Political leanings changing among Cuban-Americans

He's the owner of a restaurant; she's his best waitress, having worked for him for eight years.

He came to the United States by foot, crossing from Mexico into Arizona; she came on a raft fashioned from driftwood and tires.

He's nearly 20 years her senior.

But they have a few things in common: They live in the Las Vegas Valley, work hard for a living, and fled communist Cuba for a better life, just as legions of political refugees before them. These two fled because of the economy.

Their biggest difference? He, Sergio Perez is a hard-core Republican, and she, Malbys Martinez, is a hard-core Democrat.

ETHNIC GROUP AFFILIATIONS IN MOTION

Cuban-American Democrats are on the rise across the United States even as they dwindle in Miami-Dade County, where the vast majority of Florida's 1.5 million Cuban-Americans live.

Cuban-Americans - Cubanos - have long been staunch Republicans because they consider the GOP as anti-communist and opposed to Fidel Castro as they are. But in Las Vegas, home to an estimated 16,000 Cuban-Americans, that party identification seems to be fading.

Look no further than Martinez, 28, who lives in east Las Vegas and helps her mother pay the mortgage by waiting tables at the Florida Cafe Cuban Bar & Grill on Las Vegas Boulevard South.

She's going to vote for Obama.

"He just seems to be more for the hardworking people," says Martinez, who has acclimated to U.S. culture after moving here at the age of 9.

"Mitt Romney just seems to be for the rich. I think we need to give Obama another shot. He needs time to clean up the mess."

Her boss, Perez, 45, quipped from the other side of the counter during a recent breakfast: "Obama hasn't done nothing for this country, man. He makes promises, promises, promises - just like Fidel. He talks, talks, talks. Blah, blah, blah. But nothing has happened."

At least Romney, Perez added, knows how to run a business.

"And that's how the government should be run," he says, "Like a business."

KEEPING TRACK OF THE UNDER-30 CROWD

And so the lines are drawn, nothing short of fighting words among Cubanos across the country.

They're an often overlooked group in Nevada but a formidable political force in Florida, where the same generational divide is playing out.

"The younger generations of Cuban-Americans, the under-30 crowd, they're voting Democratic because they're more liberal than their parents. They were born here," says Hector Caraballa, 69, who voted for both presidents Bush but since has turned a new political leaf.

Caraballa, president of the Cuban American Democratic Club in Miami-Dade County, says exit polls show 19 percent of the Cubano vote was Democrat in 2000, 35 percent in 2008 and projected to be 40 percent in this election.

"Little by little, we're inching up and gaining ground," he says in Spanish. "Before long, we will be ahead of the Republicans, just you watch."

BOSS, WAITRESS A STUDY IN CONTRASTS

Perez and Martinez are generations apart in years and experience in Havana, their hometown.

He wasn't even born when Castro took over in January 1959, but Perez remembers the tough times of the 1980s as a teenager.

It was a time, he says, when all businesses were owned by the government and no sales were allowed. Those restrictions have been relaxed somewhat, and the government has embraced free-market principles to boost its economy.

"But back then," Perez remembers, "if you were caught with a dollar of profit in your pocket, you'd go to 'la carcel,' the jail."

"It would be like if you had cocaine in your pocket here," he added.

Martinez recalls the extreme poverty as a girl - and how her mother and aunt hid their plans to make the dangerous 90-mile journey to Florida by raft.

"They kept telling me we were going to go camping," she says. "But I was old enough to know. I mean, they hid the motor underneath my bed. I think they got it from an old ambulance."

Her illegal trip is the stuff of nightly news, where refugees are rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard in "shark-infested waters," as the narrative often goes. Only in Martinez's case, there were no sharks. Just a boatload of other Cubans wielding machetes who tried to overtake her raft because their boat was taking on water.

"That was scary," she says. "I remember that."

The U.S. Coast Guard came to the rescue - just in the nick of time, she says.

She'll never forget the date: Aug. 26, 1994.

BOTH SEND MONEY BACK TO CUBA

Perez remembers his first steps on U.S. soil: Jan. 10, 1992.

His route was paved by his mother, Gilda, who was living in Las Vegas with her sister. Both worked in casinos.

Perez's indirect journey began with his flight to Monterrey, Mexico, then a bus to Nogales followed by a walk across the border with a tourist visa, into the waiting embrace of his mother.

His first years here were full of washing dishes, cleaning cars and cooking meals in back kitchens before he saved up enough to buy two restaurants. His wife runs the other, the Havana Grill.

Martinez graduated from a Las Vegas High School, then found a job soon after graduation. She's single.

He has two children to support; she doesn't.

But, like her boss, she sends money to her father in Cuba. Both of their fathers are barely getting by, they say.

And if there's one more thing they have in common it is this: They do not care if Fidel Castro dies tomorrow.

They are now bona fide Americans.

"If he died tomorrow, I wouldn't bat my eyes," she says.

Says Perez: "In Cuba, you can only live a good life if you get American money wired to you. Otherwise, you live poor, and you don't got nothing."

Contact reporter Tom Ragan at tragan@reviewjournal.com or 702-224-5512.