Published Thursday, February 8, 2001, in the Miami Herald

U.S. aid against Castro sought

BY CAROL ROSENBERG

WASHINGTON -- Launching a new offensive on the Capitol, Cuban American National Foundation Chairman Jorge Mas Santos on Wednesday urged a technological and financial invasion of the island funded by U.S. aid to topple Fidel Castro's regime.

Arm anti-Castro Cubans with cellphones and computer printers, fax machines and Internet access through special U.S. funding to private organizations and individuals, said Mas, in his first major address since taking over the influential lobby.

``Many on our side have pretended that if we just enforced U.S. sanctions against the regime, we could achieve our objective of establishing freedom and democracy for the Cuban people,'' said the U.S.-born Mas, 37, whose founder father died in 1997.

Mas offered no price tag for his laundry list of ideas. It included using taxpayer money to pay private groups to fund microloans inside Cuba to independent soup kitchens, day care centers and restaurants as a way of disrupting the state-controlled economy.

He also proposed establishing a Food for Peace Program that would somehow circumvent Cuban distribution systems and deliver U.S. farmers' food donations to individuals; funding and creating independent Internet sites and e-mail portals; and licensing U.S. groups to establish business management training and labor rights institutes in Cuba.

The call comes just days after Cuba freed two Czechs who had been jailed in Havana for 24 days on allegations they engaged in subversion by meeting with dissidents to describe how they resisted Communist rule in their country.

He unveiled the list at an invitation-only speech to academics, church activists and think-tank members at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Some people there politely told him they oppose the embargo. Others questioned how the aid programs -- which Mas said should be ``overt, not covert'' -- could circumvent Cuban government interference.

``I hope it comes with a `Get out of jail, free' card,'' one audience member told another after the speech.

CANF Washington Director José R. Cárdenas characterized the address as part of a calculated campaign to increase Bush administration attention on ending Cuba's four-decade communist rule.

Mas met with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday to urge what he called ``a reinvigorated political will with an activist policy.''

Using a huge endowment left by founder Jorge Mas Canosa, the foundation bought a $1.7 million townhouse in Washington and is restoring the Freedom Tower in Miami. CANF also expanded its permanent staff after Mas' failed effort to intermediate in the Elián González episode.

Many of Mas' ideas are not new. Republican Sen. Jesse Helms outlined a similar strategy in a speech several weeks ago, and Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart, R-Miami, is advocating similar but not identical legislation.

But Mas said today's strategy is no longer to simply solidify sanctions but to expand people-to-people contacts like the Reagan administration's support to Poland in the 1980s.

The Clinton administration similarly supported people-to-people contacts, mostly cultural and sports events. But in a prepared text distributed to the audience, Mas dismissed those efforts as ``a static, sterile policy in which leading officials have paid lip service to the goal of a free Cuba, but were actually more interested in preserving what they called `stability' on the island.''

Mas also scolded members of his host think-tank, the Inter-American Dialogue, made up of both Republicans and Democrats, some who argue that ending the embargo would flood Cuba with capitalist culture.

Dialogue members met with Castro last week in Havana.

``Whatever you call your delegation, you are just a tourist,'' Mas said.

Copyright 2001 the Miami Herald.
Republished here with the permission of the Miami Herald. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the written approval of The Miami Herald.