{"id":4905,"date":"2024-05-11T17:31:09","date_gmt":"2024-05-11T17:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/traceyeaton.com\/?p=4905"},"modified":"2024-05-12T00:57:36","modified_gmt":"2024-05-12T00:57:36","slug":"senator-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/traceyeaton.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/11\/senator-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Senator rose to power with help of Cuban hardliners"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sen. Bob Menendez, the most powerful Cuban-American to serve in Congress, goes on trial in Manhattan on May 13 on bribery and other charges.
\nThe New Jersey Democrat furiously denies the accusations and vows to wage his \u201cbiggest fight yet.\u201d
\nA forgotten story is that Menendez may not have reached the pinnacle of political power without the support of hardline Cuban exiles, including some accused of violent attacks on Cuba.
\nOne of the senator\u2019s most important early backers was Arnaldo Monz\u00f3n, a New Jersey businessman linked to a string of bombings that ripped through hotels and nightclubs in Havana, killing an Italian man and injuring 11 others in 1997.
\nCuba\u2019s Interior Ministry blamed Monz\u00f3n and other exiles.
\n\u201cUnion City businessman called a TERRORIST,\u201d the Jersey Journal declared in its Nov. 9, 1998, edition.
\nMonz\u00f3n, who emigrated to the U.S. in 1965, denied financing violent attacks on Cuba and was never charged in connection with the bombings.
\nThe senator has rejected the use of violence, and his supporters say linking him with attacks on Cuba is unfair.
\n\u201cThese accusations have nothing to do with Bob. Terrorist accusations and his rise to power have little to do with one another,\u201d said Joe Garcia, a former Florida congressman. \u201cHe\u2019s not a terrorist and he\u2019s not accused of being a terrorist.\u201d
\nGarcia said he credits Menendez with helping lead a decades-long quest to bring freedom to Cuba.
\n\u201cNo Cuban American has ever had more power in their hands at one moment than what Sen. Menendez had at the ascension of Joe Biden to the presidency,\u201d said Garcia, former executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, or CANF, an influential lobby organization. \u201cHe is clearly the most powerful man in New Jersey politics and can move things his way when he wants to. He’s a very, very smart and skilled politician, probably the most powerful Hispanic to serve in the Senate.\u201d
\nMenendez was born in New York City on Jan. 1, 1954. His parents, Mario and Evangelina Menendez, left Cuba in 1953. They settled in Union City, a densely populated patchwork of apartments and garment factories.
\nThe senator\u2019s father struggled as a carpenter and later committed suicide. Menendez grew close to Monz\u00f3n, a leader of the CANF in New Jersey.
\nMenendez dated Monz\u00f3n\u2019s daughter and remained close to the businessman even after they broke up, according to two sources.
\n\u201cIn my opinion, Monz\u00f3n created Bob Menendez,\u201d restaurant owner Ram\u00f3n D\u00edaz said in a new film called Hardliner on the Hudson<\/a> by Belly of the Beast<\/a>, an independent media outlet run by Cuban and American journalists and filmmakers.
\n\u201cMonz\u00f3n essentially groomed and influenced anybody he could to make sure Bob Menendez went up the ladder,\u201d said D\u00edaz, who grew up around exiles intent on toppling Cuba\u2019s socialist government.
\nIn 1974, Menendez was elected to the school board in Union City. Later he worked for the mayor, William Musto.
\nUnion City was notorious for machine politics and corruption.
\n\u201cI can\u2019t say I\u2019ve seen a mob boss or anything like that just gunning people down or throwing hookers in a river. But I think New Jersey\u2019s maybe only a couple steps removed from that,\u201d journalist John Heinis said in the film.
\nIn 1981, a grand jury indicted Musto and six others on racketeering, extortion and fraud charges. Menendez wore a bullet-proof vest as he testified against his former mentor, who was convicted of taking kickbacks and sentenced to seven years in prison.
\nBy then, Menendez was a rising star.
