What do Cubans living in Miami expect from the new presidency of Cuba?
Hugo Cancio, a 54-year-old businessman who arrived in 1980 in the Mariel exodus, Cuba has a vast and prosperous diaspora that has the right to return and participate in the renovation of his country. It is an extremely important process.Carlos Saladrigas, another of the veteran voices, points out that the abundance of capital in Miami will sooner or later be an unparalleled resource to resuscitate the Cuban economy, although the history of Cuba is a history of lost opportunities.
Millions of Cubans, on both sides of the Straits of Florida, hope that the generational change in the presidency of Cuba is another step to leave behind a long era marked by the impoverishment of the island and the division of its people.
The end of the presidency of Raúl Castro returns to the Cuban community of Miami the hope of a historic change in Cuba. With the faith lost decades ago in a sudden fall of the regime, in the capital of the Cuban dispersion a feeling of limited expectations has been consolidated; However, with the inauguration of Miguel Díaz-Canel and the withdrawal of the surname Castro from the foreground, the corroded expectation of transformations on the island is renewed.
According to Carlos Saladrigas, one of the most recognized veteran voices in Miami about the Cuban reality, this is a moment of opportunity. The businessman and president of the Cuba Study Group, believes that it is unrealistic to want to choose from Florida the direction the Cuban government will follow. Realistically, a political change is very difficult. However, it is important to begin the changes, beyond taking into account where they start, because then everything can come as a snowball.This judicious, reserved optimism is also shared by the new generations of Cuban emigrants.
The journalist Mario Pentón, 31, who arrived in the United States in 2015 after traveling the dangerous route of migrants from Guatemala, says he has hope that the situation will change for the better, even if it is not a sudden change.Others who have recently arrived are pessimistic and believe that it will remain the same dictatorship with another name in the presidency.
According to Pentón, in Cuba things have improved, today it is no longer the country of 20 years ago. I would like to return, but will not do so until there is a minimum of respect for the independent press, for human rights and for political plurality. In the United States live 1.7 million Cubans or descendants of them, 1.2 million are concentrated in Florida and about one million in metropolitan Miami.
Most political questions on the island are already very foreign to him.For the current Cuban community based in Miami, unlike decades ago, ideology and politics are secondary issues in their relationship with the island.According to surveys conducted more than half supports the elimination of the economic embargo of Washington. They are interested in practical matters such as being able to get to and from the island, being able to bring relatives to the United States or sending remittances and consumer goods to their families on the island. And many of them yearn to be able to return to Cuba to start business with legal security.
