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Mixed reaction in Miami as Florida’s Cuban-American leaders blast policy shift

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President Barack Obama on Wednesday abruptly ended more than 50 years of U.S. attempts to isolate Cuba, ushering in sweeping changes that will connect Floridians to the island through increased travel, business and communication links.

The policy will have an especially big impact on Florida because of its proximity to Cuba, its population of Cuban exiles and their families, and a long-simmering antipathy toward the Castro regime.

The announcement set off a torrent of scorn from Cuban-American leaders in Florida and Congress. But an unnamed senior administration official asserted that the president had discovered during his visits to Florida that “the Cuban-American population has increasingly supported greater openness to Cuba.”

In Havana, Cubans rejoiced after hearing the news. Students from the Raul Roa Garcia Institute of International Relations in Havana paraded through the streets in celebration. Residents stood on balconies and in doorways and cheered as the students passed by.

“People in the street are happy,” said Yusnely Hernandez, 33, a waitress in Havana. “We hope it’s for the best and that the mentality of the two governments changes.”

Deysi Mata Nuñez, 66, cried with joy when she heard that three Cuban spies being held in the U.S. — Antonio Guerrero, 56, Gerardo Hernandez, 49, and Ramon Labañino, 51 — would be returning to Cuba.

“I have to shout it out to the world because justice was done at last,” said Nuñez, who scratches out a living selling cloth dolls for about a dollar each. “We love the American people. We love people who want peace, no matter what country they’re from or what color they are.”

The new policy will be spelled out in coming weeks and implemented through new regulations in coming months.

More Americans will be able to travel to Cuba on a general license for professional research, education, religious missions, commerce, athletic competition, public performances and humanitarian projects. But pleasure trips and general-purpose tourism will still be banned. Visitors will be able to bring back $400 worth of goods from Cuba, with no more than $100 of it alcohol and tobacco.

Americans will be able to send larger amounts of money to Cubans under the new rules. Cuban-Americans already can send unlimited remittances to their families. Under the emerging rules, limits will be raised from $500 to $2,000 every three months.

Businesses will be able to establish commercial ties to the island, and traders will find it easier to finance shipments of food and other products.

U.S. banks will be able to establish accounts in Cuba. And Americans will be allowed to use debit and credit cards on the island.

Telephone and Internet links will be created. Americans will be allowed to sell and install consumer communications devices, software and services.

The new policy was triggered by Cuba’s release of Alan Gross, 65, of Maryland, who has been imprisoned since 2009 for bringing communications equipment to dissidents. Cuba also released a U.S. spy, who was not named.

In exchange, the United States agreed to release the three Cubans who were imprisoned for espionage, stemming from convictions of the so-called “Cuban Five” in 2001.

“Alan Gross should never have spent one day in prison, and we are glad that he will finally be reunited with his family,” said U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Miami. “However, the way that his release was achieved is outrageous and proves that once again, President Obama is the Appeaser-in-Chief who is willing to provide unprecedented concessions to a brutal dictatorship that opposes U.S. interests at every opportunity.”

He called the release of the three Cuban spies “an egregious miscarriage of justice.”

The announcement came as dozens of American academics and analysts met with their Cuban counterparts in Havana at a conference aimed at studying the prospects of better relations during the final two years of the Obama administration.

“This is a historic moment – a game changer,” said Philip Brenner, an American University professor who attended the conference, where the news was met with cheers. “It creates a legacy for President Obama in a way that nothing else could. This is not reactive. It’s proactive.”

At about the same time Obama announced the agreement in Washington, Cuban President Raul Castro did the same in Havana, saying that “the progress achieved in the exchanges we’ve had shows that it’s possible to find solutions to many problems.”

“We have to learn the art of living together with our differences in a civilized way,” said Castro, who took charge of Cuba when his brother Fidel Castro left office in 2006.

Diaz-Balart and other Cuban-Americans said the president’s plan to normalize relations with Cuba will jeopardize attempts to bring democracy and human rights to the Cuban people.

In a Miami news conference, U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, said she was “aghast that this has happened.” Ros-Lehtinen was joined by relatives of those aboard two Brothers to the Rescue planes shot down off the Cuban coast in 1996. Four aboard were killed, and Gerardo Hernandez, one of the Cuban Five, was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder in connection with the shootdown.

“This president knows no bounds when it comes to negotiating with terrorists,” Ros-Lehtinen said. “It shocks the conscience of our community. It saddens me and fills me with anguish to be here with these families at this time.”

