In his youth, Havana native Antonio Zamora put it all on the line to take out the Fidel Castro regime and rid the hemisphere of a menacing Soviet satellite. He survived the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion – and subsequent imprisonment in a Cuban jail.
He could be the avatar of anti-Castro, pro-embargo Cuban gravitas. Indeed, for years he was legal counsel for the hard-line Cuban American National Foundation (CANF). And he readily acknowledges that he “wrote the book on Miami politics.”
But time has elapsed, and times have changed. The influential Miami attorney is now president of FORNORM, the Foundation For The Normalization of US/Cuba Relations.
He was in town last week, along with representatives of 16 other organizations whose charge was to speak with one voice on the need to normalize relations with Cuba. To speak, in effect, with a voice other than the strident, pro-embargo, South Florida one that has dominated the subject of Cuban-American relations for the better part of half a century.
They gathered, appropriately enough, in the theatre of Ybor City’s Circulo Cubano (Cuban Club).
“It’s a different world now,” reflected Zamora. “Back then was a function of the Cold War era. That’s over. Things change