In memo, he calls rift 'self-cleansing'

 BY CAROL ROSENBERG

 The long-serving director of the Cuban American National Foundation's Washington, D.C., office says in a secret memo that the influential lobby is engaged in a
 ``self-cleansing process'' of members who have not come to terms with the death of the founder, Jorge Mas Canosa.

 Addressed to ``friends,'' José Cárdenas sent the e-mail to a select group of Capitol Hill staffers and other anti-Fidel Castro activists to quiet concerns over the public resignation and renunciation of the group by veteran Miami spokeswoman Ninoska Pérez Castellón.

 It is significant both for its content and because it offers a rare, candid view of infighting at the lobby where the credo has long been, La ropa sucia se lava en la casa, no en la calle -- wash your dirty laundry at home, not in the street.

 ``There may be some more righteously indignant resignations before this is all over -- and I don't believe that's such a bad thing,'' Cárdenas wrote Monday in response to Pérez Castellón's WQBA 1140 AM denunciation of CANF leaders as liars and hypocrites. ``As someone said, we're not interested in preaching to the choir but getting more people into the church. Amen, brother.''

 Pérez Castellón, for her part, said she quit in protest of funding and organizational changes at the 20-year lobby, which she said no longer followed the founder's line. Both insiders and the popular Spanish-language radio host now agree that she had fiercely fought the changes from inside, but was publicly silent about her discontent.

 ``Frankly, I find it patently offensive to be lectured to about loyalty and what Jorge Mas Canosa REALLY stood for,'' Cárdenas wrote. ``And in one aspect of the theater of the absurd by his former bodyguard! -- and if I'm offended I can't imagine how Jorge Jr. must feel.''

 Cárdenas has worked for the lobby in Washington since 1986, notably as the lone representative during a period of dramatic downsizing after Mas Canosa's death in 1997.

 ``That e-mail was never meant to be in the public domain,'' he said Wednesday, alarmed that The Herald had obtained a copy. ``But I stand by what I wrote.''

 Pérez Castellón said Thursday that she had seen the memo. ``It shows the low level to which the foundation has sunk, and I don't want to be a part of it,'' she said.
 ``Obviously, there is no space for those who criticize.''

 Some of the son's changes to CANF culture have included hiring for the Washington office Dennis Hays, a retired U.S. diplomat who once served on the State Department Cuba Desk, and buying a $1.8 million townhouse there for office space.

 A posh opening party there promoted the offices as ``An Embassy for a Free Cuba.'' Pérez Castellón was notably absent from the February affair; CANF employees said she missed her Miami-to-Washington flight.

 Mas Santos has also hired other professional staff and pumped millions into Miami's Freedom Tower, which critics have grumbled are expenditures at odds with Mas Canosa's more frugal approach.

 Cárdenas ridiculed the defectors and critics in the memo without specifically naming Pérez Castellón or her husband, longtime jailed island dissident Roberto Martín
 Pérez. Neither did he name Mario Miranda, Mas Canosa's former bodyguard who recently registered himself in Tallahassee as president of the Cuban American National Foundation Inc. CANF lawyers apparently mistakenly let the Florida registration lapse.

 ``Basically, what you have here are a number of people who built up special relations with Jorge the elder and never have adjusted well to his death,'' he wrote.

 ``They expected right off that they would just replicate the same type of closeness with Jorge Jr. For a variety of reasons -- Jorge Jr. has a day job that taxes much of his time, he has his own style and has set out to make his own mark and not mimic his father -- those relationships did not materialize in the ways some wanted, and they felt left out, in their minds perhaps spurned, rejected.''

 Separately, CANF legal counsel George Fowler III, a member of the board of directors, agreed in an interview Wednesday from his law offices in New Orleans that the rift resulted from the transition from father to son.

 ``Frankly, she was unhappy for such a long time it wasn't a good thing for her or for us,'' the Havana-born lawyer said of Pérez Castellón.

 ``Some people thought after Jorge Mas Canosa died that they would call the shots, that after Jorge Mas Santos took over that he would be someone they could
 manipulate. And he's not someone to be manipulated,'' explained Fowler, who called himself one of the son's ``closest advisers.''

 Fowler also dismissed Pérez Castellón's characterization of CANF's inner circle as undemocratic and the new leadership as dictatorial. ``Ninoska is brazen, strong-willed, outspoken. She spoke her mind on many occasions,'' he said. ``I loved Ninoska. I love her still. But I'm really unhappy. Instead of just resigning quietly we have this tirade to undermine the foundation.

 ``The only one who gets the jollies out of this is Fidel Castro,'' he concluded. ``He uses it for his propaganda purposes to show that the foundation is divided. It's very negative for us. It makes us look weak, makes us look divided. That's what he wants.''

                                    © 2001