Now more than ever, Jorge Mas Canosa (Santiago de Cuba, September 21, 1939 – Coral Gables, November 23, 1997) is remembered as the man who built the influence of the Cuban exile community on Washington’s policy toward Havana.
The Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), which he founded and led until his death, and other organizations are paying tribute to him these days, coinciding with his birthday.
Because of his fundamental importance in articulating the opposition and denouncing Castroism, in uniting and empowering the exile community, and in building bridges with the oppressed population of the Island.
A Man Obsessed with the Freedom of Cuba
Mas Canosa grew up in Santiago de Cuba. He was the son of a military officer linked to the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, which he nevertheless opposed. He was sent by his family to study in North Carolina, USA, where he learned English.
He returned to Cuba in 1959, a few days after Fidel Castro came to power, and began studying law, but soon began to disagree with the anti-democratic course the regime was taking.
He returned to the United States permanently in 1960, determined to fight for Castro’s overthrow. He volunteered for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and later served briefly in the U.S. Army.
He married his high school sweetheart, Irma Santos, and they had three sons: Jorge, Juan Carlos, and José Ramón. He worked washing dishes and delivering milk to support his family, using conversations with his customers to talk to them about his dream of a free Cuba.
But Canosa soon understood that economic independence was an essential requirement for freedom. This conviction and his business acumen led him to transform a nearly bankrupt electrical installation firm, Church and Tower, into MasTec, a multinational corporation that became the largest Hispanic-owned company in the United States.
In 1981, he founded the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), the organization through which he united a large part of the exile community and which became one of the most effective influence groups in Washington.
From that time onward, virtually every significant piece of U.S. legislation regarding Cuba was influenced by the CANF, from the creation of Radio and TV Martí to the Helms-Burton Act.
The organization made substantial donations to the campaigns of both Republican and Democratic politicians, and presidents such as Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Bill Clinton listened to Mas Canosa’s opinions on how to deal with the Havana regime.
For the Cuban cause, Mas Canosa traveled extensively, seeking to forge alliances. He met with figures as diverse as Boris Yeltsin and Margaret Thatcher, and supported UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi during the Angolan Civil War, in which Cuban soldiers participated.
The Fidel Castro government and its allies around the world waged a fierce smear campaign against Mas Canosa. No other exile politician has been so relentlessly attacked by the regime, which labeled him “the ringleader of the counterrevolutionary mafia in Miami.”
In Florida, Mas Canosa clashed with other exile groups and the local press, both over his business activities and his uncompromising stance against the Cuban regime. However, when he died of cancer in 1997 at the age of 58, tens of thousands of people attended his funeral and celebrated his legacy of unwavering commitment to the struggle for freedom, justice, and democracy in Cuba.
That legacy also remains in Mas Canosa’s political discourse, where his continuous denunciation of abuses and murders in Cuba prevails; his defense of economic freedom; his demand for political pluralism, free and transparent elections; his call for unity between exiles and Cubans on the Island; his promise of help in the reconstruction of the country after Castroism, and his warning that “only hatred can divide and destroy us.”
