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 But after 53 years in the United States, the former manager of the
city of Miami swallowed his pride and decided he had waited long
enough.
Arriola, 67, said a weeklong trip to the island last year had opened
his eyes to what he now believes is a failed U.S. policy of trying
to isolate Cuba.
"The number one weapon we have is capitalism, and we are not using
it," he said over breakfast at the Riviera Country Club in Coral
Gables, a bastion of older, conservative-minded exiles in Miami-Dade
County. "We should be flooding the place with tourists and
commerce."
Tired of waiting for the end of communism in Cuba, more and more
Cuban-Americans have concluded that it is time for the United States
to allow more engagement with the island they left behind, polls
show.
"Our president has not had the guts to do the right thing," said
Arriola, who helped raise funds for Barack Obama's campaign and
whose son, Ricky, sits on the President's Committee on the Arts and
the Humanities.
Advocates of policy change say the administration's caution stems
less these days from concerns about a Miami backlash than from the
hard-line stance of lawmakers like Bob Menendez, a Cuban-American
and the influential chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The New Jersey Democrat and other members of Congress, including
Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican who is also of Cuban
descent, have lashed out at exiles who favor lifting a
five-decades-old trade embargo against Cuba, accusing them of
betraying the cause of democracy and putting money in the pockets of
the Castro dictatorship.
But a poll set for release Tuesday by Florida International
University is expected to show a tilt in the exile community, with a
majority favoring closer ties with the communist-run island.
Such widespread sentiment could ease the way for the Obama
administration to revise U.S.-Cuba policy by permitting greater
travel and commercial activity to help an emerging private sector on
the island.
"The old understanding was that you could not do anything in Cuba
without causing a tempest among the exiles,” said Peter Schechter,
director of the Latin America Center at the Atlantic Council think
tank. "Now it's clear there really isn’t a political price to pay."
TAKING TO THE SKIES
The poll is the latest in a series of developments seemingly
destined to undo the last vestiges of U.S.-Cuba policy crafted
during the height of the Cold War.
Many Cuban exiles are letting their feet do the talking, taking
advantage of relaxed travel restrictions Obama introduced in 2009.
Between January and June, there were 2,345 flights to Cuba from the
United States, and about 82 percent of the 282,450 passengers were
Cuban-Americans visiting family, according to Emilio Morales,
president of the Miami-based Havana Consulting Group.
He calculates that 650,000 people, mostly Cuban-Americans, will
travel between Cuba and the United States this year. The exiles will
also send $3 billion in cash remittances.
George Feldenkreis, owner of Miami-based fashion company Perry
Ellis, led a group of 12 family members back to Cuba in 2011 for the
first time.
"I wanted to make a trip to show my grandchildren what I came from,
how poor I was," he said, describing how he took the family to see
his humble home near Havana's train station.
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For Feldenkreis, 78, age was also a factor. "I didn’t want to go
while he (former Cuban President Fidel Castro) was still alive, but
I am getting old," he said.
Feldenkreis is frustrated with Cuba policy, but remains a staunch
opponent of loosening U.S. sanctions. A chorus of voices from
Hillary Clinton, former secretary of state under Obama, to John
Negroponte, the director of national intelligence under President
George W. Bush, have recently spoken in favor of rethinking Cuba
policy.
The head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce visited Cuba last month and
praised Havana's free-market reforms, saying the U.S. trade embargo
was an impediment for American companies.
In February, a poll by the Washington-based Atlantic Council found a
strong majority of Americans nationwide favored loosening Cuba
sanctions.
Obama has hinted he is considering a policy shift. In November he
told a Miami area fundraiser that it might be time for the United
States to "update" its policies toward Cuba.
But administration officials have repeatedly said in recent months
that there are no plans to change current policy.
Policy analysts say Cuba sits low on the list of White House
priorities, even as the potential costs of bolder moves appear to
diminish.
"The Obama administration expects civil society to be ahead of
public policy," Schechter said. "Before it leads, it wants civil
society to agitate and create an atmosphere that will be ripe for
its own leadership."
With that in mind, groups in Miami have set about stirring things up
to press for more engagement with Cuba. In April, a group calling
itself #CubaNow advertised on posters on the Washington, D.C., metro
system that Obama should "stop waiting."
To be sure, Cuba still arouses local sensitivities in Miami. When
Florida gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist questioned the embargo
in May and announced his intentions to visit the island, a Miami
Herald columnist warned: "We will punish you."
While the concept of opening up relations with Cuba remains hard to
stomach for some in the exile establishment, Arriola says nostalgia
is winning out.
"Everyone is dying to go," he said. "They want to see the old place
before it's too late."
(Reporting by David Adams; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)
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