If all of these aid-to-Cuba groups were a charity, no sane person would give them a dime. Even the biggest donor -- the United States -- has questioned the spending.
Now the latest report finds that more than 80 percent of the money earmarked for Cuban democracy stays here. But the most surprising thing about the study is its sponsors: The Cuban American National Foundation.
Someone who left Miami in the 1990s and returned today would be flabbergasted. But CANF has been slowly adapting since the death of its founder, Jorge Mas Canosa in 1997. Friday, the group of former Republican party loyalists hosts a lunch for Barack Obama.
Many factors have contributed to the once-hardline organization's evolution. But no single person more embodies its philosophical shift than its president, Francisco ''Pepe'' Hernandez.
''Before, we thought we could go to Cuba and invade and establish democracy by force and the U.S. would help us,'' Hernandez told me. ``Those times are over. A man like me who has struggled and dreamt has to reach the conclusion that the future does not belong to my generation. Change in Cuba has to come from inside.''
BRAVE ADMISSION
It's a brave and stunning admission for a man who sat with U.S. presidents, cultivated confrontation, and lobbied for the unsparing laws that helped shape this country's failed Cuba policies.
The political divide among Cuban Americans in Miami is often seen as a generational one. But at 71, Hernandez proves that members of what is often called the ''historic exile'' are often at odds with their contemporaries, many of whom spent the better part of last week bashing CANF.
In Hernandez's case, his new willingness to engage Cuba puts him at odds with an even more intimate figure: his former self.
''I'm speaking as someone who had a lot to do with the policies, or at least someone whom people want to blame for them,'' he said, a smile in his voice. ``But Cuba has bought some $900 million from the U.S., including the paper used to print Granma. That's something people don't understand. Embargo? What embargo?''
Almost 50 years into his fight, Hernandez -- the Bay of Pigs veteran who was implicated in a plot to kill Castro, a CANF heavy who publicly berated journalists -- has become the voice of calm reason.
CONCESSION TO REALITY
His goals have not changed (''Nothing about how I view Cuba's rulers has changed'') but his methods have -- a concession, he says, to reality.
His shift also reflects a more general souring on empty American promises. For decades, administration after administration courted the Cuban-American vote on the cheap: flattering with hope while changing nothing.
Today, Hernandez refers to the 2004 restrictions on exile travel to Cuba as the ``Bush absurdity.''
''Who's ever heard of an exile group begging the U.S. government to stop them from visiting their homeland?'' he asks. 'What other group says to the U.S., `Please don't let me help my family.' It's absurd.''
Hernandez played one of the most important roles in creating the conditions for the absurdity that became exile politics. Now, near the end of his struggle, he's pointing the way out of the politics of self-destruction.
''The worst thing for me,'' he said about the travel ban, ``is that there are people in my generation who asked for this.''
It's too late to recover the millions squandered over the years. But we may yet recover our sanity. Few could have predicted that CANF would lead the way.
