Those sentiments could help pave the way for future negotiations between Washington and Havana. To be sure, relations between the two countries remain as icy as ever. The hardline exile community in Miami considers Raúl as villainous as Fidel, and the administration of President George W. Bush refuses to even consider talks with him. For his part, Raúl lambasted the United States with the same gusto as his brother at a recent summit of non-aligned nations in Havana. And so far, Raúl has managed the transition smoothly, with no signs of civil unrest. Nevertheless, at 75, he is himself reaching his twilight years, and many analysts predict his tenure won’t last long.
Maybe that’s one reason that the Miami exile community believes that change is afoot. According to the poll—which surveyed 600 Cubans and Cuban-Americans in South Florida and has a 4 percent margin of error—88 percent of respondents believe that Fidel Castro will never return to power, either because he’s terminally ill or because he’ll recover but not retake the helm. In the wake of Fidel’s transfer of power, which, when it was announced, was declared temporary, 55 percent of those surveyed say there’s a “major probability” of a democratic transition on the island and 30 percent say there’s a “minor probability.” When asked what sort of transition respondents favored, 77 percent said they thought it should be “gradual without violence” rather than “fast and violent”—a significant shift from as recently as the early 1990s, when Cuban-Americans preferred confrontation over dialogue.
The exile community appears more amenable to engaging the island. Seventy-two percent of poll respondents said that if a new Cuban government were to express interest in improving relations with exiles and the United States, the United States should negotiate with the island. Moreover, 67 percent favored the direct transfer of money and goods to Cuba to promote internal opposition. On the emotionally charged topic of the U.S. embargo on Cuba, a majority of exiles—53 percent—said that they still believed that the policy should persist. Yet that’s down from 62 percent in a Miami Herald survey only a year ago. Cuban-Americans also seem less keen on the restrictions imposed by the Bush administration in 2004 that limited travel and remittances to the island. In the current poll, 49 percent favored those measures and 45 percent opposed them, while a poll two years ago showed exiles favoring the restrictions by a margin of 61 percent to 35 percent. Taken together, these findings suggest “maybe a greater willingness to look at policy and strategy under more optimistic eyes and in a way that’s willing to entertain new approaches,” says Sergio Bendixen, who conducted the poll.
The survey also showed that Cuban-Americans are less likely to lay claim to properties confiscated long ago by the Castro regime. While that has long been a contentious topic, the poll found that 67 percent of respondents believe residential properties belong to those who live in them now; only 20 percent argue that they belong to those who owned them before the revolution. That may reflect a recognition that exiles’ lives are now rooted in the United States. Indeed, 80 percent of those polled said they would remain in the United States if democracy were established in Cuba.
The survey helped highlight differences among Cuban-Americans. Those who arrived in the U.S. before 1980—more often political exiles—tend to prefer tougher positions. On the other hand, those who have arrived since 1980-more likely to be migrants pursuing economic opportunity—tend to favor more lenient stances. For instance, on the issue of travel and remittance restrictions, the pre-1980 group favors them by a margin of 63 percent to 29 percent, while the post-1980 group opposes them by a margin of 55 percent to 41 percent. Since the post-1980 cohort makes up a growing share of the population, it has helped make the exile community overall—which has long been reliably Republican—more politically moderate.
Until more of those recent arrivals become voters, however, the Cuban-American electorate will remain mostly faithful to the GOP. Poll respondents were 72 percent Republican and only 17 percent Democratic. Yet in a sign that the exile community isn’t as uniformly supportive of the Bush administration as one might expect, respondents approved of his handling of the recent situation in Cuba by a less-than-impressive 51 percent to 28 percent margin. Perhaps he’d perform better if he matched the exiles’ apparent appetite for a bit more openness.
