Cuban-Americans: Cuba Libre

BEFORE FELICE GORORDO, a young Cuban-American entrepreneur, first visited his homeland in 2002, he had to endure a titanic row with his parents. His mother and father are stern Republicans, like many who left in the first decades of the Castro regime, and saw travel to the island as a betrayal of the revolution’s victims.

Mr Gorordo’s mother had two uncles, one of whom supported the revolution and stayed whereas the other one fought the Communists and was jailed before heading for America. Yet when Mr Gorordo at last met his relatives on the island, he found that the schism was not as deep as he had feared. He saw photographs of himself and his family in Florida, sent to Cuba by his exiled uncle who had quietly maintained ties with letters and parcels. Then his 13-year-old cousin walked into the room, sporting a familiar outfit. “He didn’t just look like me and sound like me, he was wearing my clothes,” Mr Gorordo recalls. After that visit Mr Gorordo founded Roots of Hope, a non-partisan youth group which promotes engagement with the island.

Beyond human interest, such stories have national political significance. More than one presidential election was arguably swung by America’s 2m-strong community of Cubans, who are more conservative than other Hispanics and mostly live in the swing state of Florida. Since the cold war Cubans have, in essence, enjoyed automatic rights to political asylum and permanent residency the moment they set foot on American soil. That has made them something of a resented elite among Hispanics.

Mr Gorordo’s group avoids commenting publicly on President Obama’s decision in December last year to seek diplomatic ties with Cuba and to ease curbs on travel and trade with the island (only Congress can fully lift the 55-year-old Cuban embargo). What he will say, with confidence, is that America’s Cuba policy is less often a vote-deciding “wedge issue” among his younger members.

Polls suggest that greater engagement with Cuba is backed by hefty majorities of younger Cuban-Americans, and by those who went into exile following an economic crisis in the early 1990s. Alejandro Barreras, an advertising executive, left Cuba in 1992. He feels no love for either the Castro regime or for old-school hardliners in Florida who complain that money invested in Cuba props up the regime. Mr Barreras disagrees: in the long run, “private economic activity makes people less dependent on the Cuban state.”

Florida’s politicians are adapting. Carlos Giménez, the 61-year-old centrist Republican mayor of Miami-Dade County, has not seen his Cuban homeland since leaving in 1960.But he does not condemn constituents who travel back and forth to support relatives.

Local political reactions to the presidential plan fall into three broad camps. Hardliners oppose “rewarding” the Castro regime with negotiations of any sort. Liberals would support a unilateral end to the embargo. A middle camp (including Mr Giménez) does not exactly claim that the embargo has worked, but accuses Mr Obama of offering concessions without any guarantees of reform from Cuba.

In the 2016 presidential elections younger Cuban-Americans will be less likely to support Republicans, but older conservatives remain much likelier to vote. Only about a third of Cubans who have arrived since the 1990s have progressed from residency to full citizenship. At the same time the Cuban vote has become more diluted by the inflow of other ethnic groups. With luck, relations with Cuba could stop being a hostage to domestic politics and become just another aspect of foreign policy.