Miami protesters decry renewed US-Cuba ties

Dozens of demonstrators gathered in Miami on Saturday to protest President Obama’s announcement this week that he was moving to scale back travel and trade restrictions on Cuba as part of a bid to normalize relations with the communist island.

Protesters wove flags blasting the president as a “traitor” and expressing disappointment over the deescalation of sanctions, according to reports from the Associated Press. Those present argued the moves would embolden the Castro regime by infusing the government with more money and do little to change conditions in the country. 

But the protest was small relative to similar demonstrations in the past, including in the aftermath of the seizure and return of Elian Gonzalez in 2000, when hundreds were arrested.

Still, the demonstration underscored the difficult politics of the president’s Cuba decision.

Many of the refugees and elder members of Florida’s Cuban community have vehemently opposed any efforts to reestablish ties to the Castro regime. 

An estimated 1.2 million Cuban Americans live in Florida — representing 6.5 percent of the state’s population — and the bloc has played a crucial role in the purple state’s often down-to-the-wire elections. President Obama won the state’s 29 electoral votes by less than a percentage point in 2012.

Still, a poll of Cuban Americans by Bendixen & Amandi International released this week found divisions among the nation’s Cuban population.

While 44 percent backed normalizing relations, 48 percent opposed the move. Six in 10 Cuban Americans opposed removing Cuba from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terror, and just 41 percent have a favorable view of the president.

But something of a generational change is afoot.

Of those born in Cuba, a majority – 53 percent – oppose the president’s proposed policy changes. But nearly two-thirds of Cuban Americans born in the United States say they back the president’s move. Moreover, a majority – 51 percent – of Cubans born in the U.S. have a favorable opinion of President Obama.