Biden wants to re-thaw relations with Cuba. He'll have to navigate Florida politics.

[Judi Lynn]

13. I should add that Jorge Mas Canosa, who believed he would be Cuba's next President, after the US

grabbed the island back from the people, also went to the Bay of Pigs invasion, only he STAYED IN THE BOAT, and once he saw they were getting their butts kicked he had them turn the boat around and take him right back to Miami.

Here is an excellent article on the man who controlled Miami's Cuban exile community until his death, and created the iron fist grip on US politics which has resulted in every damned national US politician's long trudge to Miami to have Cuban coffee at the Versailles restaurant, get photos taken with local Cuban politicians, make speeches, etc. EVERY time they hope to seek national office. Shameful.



No Mas Canosa - the death of Cuban political figure Jorge Mas Canosa - Obituary
Saul Landau

For forty years, U.S. national security apparatchiks have tried to exact imperial revenge against Fidel Castro, the man who should hold the Guinness record for disobedience. From almost the day Fidel Castro led his triumphant rebeldes into Havana in January 1959, the U.S. government has employed routine terrorism against the Cuban revolution; in addition, the United States has tried to embargo Cuba to death and strangle it by any means, short of full-scale U.S. military invasion. One Cuban exile took advantage of this climate, and the space the government created for anti-Castro mischief, to mount a prolonged campaign of naked terror, and astute political manipulation of the highest levels of the U.S. government. His aim was to replace Castro as president of Cuba and substitute capitalism for socialism on the island.

I read the news, on November 23, 1997, that Jorge Mas Canosa had died. Mas emerged as a modern Horatio Alger, who learned how to acquire power and wealth in a uniquely American way. He was one of the few men clever enough to combine the tactics of a Ku Klux Klan good old boy with the pragmatic lobbying techniques of the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC), thereby grabbing national prominence and dictating U.S. policy toward Cuba.

Mas's formula amounted to a one-two combination in the U.S. political ring. By getting himself or his cronies appointed or elected to local water, sewer, utility, road and electoral commissions - much as the Klan did in the South until the late 1960s - Mas and his Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), and its various political and business spinoffs, built an empire. Mas could award contracts and jobs, do favors and act like an old-style political ward boss. This Godfather-like role made him into a local, and then national, persona - a business-political superstar. Thousands of Cuban exiles owed him for bringing in their relatives, resettling them, getting them jobs, apartments, or loam. Thousands more had at least a vicarious investment in this hombre fuerte who knew how to work the American system.

By the 1980s, Mas had achieved national recognition. He had learned how to intimidate and buy strategically placed members of Congress, and even presidents, on Cuba policy. He put large donations into their campaign coffers and then used them for policy decisions, photo ops, and promotional quotes. For twenty years, Mas exercised a singular influence over U.S.-Cuba policy, and he let everyone know about it (and then some). Indeed, he learned how to step forth and boldly take credit even when none was due him.

Mas was the son of a Batista army veterinarian, and his life became a modern American "success" story. In 1956, he became president of the Free Mason Youth (Asosiacion Jovenes Esperanaza de la Fraternidad), which he quit just months after the revolution triumphed. In January 1959, he joined a right wing Catholic group.(1) The revolutionary tribunals that investigated offenses by the Batista regime acquitted Mas's father, an officer, of any wrongdoing. Mas, however, got caught for counterrevolutionary plotting with his Catholic group. He escaped from Cuba in July 1960 by using a false identity.

More:
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/exile/canosa.htm