Jorge Mas Canosa

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Jorge Mas Canosa (born September 21, 1939 in Santiago de Cuba in Cuba , † November 23, 1997 in Miami , USA ) was a Cuban businessman and political activist. In 1981 he was the founder and, until his death, chairman of the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), which had a great influence on US policy on Cuba.

Life

Jorge Mas Canosa was born to the military veterinarian Ramón Mas Cayado and Josefa de Carmen Canosa Aguilera. Even as a high school student he was politically active and protested against Fulgencio Batista , who had seized power in Cuba in a military coup in 1952. At the age of 14 he was arrested for a speech critical of Batista on the local radio and imprisoned for several months. His father later sent him to a junior college in North Carolina to continue his education, from where he returned to his hometown of Santiago after graduation. In Cuba, in the course of the Cuban Revolution , Fidel Castro, initially supported by Mas, had taken control of the country. However, Mas developed an increasingly negative attitude towards the new head of government, whom he publicly criticized. He was briefly arrested for this before he and his wife emigrated to the USA in 1960.

Mas Canosa took part in the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and then completed an officer training course with the United States Army at Fort Benning , Georgia .

Later he was extremely successful as an entrepreneur (division: telecommunications, sales approx. 1 billion US $). In 1981 he founded the Cuban-American National Foundation together with 14 other Cuban-American business people, which later joined with 250,000 members. He was considered one of the leading figures among the Cubans in exile and one of the most influential political lobbyists in the United States. He was an avowed opponent of the government of his home country led by Fidel Castro and advocated a confrontational policy of the USA towards communist Cuba, for which he - apart from the public - promoted various presidents, governors and congressmen, in whose election campaigns he was an important factor . In 1989, in the wake of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, he also hoped for a quick end to the Castro regime. He had his CANF drafted a new constitution . He wanted to lead the new government himself.

Mas was the chairman of numerous business associations and chambers of commerce and the initiator of the US state broadcaster Radio and TV Martí, which is aimed at the Cuban population .

criticism

There is ample evidence that Mas Canosa provided financial support to Castro's militant Luis Posada Carriles , who is held responsible for terrorist attacks and attempted attacks on Cuban targets, including the blowing up of a civilian plane that killed 73 people. Later denied statements by Posada in his autobiography and to the New York Times, a corresponding testimony by Mas Canosa's brother Ricardo, and declassified CIA documents from 1965 speak in favor of Mas’s funding.

Awards

  • Honorary doctorate from Mercy College, New York, awarded for "Outstanding for Democracy and Human Rights"
  • Department of Education Lincoln Martí Award for "Exemplary Civic Contributions to the United States of America"
  • Honorary Consul of the City of Tel Aviv in Israel for "his support for the State of Israel and pro-Jewish issues"

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biography in: American National Biography Online, accessed January 3, 2012 (English)
  2. ↑ a b c Short biography ( memento of the original from December 25, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the website of the Jorge Mas Canosa Freedom Foundation (English)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.jorgemascanosa.org
  3. ↑ Jochen Oberstein: Cubans in exile: "Fidel Castro is a murderer". In: Focus from March 1, 1993, accessed on November 3, 2013
  4. ↑ William M. Leogrande, Peter Kornbluh: backchannel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana, The University of North Carolina Press, 2014, ISBN 978-1469617633 , page 264
  5. ↑ Cuban Exile Says He Lied to Times About Financial Support in: New York Times, August 4, 1998, accessed January 3, 2012
  6. ↑ Our Founders on the CANF website, accessed on January 3, 2012 (English)
personal data
SURNAME Mas Canosa, Jorge
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mas, Jorge
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American entrepreneur and Cuban exile
DATE OF BIRTH September 21, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Santiago de Cuba , Cuba
DATE OF DEATH November 23, 1997
Place of death Miami in the USA