Word: cubans
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...under a lot of pressure from Chávez, who is acting more like a dictator every day," says Diaz-Balart, who accuses the Venezuelan President of human-rights abuses against opponents and of pressuring independent media that criticize his government. Ros-Lehtinen agrees, noting the similarities between the Cubans who fled the island in the wake of Fidel Castro's communist revolution 50 years ago and the Venezuelans now residing in her South Florida district. "We are very much aware of the key issues facing them," she says. Adds Ninoska Perez, director of the conservative Cuban Liberty Council...
...successful, could ultimately create a cache of future voters for pols like Diaz-Balart and Ros-Lehtinen - a source that may only grow stronger as the ties between the Castros and Chávez grow warmer. Indeed, soon after he was first elected, the Venezuelan President asked then Cuban leader Fidel Castro for advice on how to transform his country into a socialist state for the 21st century. Chávez also began to refer to Castro as his "father." (Fidel, 82 and ailing, has since ceded power to his younger brother Raúl.) Today, oil-rich Venezuela sends...
Florida's Cuban-American GOP lawmakers, including Lincoln Diaz-Balart's brother and fellow Congressman, Mario Diaz-Balart, are also reaching out to other Latin Americans whose home countries have recently elected leftist leaders, most notably Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador. Some contend the effort is a strategic political move aimed at consolidating their power base during a palpable shift in the dynamic of Florida's Latino community - from traditionally Cuban and reliably Republican, to more Central or South American and Democratic or independent. While incumbents Ros-Lehtinen and the Diaz-Balarts all won re-election in November, their margins...
This year's FIU poll concerning the trade embargo - adamantly supported by Ros-Lehtinen and the Diaz-Balarts - could be an even better indicator that the political base on which the Cuban-American lawmakers relied for so long may be eroding. In the survey, two-thirds of Miami Cuban-Americans said the U.S. should re-establish formal diplomatic ties with Cuba. "The demographics of the Cuban-American community are changing," says Guarione Diaz, president of the Cuban American National Council, referring to what appears to be a shift away from the hard line on Cuba favored by the previous Administration...
Lincoln Diaz-Balart denounces the FIU poll as "pure baloney," saying it surveyed both Cuban Americans who are U.S. citizens and Cuban residents unable to vote. Still, Obama captured an impressive 35% of Miami's Cuban vote in large part because he pledged to undo George W. Bush's tight restrictions on Cuban-American travel and remittances to Cuba. It would all suggest that one of the key principles of the Miami Representatives' agendas - a hard-line approach to Cuba - is no longer the policy of choice in the community. And it's that kind of complexity that just might...