Cuban exiles and their curious vigil

Cuban exiles and their curious vigil

By John Paul Rathbone in Miami



Much has changed during what has been a long wait on the mainland,

writes John Paul Rathbone

Every August, a distinguished group of Cuban-American scholars – from

Harvard sociologists to moonlighting International Monetary Fund

officials – forsake Florida's beaches and gather in a downtown Miami

hotel instead. Their lofty purpose? To gauge communist Cuba's transition

to a market economy and a liberal democracy. As these meetings have gone

on for 23 years, it goes to show that quixoticism can swell the hearts

of even reasonable men.

There was once a heady excitement to these gatherings of the Association

for the Study of the Cuban Economy. Immediately after the fall of the

Berlin Wall, Central Intelligence Agency operatives often mingled with

the academics, who knew chapter and verse on the baleful decline of

Cuban total factor productivity, but were more likely to have slide

rules in their pockets than spy cameras up their sleeves.



Since then, most other governments have come and gone, including Cuba's

biggest patron, Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's recently deceased president. In

Havana, meanwhile, the ailing Fidel Castro simply passed the baton to

his brother Raúl, who has instigated limited reforms. This was not the

transition anybody expected. "Every year, the same faces, much the same

words, and nothing has changed!" remarked an old-time attendee with

characteristic black humour, but also typical Cuban exaggeration.

It is true that strange cold warlike incidents still swirl around the

island. The latest was the discovery in Panama last month of a freighter

with some outdated fighter planes and missiles hidden under 10,000

tonnes of Cuban sugar, bound for North Korea. Why Havana thought to

dispatch obsolete munitions to Pyongyang for repair, all anybody can say

is: weird. Equally weird, their discovery was broadcast in photographs

tweeted by the Panamanian president. (The gossip is Ricardo Martinelli

wanted to ingratiate himself with Washington – as if commandeering

contraband with a smart phone in hand gave the impression of a President

Really-On-The-Case.)



Such incidents aside, it is remarkable though how much Latin America has

changed over the intervening 23 years – thanks to a boom that, like most

of recent history, has passed Cuba by, and how these changes are

reflected in the fabric of Miami life, the officially bilingual but

ex-officio business capital of much of Latin America.

One of these is the welcome passing of Miami Vice , and not only for

stylistic reasons. In the 1980s heyday of the television series, Miami

became known for its pastel colours, flash cars, Armani padded-shoulder

suits, speedboats and cocaine trade. Today, that business has been

pushed overland through Mexico by the US coastguards' throttling of

Caribbean smuggler routes.



Another is how Miami's Cuban-dominated Spanish conversation has been

diluted by other accents – spendthrift Brazilians and Haitian refugees,

of course, but also Venezuelan émigrés, whose talk can resemble that of

Cuban exiles of old, filled with an anger that to outsiders can seem absurd.

Meanwhile, the Cuban exiles' zesty language has mellowed into

resignation, and its bitterness taken up by Cubans from the island. This

became clear during a conference panel of dissident economists,

doubtless brave but some of whom only echoed words by Raúl Castro

himself. Last month, the 82-year-old grandfather and former general

rebuked the National Assembly for the demise of Cuban manners and morals

– from urinating in the street to raising pigs in the city, taking

bribes, vandalising public telephones and throwing stones at passing

cars. Exiles were once called revanchist when they voiced such laments.

But times are changing.

Last year this Republican crowd even elected a Democrat to Congress. The

old guard are turning up their toes, and the young guard are travelling

to the island in droves. Around half a million visited last year, making

them Cuba's second-largest source of tourists. (Did anyone say US

embargo?) Even more remarkably, exiles send some $2bn a year to their

island relatives.



That makes them one of Cuba's economic mainstays, which is just as well

because mind-boggling mismanagement may well see Venezuela's oil-fuelled

largesse soon reduced to fumes. A case of Miami coming to Havana's

rescue then? Fidel once said, famously, of his revolution: "History will

absolve me." The wittiest rebuke to that was: "Perhaps, but not

geography." And so it has proved.



johnpaul.rathbone@ft.com



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