In Antwort auf:

---

Rabble-rousers gravitate to easy targets

("Aufwiegler suchen sich einfache Ziele")

By ANA MENENDEZ
amenendez@MiamiHerald.com

NO OUTCRY -- Where have all the right-wing lunatics gone?

A French company with ties to the Castro regime -- its affiliate has built 11 resort hotels with the Cuban military -- now wants to bring its construction skills to the $1 billion tunnel at the Port of Miami.

And the protesters? Busy boycotting the mom-and-pop businesses that advertise on an obscure AM radio program.

This is what the mighty Miami Cuban Mafia has come to. Their nemesis is dying, their bitterness has grown old and their power has dwindled to sad experiments in self-parody.

I miss them already.

YET

Bouygues Travaux Publics' bid for the Port Tunnel hasn't gone completely unnoticed, but the opposition, at least so far, has been insignificant.

Miami attorney Nicolas Gutierrez, who represents those who had property expropriated after the Cuban revolution, boldly predicted: ``I think once the public becomes fully aware of this, especially at the County Commission level, then Bouygues is going to have a very hard time winning this contract.''

Or maybe not. As The Miami Herald's Larry Lebowitz and Matthew I. Pinzur reported: The County Commission registered a deep, heartfelt yawn.

Natacha Seijas, who went nuts when she was dissed at the opening of the Performing Arts Center, suddenly seems to have connected with her contemplative side.

''I would have to do my duty as a county commissioner, but my Cuban heart would hurt tremendously,'' she told The Miami Herald.

That's right, swallow your pain. $1 billion is a lot of money. And if commissioners start to play ''More Cuban Than You,'' the Florida Department of Transportation may pull the $600 million they were giving to the cause.

Commissioners can't conduct foreign policy, but what's stopping everyone else? Where are all the people who protested Los Van Van's performance here? What happened to the Cuban patriots who boycotted The Miami Herald after the Radio Martí stories? Where are those who crusaded against the dangerous children's picture book Vamos a Cuba?

PICKING THEIR BATTLES

The rabble-rousers love to complain about speech they deem unorthodox. But they fall oddly silent when it comes to confronting powerful business interests like Bouygues or the Chinese Shangri-La hotels or our own Terra Group that sought to maim the Freedom Tower. Why go after the big guys when there are smaller effigies to fry?

Which brings us to Edmundo Garcia, the host of La Noche se Mueve (The Night Moves), heard weeknights on WNMA-AM (1210). He loves to intelligently stir things up, and he's provocative and well-informed. He is not, however, anyone's idea of ''powerful.'' Which made him the perfect target of a boycott against his advertisers.

''They have the right to patronize a Castrista, but we have the right to not buy from them,'' wrote Iliana Curra in a widely circulated e-mail. Within days, ''Ño Que Barato'' had pulled its ads.

Oh wow. Sure showed them. It's like a scary-funny children's cartoon: The old man gloats over the flea he's killed while behind him looms the shadow of Le Monstre.

Can't blame the boycotters, though. Exile has gone on for a long time. The people are old and tired. And at this late stage, it's easier to go after a radio guy than to slay the multinational.

That's Miami in the waning days of nostalgia: a place where politics is personal. And business is business.

---