Children of Cuban Exiles Pick Up Parents' Fight

Published Monday, August 7, 2006
Children of Cuban Exiles Pick Up Parents' Fight
Younger CubanAmericans plan a march for an end to Castro's control.

By ALEXANDRA ZAYAS
St. Petersburg Times

MIAMI -- Early Thursday morning, Armando Gutierrez was schmoozing with
old friends outside the Versailles restaurant on 8th Street. The portly
man with a white mustache has one of the most recognizable faces in
Cuban exile politics.

Minutes later, Armando Gutierrez Jr. parked his BMW and joined his
father at the door.

"Es mi hijo, Armandito," Gutierrez said, introducing his son to the
regulars who haunt this political nerve center of Miami's Cuban community.

The 24-year-old real estate developer in slacks and a tie may have the
name, but nowhere near the recognition of the man who was a spokesman
for the family of Elian Gonzalez.

The younger Gutierrez had already been to Versailles four times since
Monday, when an ailing Fidel Castro ceded power to his brother Raul. He
usually goes once every two weeks. But no one who considers himself a
player in exile politics would have thought of being anywhere else last
week.

Father and son talked over café con leche and tostadas.

"You can't liberate Cuba from Miami," the father said.

"I think it's going to be a long ways away before it can go back to a
full democracy unless there's outside influences," young Gutierrez
responded.

People in Miami have been pleasantly surprised this week by the
willingness of young CubanAmericans to take to the streets in support of
a Cuba without Fidel Castro. Far from disaffected, these American-born
children of Cuban exiles have absorbed their parents' passions -- most
without ever having set foot on the island.

After breakfast, Gutierrez followed his father to a radio interview at
La Poderosa 670 AM and listened quietly as his father addressed people
who pick up the radio signal in Cuba.

"The time has come, and the nation of Cuba has its chance," Gutierrez
Sr. said in Spanish. "This is the time, the day, the hour that the
nation realizes it can be free."

Afterward, Gutierrez Sr. mentioned that exile leaders want to organize a
march in Miami. His son wondered why no one had planned it yet.

YOUTH MOVEMENT

Wendy's lunch in hand, Daniel Pedreira sat at his desk in the University
of Miami's political science department Thursday. Between clerical
duties, the 22year-old writes a newsletter for a UM-based group called
Jovenes por una Cuba Libre, Youth for a Free Cuba.

"At this important and historical crossroads, Cuba's future is in the
hands of its people, especially its youth," Pedreira wrote in an email
Tuesday to his readers in Cuba.

Pedreira's parents left Cuba in 1980. He always knew they opposed
Castro's regime, and that his mother was fired from her job as a teacher
because she openly married in a Catholic church, but conversation didn't
extend much past the basics.

"I brought Cuba to the dinner table," Pedreira said. "My first taste of
civic action was Elian. It did plant that seed."

Pedreira is part of a generation of Miami-born children of Cuban exiles
whose activism arrived when the Cuban boy did on Thanksgiving 1999.

"The Elian González issue was a turning point for the younger
generation," said Dr. Andy Gomez, a senior fellow the University of
Miami Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies. Gomez said that
the younger generation saw the passions of their parents, but also saw
the older generation's failures in handling the issues.

"This generation is as American as it is Cuban. But over the last five
years, this generation has become again engaged in what I call the
future of Cuba, in trying to develop a plan that when the time comes . .
. this generation will be able to reach out to that generation in Cuba,"
Gomez said. "It's pragmatic, but a little unrealistic, too."

If the older generation's downfall is "blind passion," Gomez said, the
younger generation's weakness may be "unrealistic expectations." Young
Cubans on the island, he said, may not share the same attitudes about
democracy.

Thursday afternoon, Alex Correa dropped by Pedreira's office. The
19-year-old had been scheduled to go to Cuba on a church missionary
trip. It had taken plenty of convincing to get his family to agree to
let him go. His parents gave the okay, but he skirted the issue with his
grandfather, who said he'd never forgive a family member who returned to
the island.

Correa said his parents' generation has been bitterly disappointed time
and again -- during the Bay of Pigs, the Mariel boat lift, the shooting
down of two Brothers to the Rescue planes and, most recently, when Elian
was returned to Cuba. His generation, Correa said, isn't as burnt out.

Correa said he sees carrying the torch as a responsibility.

"Two or three generations from now, if we have children, they'll be
carrying our last names," Correa said. "What else will they carry?"

FINDING A MESSAGE

For Gutierrez Jr., Cuba did not become something more than a story his
father told until a day in early 2000. That was when he followed his
father on a visit to Elian González's Little Havana home. He met the
boy, the exile family caring for him and the scores of exiles keeping
vigil outside.

"You go there, you see it, and you become passionate," the son said. He
went home and created a Web site about the boy with a petition to allow
Elian to stay in the United States. The day the Immigration and
Naturalization Service took Elian into custody, his Web site got 2.6
million hits.

Thursday afternoon, Gutierrez Jr. got a call from Armando Perez Roura of
Radio Mamb', a Miami station.

Roura challenged Gutierrez to organize his generation and find out what
message they want to send to the Cuban community in Miami and 90 miles
away, across the Florida Straits.

Gutierrez scrolled through the numbers on his cell phone. He called 20
friends and representatives from young Cuban-American groups. Meet at
Versailles, he told them. 7 p.m.

"Everybody's been criticizing Cubans for their reaction," Gutierrez
said, leading the meeting later that night. "I feel it's our
responsibility to figure out a plan."

"A peaceful movement," suggested Tony Iglesias, 35. "A march."

The group, nibbling on Cuban bread, lingered on the idea for a bit,
deciding that they would march from the Versailles to downtown as soon
as they got the news that Castro was dead.

"Armando, what are we talking about?" Pedreira asked. "Say there is a
march. What's the message? We shouldn't just be celebrating his death
when no change is going to happen in Raul."

Vince Lago Jr. agreed.

"We can march till we get tired. We can have a press conference till
there are no more words. That government doesn't believe in dialogue,"
said Lago, 29.

"There's a lot of dissident groups, but they've never gotten together,"
Lago said. "A lot of young professionals are changing their views. Young
people need to get involved, somehow, some way."

"This is not just you picking up your father's fight," Scott Wacholtz
told Gutierrez. "This is our struggle as well."

That was the message, Gutierrez decided.

"The fact that we're all here, that we're the next generation and that
we're politically inclined is the success of this meeting," Gutierrez said.

Pedreira wasn't satisfied.

"So what do we do?" he asked.

"If anything happens, we can communicate faster with each other. I think
we know what our message is that we're the next generation and we want
to be involved," Gutierrez said. "It's going to affect our future. It's
going to affect us more than we think."

By the end of the meeting, Gutierrez's generation hadn't come up with
one specific message. They hadn't drafted a plan on how to free Cuba.
They agreed to wear yellow at the march, to signify peace. Then they
wrote their names and e-mail addresses on the back of a paper place mat
and agreed to meet again

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