By Albor Ruiz

 That hundreds of Cubans leave their country for the U.S. is nothing new. What is new is for Cubans already in this country to go back to their native soil, renouncing the comforts and riches of development.

 Yet that is exactly what former revolutionary comandante Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo did on Aug. 8.

 The one-time Fidel Castro ally in the struggle against dictator Fulgencio Batista, who later spent 22 years in a Cuban jail for his armed opposition to the Communist
 regime, surprised even his own wife and children when he told them at Havana's José Martí Airport, after a two-week vacation in Cuba, that instead of going back to the safety of Miami with them, he had decided to remain on the island without the Castro government's authorization.

 "I am more useful here than abroad," said Menoyo in Havana, while calling on Castro's government "to open legal spaces to the opposition."

 And he added: "I want to identify, by means of dialogue, peaceful ways of understanding and reconciliation between all Cubans."

 Wait-and-see stance

 Although accusations of his being a Communist collaborator and playing Castro's game immediately came from hard-liners in the South Florida Cuban-American
 community, reality is far more complex - and far more interesting.

 In fact, more moderate Cuban-Americans, mindful that the former comandante's action could perhaps open a new avenue to understanding and peaceful reform, adopted a respectful, even admiring attitude of wait and see.

 "This is a man I respect," said Samuel Farber, a Cuban-born political science professor at Brooklyn College. "But I just don't know enough about this particular event to give a considered opinion. We will have to watch what happens in the coming months."

 Gutiérrez Menoyo's wife, Gladys, the mother of their three sons - ages 13, 11 and 9 - defended his decision in Miami.

 "He still wants to achieve the revolution that he fought for many years ago," she said.

 Gutiérrez Menoyo, though, has been a controversial figure since he arrived in Miami in 1986 after being released from jail. At that time, he declared that he had decided to oppose Castro, and in 1993 he founded Cambio Cubano (Cuban Change), a moderate group seeking to effect reforms in Cuba through dialogue.

 As a result, the powerful ultraconservative Cuban-Americans in South Florida did their best to vilify and ostracize him.

 Quixotic figure

 Gutiérrez Menoyo, an old-style revolutionary, was never afraid of attacking hard-liners who asked for a U.S. invasion of Cuba and advocated the failed, four-decade-old trade embargo while staying safely behind in their air-conditioned Miami homes.

 And, proud of his independence from Washington, he did not hesitate to criticize dissidents on the island as willing or unwilling pawns of the hostile and mistaken policies toward Cuba carried out by the U.S. Interest Section in Havana.

 Gutiérrez Menoyo, now 68 and nearly blind, is an almost Quixotic figure.

 Whatever one may think of his political position, he is in Cuba risking his freedom and his comfort, while his most virulent critics remain safely in Miami.

 Yet the potential success of his aspirations is, at best, doubtful.

 "The differences between Cubans cannot be resolved until the difference between the U.S. and Cuba are resolved. That is the key issue," said Max Lesnik, a
 Cuban-American political analyst in Miami. "But Gutiérrez Menoyo doesn't see it that way. He sees it as a conflict between two comandantes that the two of them can resolve among themselves."

 Let's wait and see.