Cuban exile attends ceremony to restore citizenship

CASTRO CONFERS WITH EXILED FOE
Cuba's Future is the Topic In First Meeting

THE NEW YORK TIMES JUNE 28, 1995
By MIREYA NAVARRO

MIAMI, June 27 --Fidel Castro said "You have let your hair grow long."

Eloy Gutierrez-Menoyo said, "It's not my style, but mi wife likes long, so long it is."
With that, and a handshake, two adversaries who last saw each other 30 years
ago, when Mr. Castro put Mr. Gutierrez-Menoyo in prison for 22 years, sat down
to talk about Cuba and its future.
They met for more than three hours last week in Havana, the first time Mr.
Castro has received an opposition exile leader.

Mr. Gutierrez-Menoyo, a guerrilla commander in the Cuban revolution who now heads Cambio Cubano (Cuban Change), an organization that advocates a peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba, said that the granting of a meeting he had sought for the last two years demonstrated Mr. Castro's desire for political change. But experts on Cuban affairs, including some Clinton Administration officials, said it remained to be seen whether it was a significant overture.

Despite conventional wisdom to the contrary, the Cuban-American population, like any diverse diaspora, holds within it broad, overlapping and conflicting political opinions. The purported right-wing hegemony of exile politics--the great Myth of the Miami Monolith--does not hold up under scrutiny. In terms of general ideological leanings, about 45% of Cuban Americans classify themselves as moderate or liberal.1 On the Cuba issue, even exile conservatives often disagree on the best means of advancing democracy on the island. While a significant minority in the exile community have advocated negotiations with Cuba for decades, only recently have exile moderates established advocacy groups that make their dissenting voices heard on a wider basis.2

The two most prominent of these groups, Cambio Cubano (Cuban Change) and the Cuban Committee for Democracy, were formed in 1993. Cambio Cubano functions as the activist vehicle of Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, a veteran anti-Castro crusader who founded the group at age 58 after undergoing a remarkable personal odyssey. During the late 1950s insurgency against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, Gutierrez Menoyo commanded the Second Escambray Front, an independent guerrilla group. Soon after the triumph of the revolution, however, he turned against Castro and fled to Florida, where he helped found the exile paramilitary group Alpha 66. Arrested on a mission inside Cuba in 1965, he ultimately spent 22 years in Cuban prisons.

Released and exiled in 1987, Gutierrez Menoyo abandoned militant anti-Castro strategies and now sees a different path to Cuban change. "We advocate a future without revenge and without hatred that achieves the freedom of Cuba by peaceful means," he wrote in Cambio Cubano's charter statement. He advocates immediate negotiations with the Cuban government, arguing that continued U.S. sanctions are fruitless and harmful. "I am the first to recognize the need to open Cuba's politics," he says. "But the last thing I want to do is open the arteries of the people who live there by maintaining a cruel and foolish embargo."3

Gutierrez Menoyo advocates a wide-ranging dialogue between Cuba and the Cuban-American community, and has done more than any other exile figure to commence such discussions. In September, 1994, he met with Cuban Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina in Madrid. This June he returned to Cuba for the first time since his release from prison. During his week- long visit, he held lengthy discussions with President Fidel Castro and other high-ranking officials, and met with dissidents on the island. Upon returning to the United States, he reported in an op-ed in the Washington Post that he found "a greater openness to new ideas on the part of Cuban officials." "If the Cuban government is now prepared to show tolerance and respect for the views of those like myself," he wrote, "then indeed a new beginning can be made and we can face the future with renewed hope."4
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But he said he had asked the Cuban President to be allowed to take his exile organization to Cuba as an opposition party. He said he also expressed his wish to move to Cuba and for all Cubans to "have the right to return to their homeland."

"That we could finish our conversation in a civilized way and leave the door open is very important," said Mr. Gutierrez-Menoyo, who did not get any promises but said he found Mr. Castro "receptive and tolerant."
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Although respected for his political imprisonment, Mr. Gutierrez-Menoyo is belittled by conservative Cuban exiles who advocate a hard line, including a tightening of the economic embargo and a naval blockade, to bring Mr. Castro's Government down. In Spanish language radio here, his visit to Cuba has been the theme of talk shows for days, with callers labeling him "traitor," "shameless," "less of a man," and "Spanish, not Cuban." He was born in Spain but moved with his family to Cuba when he was 11.
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