Cuban American National Foundation

A Falange of the nostalgic Cuban oligarchy founded in September, 1981. Its emergence responded to political guidelines of the Reagan administration, interested in modifying the prevailing rules of the game from the Eisenhower to the Carter government in its relationships with Cuba.

The idea was to set up a group that would cast the image of Cuban immigrants speaking "with a single voice," at the head of whom was Jorge Mas Canosa, bearing in mind that the prominent Cuban American figures were known to be involved in terrorism.

The sale-out mentality of the CANF is largely due to the distorted view that the anti-Cuba organization has of the Cuban people as seeking to annex Cuba to the United States. The most noted members and perpetrators of terrorist plans in Cuba and other countries like Jorge Mas Canosa, very ingrained in the Batista régime, formed the board of directors of this Foundation. After Mas Canosa’s death, his son Jorge Mas Santos took over.

The modus operandi of the American Cuban Foundation is the buying of politicians, although at times it uses intimidation and other more repressive methods such as murder. The electoral abstentionism in the United States is used by the Foundation to impose its economic power and politics.

There are clear signals that the CANF finds it's difficult to silence opposition. The fiasco in the kidnapping of the boy Elian Gonzalez discredited the organization.

Its military wing has in its ranks people like Roberto Martin Perez and the brothers Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampol, Alberto Hernández and Jose (Pepe) Hernandez who is now its president.

When Mas Canosa died in 1997, Alberto Hernandez, his doctor, assumed the presidency. But Jorge Mas Santos finally took over in July 2001, during an annual congress of the CANF, in Port Rico.