LONG-DISTANCE CALLING

By Richard Lacayo

For Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, "opponent'' is something of a career description. As part of Fidel Castro's rebel army in the 1950s, he led 3,000 men against the Batista dictatorship. When the victorious Castro moved politically into the Soviet camp, Menoyo launched a quixotic raid against his former comrades. That landed him in a Cuban jail for 22 years. Released in 1987, he flew to Miami, where he was greeted by cheering crowds of fellow exiles.

Today Menoyo is back in the opposition, this time against the leadership of the Cuban-American community that cheered his arrival. In 1993 he formed Cambio Cubano, Cuban Change, a group dedicated to a peaceful transition to postcommunist rule in Cuba. For Menoyo that requires dialogue with Castro-or as exile hard-liners would put it, fraternizing with the enemy.

Three weeks ago, Menoyo enraged them further by meeting with Castro in Havana. It was one small move in the flirtation between Fidel and the U.S., testing the Cuban leader's willingness to make real changes at home in return for a relaxation of the 33-year-old U.S. trade and travel embargo. Menoyo is convinced that more and more Cuban Americans are accepting, reluctantly, the idea of negotiation with Castro. The largest segment of exile opinion is still represented by Jorge Mas Canosa and his Cuban-American National Foundation, a ferociously anti-Castro organization that claims 200,000 members. But the hard line is no longer imposed as it was in the 1980s, when more than a dozen terrorist bombs were aimed at exiles who dissented from its position. Lately other dialogistas have come forward, including even Antonio Veciana, a co-founder of Alpha 66, an anti-Castro paramilitary group, who now supports some compromise. "Those who had been silent have begun to lose their fear," says Menoyo. "They have started to speak up.''

But how many do they speak for? Among the roughly 600,000 Cuban Americans in the Miami area, this is a time of psychological flux. Despite the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the end of Moscow's subsidies, Castro has hung on to power. So, asks Menoyo, what have the exiles gained from 35 years of confrontation? "Imagine a person who diets for that long without losing a pound,'' he says. "Anyone with common sense would change diets.''

Enter Castro, holding a carrot. Desperate for foreign currency, he has opened up large sectors of his economy to foreign investment, an opportunity that American companies-and Cuban-American entrepreneurs-can't take advantage of because of the embargo. Meanwhile, the children of older refugees, now grown, have little memory of Cuba and less attachment to the dream of returning.

Which is why some shifts in opinion are detectable. The exile community was shocked in May when the White House announced that in the future the U.S. would turn back Cuban boat people. However, polls indicated that 45% of Cuban Americans supported the change. And an April survey conducted by Florida International University showed that 63% of Miami-area Cuban Americans favor negotiations with Castro.

Most still oppose lifting the embargo, though, which means the White House must play a delicate game if it still hopes to attract Cuban-American voters in the crucial state of Florida. While Clinton has promised not to lift the embargo unless Cuba institutes free elections and other democratic changes, his Administration is open to easing some restrictions in return for partial measures from Castro. For now, the White House is thinking of making travel to Cuba easier for academics and religious figures, as well as lifting obstacles to the posting of Cuban journalists in the U.S. and American journalists in Cuba.

Teo Babun, 47, is one of those who thought Fidel would be gone by now. Just 13 when he fled Cuba with his family, he now advises American clients like Royal Caribbean Cruises and Baskin-Robbins on ways to prepare themselves for the post-Fidel market. But he formed his company five years ago in hopes of doing joint ventures in Cuba of the kind the embargo still forbids. Today he must study each shift from Havana and Washington for nuances affecting his clients, an obsession he admits is not shared by the younger generation of entrepreneurs. "It's not true that all Cuban Americans live and die by what's happening in Cuba,'' he says.

Other exiles, alarmed by what they see as a creeping erosion in the embargo, have got behind a bill sponsored by North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms. It would allow Cuban Americans whose homes or business holdings were confiscated by Castro to file suit in U.S. courts against foreign firms or individuals who do business in Cuba that involves their former properties. "Even if Cuban exiles cannot win back their property in the near future, we want to make sure no foreign investors get it either," says Nick Gutiarrez, a Miami attorney who represents a group of former Cuban sugar-mill owners.

To counter the softening of sentiment among his fellow exiles, Gutiarrez has also co-founded Puente, Spanish for "bridge," a group of Cuban professionals who aim to explain the older generation's anti-Castro fervor to younger Cuban Americans. He doesn't buy the claims by Menoyo and other dialogistas that they offer a centrist alternative to anti-Castro extremism. "What's a moderate?" asks Gutiarrez. "To say someone's a moderate because he'll talk to a brutal tyrant is a perversion of the label."

--Reported by Cathy Booth/Miami

With reporting by Cathy Booth/Miami