A State Department official recently provided, to a gathering of diplomats, an overview of U.S. foreign relations without once mentioning Cuba. Asked why Cuba had been omitted, the official replied that Cuba is no longer a foreign policy issue, it is a domestic political problem.
So it is with Radio Marti, the U.S. government’s broadcast service to Cuba and a political potboiler.
Several weeks before Fidel Castro’s jet fighters shot down the planes of the Brothers to the Rescue, Radio Marti was bragging that a small plane had buzzed Havana and dropped Anti-Castro leaflets. Castro was mocked for not retaliating, and a Cuban American was quoted that such flights to Havana would be made regularly.
Castro’s downing of the two unarmed passenger planes in international waters was reprehensible. Yet it is difficult to fathom why an American government-financed radio station was permitted to carry the threats by Cuban-Americans exile leaders who were goading Castro, and why the Radio Marti journalist doing the interview didn’t challenge the statements.
Radio Marti’s broadcast headquarters currently are located in Washington so that its programs can be screened by the U.S. Information Agency’s Voice of America. Congress’s mandated move of its broadcast headquarters to Miami will place Radio Marti outside any effective VOA oversight.
According to a spokesman for Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, who sponsored the move, “putting the headquarters for Cuban broadcasting closer to the heart of the Cuban-American community just makes sense.” That being the case, the time has come, too, for Miami’s Cuban-Americans formally to take over Radio Mart and run it as their own, without Washington attempting to look over their shoulders.
As they assume total control, Miami’s Cuban Americans should also foot the bill for broadcasting to Cuba.
Placed on the air by the Reagan administration in 1985, Radio Marti began by carrying news to Cuba not provided by Castro’s censored media. The broadcasts soon pressured Castro into being more open in reporting Cuba’s domestic problems, such as the spread of AIDS virus by troops returning to Cuba from Angola. The station also focused effectively on Cuba’s human rights violations.
The driving force behind Radio Marti, and later TV Marti, has been Jorge Mas Canosa, titular leader of the majority of America’s 1.3 million Cuban exiles who live in Florida. Mas found an important ally against Castro in the newly elected Ronald Reagan, whose hawkishness on communism seemed made to order. Reagan officials envisioned an important power base in Florida, with its moneyed exile community and 26 electoral votes.
Mas tried to locate the station’s headquarters in Miami, but congressional liberals were concerned that Miami’s politically active Cuban exiles would wield too much influence over program content. Thus the stations were placed under VOA control in Washington.
The move to Miami now ordered by the Republican majority is estimated to cost more than $9 million. That is in addition to TV/Radio Marti’s annual budget of $25 million. Senate and House conferees approved it in a budget bill without public or congressional debate, which is par for the course for Marti-funding bills.
The second largest but less vocal Cuban-American community is located in New Jersey, but one has not seen a congressional groundswell for moving Cuba broadcasting to Secaucus.
By mandating the move to Miami, Congress concedes that the United States has done its job by setting up and managing Radio Marti for more than a decade and that Miami’s Cuban-American community should now take over the task. Privatizing TV and Radio Marti should be part of the deal.
The VOA, which enunciates U.S. ideals and foreign policies around the world, has always been uncomfortable supervising the politically oriented Cuba broadcasts. The VOA should have never been given oversight responsibility of a program service outside of its bailiwick and congressional mandate.
Those best equipped to duke it out over the airwaves with Castro in his twilight years are Miami’s Cuban Americans. The time has come for Washington to butt out.