ideological infancy —or at the very least to the stage immediately preceding the Bay of Pigs, when a sense of desperation was the norm...

...But with the Havana regime now thought to be vulnerable, the beginning of the CubanAmerican popular front's disintegration can be discerned...

...Gathering material about what is taking place in a tightlycontrolled society a distance away, and presenting it in a fashion that retains a sense of immediacy, has been a daunting challenge...

...Betancourt and Mas Canosa have been two pillars of the Cuban exile effort to overthrow Castro, but in effect they represent alternative choices for the exile community...

...And it has developed an ongoing system for researching and maintaining data on Cuba's economic and political life that has won wide respect for its precision and objectivity...

...As a result, what began as a tactical dispute has ended as an ideological confrontation...

...An economist by profession, he did more fund-raising than economic analysis as Fidel's representative, and in the process developed ties to Cuban Americans of the pre-Castro period...

...Betancourt believes he was booted because he became a target of the Miami-based Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), said to wield undue influence at the United States Information Agency...

...It revolves, rather, around conflicting personalities and differing basic philosophies...

...Newspaper reports suggested that he was dismissed because he said the launching of Television Marti, the new Voice of America (VOA) project aimed at Cuba, violated international law as well as commonly accepted rules governing quality television transmission...

...The very fact that Castro is so troubled by Television Marti is a good indication of its potential for providing the island's population with a wider view of the world and stepping up the pressure on his already strained resources...

...A KEY issue is the role the exile community should play in any transition period...

...Again speaking in terms of policy, there is little reason to be concerned about Fidel's high-volume hysteria...

...government sees Castro as the one dictatorial domino yet to fall in the Western Hemisphere...

...After the strong support Florida's Cuban Americans gave George Bush during his successful 1988 Presidential campaign, however, Mas Canosa started to press for the establishment of Television Marti alongside Radio Marti at the VOA...

...He did exceptionally well in the booming greater Miami area...

...The Mas orces see themselves as being instrumental in bringing about a postCastro government based on capitalist free-market premises and principles...

...In contrast, Jorge Mas Canosa is a more traditional Cuban exile...

...How many years will it be before he must yield power as a consequence of biological decline if not ideological defeat...

...In short, the options in Cuba seem closer to those of the Soviet Union than of Eastern Europe...

...It could be argued, too, that Television Marti presents an opportunity not merely to supplement Radio Marti but to build on its hard-earned credibility...

...Perhaps that frustrating fact explains why there is something eerie about the present atmosphere in the Cuban exile community...

...The Betancourt camp stresses the importance of taking the lead from dissident groups that exist in, or defect from, Cuba...

...After the Revolution of 1959, he served the new Havana government as managing director of the Bank for Foreign Trade, and next was Cuban governor for the International Monetary Fund...

...Unlike Daniel Ortega Saavedra in Nicaragua, Castro utterly destroyed Cuba's private sector...

...The U.S...

...Unfortunately, though, the controversy that is dividing the Washington and Miami Cuban exile communities is not focused on the substantive matters I have been discussing...

...But the CANF's spiritual center is Miami, where Jorge Mas Canosa, a prominent businessman, is the single most powerful force within the big exile community...

...Betancourt turned an interest section of the Voice of America into a model operation, both intellectually and organizationally...

...Such questions are certainly pertinent, but parallel questions might be asked about the leaders of the exile community...

...Moreover, recent surveys indicate that only a limited number of Cuban businessmen can be expected to return from Miami, and moving one's person is quite different from moving a commercial infrastructure...

...Jorge Mas Canosa, thecreator, nurturer and chairman of the CANF—who also is chairman of a Presidential advisory board on broadcasting—categorically denies any involvement in Betancourt's ouster...

...Cubans soon came to recognize that they could learn from listening to the station, and its accuracy also became known to the rest of the world...

...His successor, rumored to be Tony Navarro, a longtime associate of Mas Canosa, faces the task of doing at least as well...

...It is no small part of Betancourt's achievement that he designed the entire Radio Marti operation and supervised it on an everyday basis...

...They have written a constitution, and they have engaged free-market advisers to plan Cuba's return to the capitalist fold...

...Opposition to Castro made the two men and their followers allies...

...The trouble with this polarization is that it may permit the biggest fish of them all, Fidel Castro, to wriggle off the hook—to swim away from the Eastern European revolutions of 1989, and even to survive the smashing electoral defeat of the Sandinistas in 1990...

...Undue provocation, it cautions, might extend his control by enabling him to once more mobilize Cuban opinion around horrific slogans like "Socialism or Death...

...With the end of despotic rule in Chile, Paraguay and Nicaragua, his is certainly the most repressive regime in Latin America, not to mention the most militarized...

...It urges us not to forget that Castro still remains very much in power...

...Economic forces capable of restoring a free market do not exist on the island...

...In the light of his increasingly sour relations with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, it could indeed be argued that adding television to the information arsenal would help underline his isolation and perhaps contribute to the elimination of dictatorship in Cuba without a heavy toll in human lives...

...On the broadcast side, Radio Marti has evolved into a full-fledged noncommercial radio station offering an interesting variety of commercial-quality programs...

...The struggle highlighted by the removal of Betancourt as director of Radio Marti, and by the urgency Mas Canosa displayed in getting Television Marti on the air, is part of a race—not only for the restoration of democracy in the Cuban mainland, but also against mortality in exileland...

...Exhibiting a style reminiscent of an old Tammany Hall pol, Mas Canosa, a tireless, affable man who gets things done, became a deal-maker for candidates seeking statewide offices...

...Since it took to the airwaves in 1985 under Betancourt's skillful direction, it has scrupulously avoided distortion and exaggeration...