By Sue Anne Pressley
Washington Post Staff Writer

MIAMI -- Joe Garcia, one of the new, younger-generation leaders of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), said he is "sad" that 22 members of the board recently publicly resigned, exposing an internal rift over the direction of the largest and most powerful Cuban exile organization in America. But that still leaves 150 other board members, he said, and a mission to move Cuban politics beyond Miami.

"We Cuban Americans have been wonderful at preaching to the choir -- we know when to clap, stamp our feet, even to cry," said Garcia, 37, a second-generation Cuban American who is CANF's executive director. "But this requires us maybe to go to the door and scream, 'Hey, there are 11 million people in Cuba who haven't had democracy in 40 years.' We Cubans know that, but we argue about silly discrepancies in position. We've got to get the rest of the world to say, 'Enough.' "

The troubles within the foundation are being described as the most serious in its 20-year history. In Miami, the recent defections of some of the group's most senior and influential members have kept tongues wagging on radio talk shows, and in Havana, the Cuban media has had a field day, with Granma, the daily newspaper of Communist Cuba, gleefully describing the infighting as "dancing among the wolves."

The split is viewed as ideological and generational, focusing on the leadership of Garcia and chairman Jorge Mas Santos, 38, the business-magnate son of Jorge Mas Canosa, the charismatic founder of CANF who died of cancer in 1997. The younger leaders' move to soften the foundation's image and widen its appeal among Democrats, as well as traditional Republican supporters, has been met with bitter opposition.

Although some have since downplayed its significance, the two leaders' recent active role in persuading the Latin Grammy music awards to move to Miami may have been the final straw for some disenchanted board members. Many old-time freedom fighters were aghast at the thought of musicians from Cuba possibly giving thanks to Fidel Castro from a Miami stage.

The upcoming event was again a point of turmoil over the weekend, however. The Miami Herald reported that organizers were concerned about protests planned by a coalition of 67 Cuban exile groups and were considering moving the Sept. 11 ceremonies to Fort Lauderdale. The Miami location may have been saved after the coalition apparently reached an agreement yesterday with the city over where the protests would be held.

But the CANF controversy also reflects the complexities and raw emotions that continue to beset Miami/Dade's Cuban American community -- which grew 15 percent to 650,000 between the 1990 and 2000 census -- over how best to battle a Communist regime in a post-Cold War world. And it indicates a great deal about the tensions left here in the wake of the Elian Gonzalez case, the passionate struggle over custody of the then-6-year-old shipwreck victim that played poorly outside the streets of Miami's Little Havana.

Although many say the CANF fissures were long months in the making, and at least four board members already departed quietly last year, the split only came to light in July when the foundation spokeswoman, Ninoska Perez Castellon, also a popular Cuban radio talk-show host, abruptly left the group. She was accompanied by her husband, Roberto Martin Perez, who spent 28 years in a Cuban prison and was viewed as an ideological conscience of the group. Castellon, who did not return telephone calls, reportedly was unhappy over what has been described by critics as Mas Santos's dictatorial leadership style.

Then, this month, 20 other board members, including Alberto Hernandez, who had been Mas Canosa's physician, and former CANF treasurer Feliciano Foyo, called a news conference at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables to announce their resignations from the CANF board, citing "principles" as their reason. They also questioned how the leadership is handling finances involved with the Jorge Mas Canosa Freedom Fund.

In a declaration read aloud, the departing members said that during the past two years, they had "worked arduously to maintain cohesion within the foundation and preserve the principles that served as the basis for its creation."

"Notwithstanding our efforts, the organization has taken an undemocratic path antithetical to these very principles," the declaration continued.

"We will not continue to engage in futile battles that do not advance the cause of a free Cuba. The battle has been too long. There is only one enemy -- the dictatorship that enslaves Cuba."

For two decades, the foundation has served as an architect in the building of U.S. policy toward Cuba, and its accomplishments -- including Radio Marti and TV Marti, which are broadcast to the Cuban people, and strenuous lobbying efforts to tighten the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba -- have been extensive. The group, formed during the Reagan administration, was openly modeled after one of Washington's most powerful political lobbies, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

"CANF has been an incredibly important organization that has basically turned around Cuban American politics, from terrorist groups like Alpha 66 trying to invade Cuba to a more mainstream approach to influencing American politics -- lobbying, giving to political campaigns," said Dario Moreno, a political science professor at Florida International University.

"What you're having basically is an ideological dispute between those who want to make the foundation more acceptable to sort of mainstream America, to avoid the public relations disaster the Cuban American community suffered during the Elian saga," Moreno said. "The new leaders want to moderate some of the hard-line stance of the foundation, especially in issues like travel to Cuba, Cuban musicians playing in the United States and medicines to Cuba. The defections are with people who want to maintain the traditional policy of no contact with Cuba."

The divisions within CANF, which erupted as Castro celebrated his 75th birthday last week and after a recent fainting spell spawned fresh discussion about his mortality, can be viewed as a healthy expression of democracy, said Delvis Fernandez, president of the Cuban American Alliance Education Fund.

"When I see the Cuban American community characterized in the press as extremists, I don't like to leave a legacy of, 'You are a Cuban American, so you must be some kind of basket case, some kind of a rabid ideologue,' " said Fernandez, whose Washington-based group took the lead last year in denouncing Miami's politicalization of the Elian Gonzalez case. "In our community, like any other community of exiles in the United States, you find a variety of opinions, and that had been lost. There has been such a control and such fear. There has been self-censure."

Lisandro Perez, director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University, says the current controversy "is more about what happens in Miami than what happens in Washington."

"In Washington, we will not see any time soon the foundation advocating for the lifting of the embargo," Perez said. "We may see this new leadership of the foundation somewhat more willing to compromise. These are people who operate mainly in English, and in Spanish, there is no word that means 'to compromise.' The foundation will have to do some of that, because the pressures in Congress are greater than they've ever been for lifting the embargo."

CANF executive director Garcia, who formerly chaired Florida's Public Service Commission, said there is no ill will toward the departed board members.

"Too often, the debate on Cuba has been characterized as right or left, when it's human rights versus a lack of them," he said. "We all stand on the side of liberty."

© 2001