By Vanessa Bauzá
and Rafael Lorente STAFF WRITERS

HAVANA · As sure as election years bring stump speeches and confetti-strewn conventions, history has shown they also breed heightened tensions between Washington and Havana as presidents and candidates ratchet up the rhetoric in a race for Cuban-American voters.

President Bush knows well the power of that voting bloc, which helped him declare victory in Florida by a razor-thin margin in the 2000 election.

In recent months, the Bush administration has taken up a range of get-tough initiatives, including suspending semiannual migration talks, accusing Cuban President
Fidel Castro of trying to destabilize Latin American democracies, announcing it will freeze any U.S. assets of Cuban-run travel agencies and even denying visas to all
but one of the Grammy-nominated musicians on the island.

The heightened tensions come amid a surge in American food sales to Cuba, which totaled $256.9 million in 2003, an 80 percent increase over the previous year,
according to the New York-based U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council.

Cuban officials call the heightened tensions "very dangerous" for Cuba and accuse Bush of pandering to Cuban exiles for Florida's 27 electoral college votes.

"As far as we are from November, the decisions this administration has taken indicate there can be many things still to come," said Miguel Alvarez, adviser to the
president of Cuba's parliament, Ricardo Alarcon.

Ironically, Havana's negative view is shared by Bush critics in the Cuban-American community who say the president has only made cosmetic policy changes on
Cuba, not substantive ones. They want Bush to create more effective broadcasts of Radio and TV Marti, increase support for dissidents and review the 1994
migration accords, which currently return most Cuban migrants intercepted at sea.

"I think this administration created tremendously heightened expectations, and many of its core constituency feel the expectations have not been met," said Cuban
American National Foundation Executive Director Joe Garcia, one of Bush's staunchest critics.

A new committee headed by Secretary of State Colin Powell to prepare the United States for a post-Castro Cuba is likely to recommend additional initiatives by
May that officials said aim to "hasten transition" to a democratic society.

"Everything is on the table" except for military action, said a State Department official who asked to remain anonymous. "We're thinking right now about ways that
we can hasten transition. And that means helping the people and not the regime. Or even helping the people and hurting the regime."

Castro has responded by playing the familiar role of David to Bush's Goliath. He claims the administration is out to invade Cuba or even assassinate him. Earlier this
month he rallied supporters and declared to booming applause: "If they invade us, I will die fighting."

Cuban officials are especially sensitive to claims that Castro, allied with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, is trying to destabilize Latin America. According to a recent
editorial in the government-run newspaper Granma, the charges serve to "create a climate of artificial hysteria that would justify… a military adventure against our
homeland, including the physical elimination of compañero Fidel."

The presidential race is sure to be closely monitored by officials in Havana, as it always is, with an eye toward watching how the Democratic candidates' more
moderate positions on Cuba evolve.

"One of the big questions now is, since Bush has pursued a tougher policy on Cuba, are you going to end up with a Democratic candidate who is going to run to the
right of Bush on Cuba or are they going to cede that territory?" said Dan Erikson, who heads the Cuba program at the Inter American Dialogue, a Washington think
tank. "That will really tell whether tensions get higher over the course of the spring and summer."

The Democratic presidential candidates have so far been relatively quiet on the Cuba issue.

After meetings with exile leaders in South Florida, Democratic frontrunner Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts told NBC's Meet the Press in August that while he
would like to see more Americans traveling to Cuba, he would not unilaterally lift sanctions that now ban trade and travel between the U.S. and Cuba.

"I am not prepared to lay down conditions at this time for lifting the embargo, because I believe that we need a major review of U.S. policy toward Cuba," Kerry
told The Associated Press.

Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina has also met with Cuban-American leaders. "Full sanctions should not be lifted until Castro and his brutal regime are gone,"
Edwards told The Associated Press.

The two underdogs, Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich and Rev. Al Sharpton, who are hanging in the race despite single-digit primary returns, favor ending the embargo.

"Our policy toward Cuba has created misery for the Cuban people and has harmed our own national interests," Kucinich told The Associated Press.

The Cuban-American electorate, which makes up about 8 percent of all Florida voters, is not a monolithic community, said Sergio Bendixen, a Miami pollster who
specializes in Hispanic public opinion.

"Election years tend to push U.S.-Cuba policy into the area of confrontation," Bendixen said. "It has been the conventional wisdom that the confrontation approach
is the consensus point of view. That approach will probably still work in two-thirds of the electorate, but one-third is more moderate in their approach to Cuba
policy. ... The question mark is, will the Democrats try to appeal to this group?"

Polls show increasing numbers of Cuban-Americans support engagement and dialogue with Cuba. Many Cubans who arrived in the 1980s and '90s have relatives
on the island, and therefore many favor a less restrictive policy that does not clamp down on travel and cash remittances from the U.S. to Cuba.

Despite Castro's crackdown on 75 peaceful dissidents last April, U.S. foods sales to Cuba have created an anti-embargo lobby in some farm states and brought
scores of Florida agribusiness executives to Havana.

Both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives last year voted to weaken the travel ban, but the move was stripped from legislation before it could reach
the president's desk. Bush had threatened to veto any legislation that would lift the sanctions.

Cuban-American voters are predominantly Republican. Democrats generally only capture about 20 percent of the exile vote, said Alfredo Durán, former state
chairman of the Florida Democratic Party. Durán hopes his party's candidates will reach out to those Cuban-Americans who favor a change in the status quo.

"If I were a presidential candidate in the state of Florida, I would say Cuba policy has to be reviewed," Durán said. "What would it do to economic development in
this state? There would be a tremendous boom. And I would of course talk about traditional democratic values: education, healthcare, social security. That would fly
even with the Cubans."

Vanessa Bauzá can be reached at vmbauza1@yahoo.com

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