\n\u201cMonz\u00f3n would set up fundraisers for Menendez,\u201d D\u00edaz, a former Menendez supporter, said in the film. \u201cIt was an obvious connection. It wasn’t something that was behind the scenes.\u201d
\nIn 1986, Menendez was elected mayor of Union City, the largest city in Hudson County, which had the second-largest concentration of Cubans in the U.S., behind Miami.
\nIn 1987, he attended a dinner to raise money for Eduardo Arocena, founder of Omega 7, a violent anti-Castro group.
\nThe Hudson Dispatch quoted Menendez as saying, \u201cI endorse the fact that there are times when what one looks at as a law at a given time has to be broken. I don\u2019t look at it that I am supporting \u2018a murderer.\u2019 I look on it that I am supporting a goal, which is the liberation of Cuba.\u201d
\nMenendez later said he was misquoted and did not support violence.
\n\"\"<\/a>
\nArocena was convicted of murder and terrorist bombings in November 1984. Prosecutors said he ordered the killing of a Cuban diplomat in New York in 1980.
\nAt his sentencing, Arocena declared: \u201cI\u2019m an anti-Communist to the death.\u201d
\nBack then, many Cuban exiles backed violent militants, said D\u00edaz, owner of Pintxo y Tapas restaurant in Englewood, New Jersey.
\n\u201cThey had a lot of support in the \u201870s, in the \u201880s. Anything was justifiable as long as it hurt the Castro regime,\u201d he said.
\nEntire Cuban families had lost everything after the 1959 revolution, D\u00edaz said. Many expected to return and take back their homes and businesses.
\n\u201cIt was war,\u201d he said.
\nIn 1992, Menendez was elected to Congress with the help of the CANF and other exile organizations.
\nThe foundation drew controversy when Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles told the New York Times that he had engineered the 1997 bombings with support from some of the CANF\u2019s leaders.
\n”We didn’t want to hurt anybody,” Posada told the Times. ”We just wanted to make a big scandal so that the tourists don’t come anymore.\u201d
\nPosada said foundation leaders didn\u2019t send him funds for any specific tasks and asked not to be told how he used their money.
\nPosada later recanted, saying he intentionally misled the Times to protect his real backers. Accusations against foundation leaders persisted.
\nIn 2006, Monz\u00f3n\u2019s longtime accountant testified that he had wired tens of thousand of dollars to Posada.
\nThe accountant\u2019s lawyer, Gilberto M. Garcia, told the Bergen County Record that his client, didn\u2019t know the purpose of the money transfers. By then, Monz\u00f3n had made a fortune selling discount clothing and was the CANF\u2019s leader in New Jersey.
\n“I have not heard, and I don’t believe, there is any evidence that indicates Mr. Monz\u00f3n supported any kind of terrorist activity,\u201d Garcia told the newspaper.
\nMonz\u00f3n died in 2000 at the age of 63. Menendez attended his funeral.
\n\u201cArnaldo Monz\u00f3n was one of the kindest, most humanitarian people I have ever known,\u201d the senator said at the time. \u201cHe helped scores of people very quietly; he never wanted to take credit publicly for helping people in North Hudson. He fought for the freedom of the Cuban people.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sen. Bob Menendez, the most powerful Cuban-American to serve in Congress, goes on trial in Manhattan on May 13 on bribery and other charges. The New Jersey Democrat furiously denies the accusations and vows to wage his \u201cbiggest fight yet.\u201d A forgotten story is that Menendez may not have reached the pinnacle of political power … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4906,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[130],"tags":[283,282,24,280,276,281],"class_list":["post-4905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-arnaldo-monzon","tag-bribery","tag-cuba","tag-cuban-exiles","tag-robert-menendez","tag-union-city"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/traceyeaton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/traceyeaton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/traceyeaton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traceyeaton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traceyeaton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4905"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/traceyeaton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4923,"href":"https:\/\/traceyeaton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4905\/revisions\/4923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traceyeaton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/traceyeaton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traceyeaton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traceyeaton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}