The New Yorker cites an Atlantic Council Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center report on Cuba, US-Cuba: A New Public Survey Supports Policy Change:
Obama ended his speech with a paean to Miami, and the line “Todos somos Americanos.” The line might have been a gesture to divides in this country as well. Almost instantly, Senators Robert Menendez and Marco Rubio were making angry comments. Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, had announced a day earlier that he was “actively exploring” a Presidential campaign; Obama’s move will instantly reorient that exploration. Bush, and the other candidates, will have to decide whether they want to make “losing the embargo” (they are a half century late for “losing Cuba”) a rallying point. Hillary Clinton will have a particularly delicate choice—will she try to take credit, for wheels put in motion while she was Secretary of State, or mutter about how much savvier she would have been as President? (Speaking to another constituency, Major League Baseball put out a statement saying that it was “closely monitoring the White House’s announcement.”) All of them, in framing the issue, need to be careful not to settle on a cartoon of Cuban-American intransigence. The views of this community, between individuals and generations and within families, are more complex and varied than is often acknowledged. A poll conducted by the Atlantic Council, conducted earlier this year, asked Floridians if they would support more engagement with Cuba: sixty-three per cent said yes. Nationally, the number was fifty-six per cent—and sixty-two per cent among Latinos. (Fifty-two per cent of Republicans agreed, too.) Americans whose families came from other countries in the region tend to have different priorities—immigration reform, for example. Florida may be where the political fight over this shift is joined, but it won’t be the only place where Latino voices are heard on the issue. And what they have to say may be as surprising as Wednesday morning’s announcement.