Miami Cubans Drugged After Obama Policy Shift

The title of this post should've been the title of this AP piece that comes close to expressing a sense of shock that Cuban-American reaction to a possible policy shift fell short of a riot. It's almost laughable that the AP considers normal reaction by normal people that occurs on any normal day in Miami as a "muted" response. As if the normal response was throwing stones, hurling spears and public hangings.

Just a few years ago, any U.S. president who suggested restoring relations with Fidel Castro's Cuban government would have been loudly called a communist or worse on the streets and airwaves of Miami. Protests would have sprung up, and Cuban-Americans who offered their support would have feared being blacklisted.

But when President Barack Obama last week made the most significant gesture in decades toward opening dialogue with the communist island, reaction from the nation's largest Cuban exile community and anti-Castro hub was barely a whisper.

The muted response, from the heart of Little Havana to the elegant suburbs of Coral Gables, crystalized the generational and demographic shift in Cuban-American politics long coming to Miami and the nation, a shift that has in part fueled the president's ability to push U.S. policy in a new direction.

There were no anti-Obama rallies, few protests. Even Armando Perez Roura, the hardline host of the Spanish-language exile broadcast Radio Mambi, began his drive-time morning show talking baseball.

Perez Roura talking about Hanley Ramirez's OBP or Anibal Sanchez's WHIP instead of whipping some anti-hardliner butt? The horror!

Even those in the younger generation who opposed the president's policies were restrained.

"It's naive of him, and I think it's kind of insulting. It's 'You're a dictator, but I want to talk to you,'" said Maday Rodriguez, 33, a small business owner, who came to the U.S. from Cuba with her family in 1984.

"But to each his own. Everyone has their own opinion," she added — including her husband, who voted for Obama.

How about that? A young Cuban-American expressing her opinion and acknowledging the rights of others to do the same. Incredible.

I don't know what I find more objectionable, the article's silly sense of surprise or its condescending tone.