Marlene Alejandre-Triana, a daughter of Armando Alejandre Jr., one of the Cuban-American aviators killed in the Brothers to the Rescue incident, said the release was a “slap in the face, a dishonor to my father’s memory.”

But Alejandre-Triana also said, “I’m happy that Alan Gross can spend Hanukkah with his daughters.”

In Fort Lauderdale, Mayor Jack Seiler said he was contacted by the White House on Wednesday morning regarding the new Cuba policy. He said other mayors of large South Florida cities were also called.

“They reached out to the mayors about what they were going to be doing,” Seiler said. “I thought it was a very proactive move on their part.”

Seiler said the call came from Jerry Abramson, director of the U.S. Office of Intergovernmental Affairs for President Obama.

As usual when divisive U.S.-Cuba politics are in the news, Cafe Versailles in Miami became a gathering place for protesters opposed to the policy change, residents curious to take in the scene, and dozens of reporters seeking to gauge the mood of Miami’s Cuban-American community.

People congregated just steps from the restaurant’s serving window, shouting out their views, waving the Cuban flag and holding posters. The smell of coffee and cigars flooded the air as people argued, some more heatedly than others.

“Obama broke the rules,” said Miguel Savaadra, 57, who carried a sign that criticized Obama. “He is a traitor to the American people and he lacks respect for the people in Congress.”

Leandro Seoane, 50, who fled Cuba in 1980, said: “If I didn’t come to the United States, I would go to jail for being homosexual.” The announcement about the policy change was very emotional for him, he said.

Obama “touched on points in his speech that haven’t been heard in years — freedom of speech, liberties,” he said. “This is a way to open a window.”

Seoane said he immediately called his 90-year-old mother in Cuba.

“When I spoke with my mother in Cuba today, she said she could hear the people in Havana clapping and cheering outside her apartment. We cried together. Whether the policy change is going to be effective, I don’t know, but it’s worth a try.”

Mimi Davila, 24, of Aventura, said that for her, the policy change has fostered more hope than anger. Davila, who described herself as half-Cuban, said Wednesday’s announcement means “reuniting families and opening lines of communication.

“My immediate gut reaction wasn’t anger. A lot of my family is in Cuba. I was happy because it’s going to make it easier to see my family and maybe for them to come here.”

Davila said she understands where others’ anger comes from, but “for me, I just think about my family.”

John Hernandez, 42, was born in Miami but his family is from Cuba. Hernandez called the policy change a disgrace. “You don’t do business with an assassin, a tyrant, a dictator like the Castros,” he said. “They are not going to change. The only thing they will respond to is force.”

Veteran Miami Cuban-American radio and television commentator Max Lesnik welcomed the news of possible change, calling any move to lift the 1961 embargo or improve relations the most significant development in years between the two nations.

“This could be a turning point,” said Lesnik, who travels to Cuba frequently. “This could be the time when Cuba mends relations with the U.S.”

But Sebastian Arcos, a former political prisoner in Cuba, is not so sure. “My concern is that we have caved in to Cuba’s demands,” said Arcos, an administrator at Florida International University’s Cuban Research Institute. “I don’t see any concessions on Cuba’s part except for the release of Alan Gross.

“What is the purpose of normalizing relations? We have always said that would come when the Cuban government makes important economic and political reforms. Are we giving away the house without getting anything back?”

For conservatives in the Cuban-American community, the release of Hernandez is likely to be particularly offensive, Arcos said.

Within that community, both the population and attitudes have changed since Fidel Castro took seized power on the island in 1959. In part, that change has come because about half of Cuban-Americans arrived here after 1990. Many grew up in Cuba, still have family there and visit the island.

Sociologist Guillermo Grenier, who polls public opinion on Cuba for Florida International University, said half of all Cuban-Americans favor lifting the embargo. “On the street, I think you’ll see a lot of young people saying, ‘Yeah,'” said Grenier. “Change is more likely to come with engagement than isolation.”

At Versailles, Jorge Collazo, 64, called the policy change “amazing.

“It was a good decision because we cannot change the past,” said Collazo, who was born in Havana in 1950. “If we really want Cuba to be what it once was, it needs commerce. We have to let the world in. Isolation won’t bring it back.”

Collazo called the viewpoint opposing the policy change “prehistoric.”

“Fifty years of policy and nothing has changed,” he said. “They are living in resentment. You can’t hold a dream hostage. You can’t hold the future of Cuba hostage to what happened in the past.

“I feel for those who were harmed. My family suffered, too,” he said. “My family came to America and started over. That’s the true Cuban spirit. They’re industrious.”