This time, Gutierrez-Menoyo isn't giving up so easily. He has spent 10 days in a tourist hotel awaiting word on whether he will see the man he pledged allegiance to more than four decades ago -- only to turn against him after he rose to power.
``I want to live in this country with my family,'' the willowy 64-year-old said Thursday afternoon as he sipped a soft drink in a garden behind the hotel.
Gutierrez-Menoyo has been asking the Cuban government since 1995 to let the group he leads, Cambio Cubano, or Cuban Change, open an office in Havana. The group was founded to promote peaceful, democratic change on the island.
So far, the answer has been no. But Gutierrez-Menoyo has not given up hope.
He has met with Castro several times in recent years, both in Havana and in New York, and says that the president listened to his ideas about allowing opposition voices to have a say on the communist island.
To maintain some semblance of support during the ongoing economic crisis brought on by the collapse of the Soviet Union nearly a decade ago, the Cuban government will eventually have to bend, said Gutierrez-Menoyo.
``Sooner or later there has to be an opening,'' he said.
Gutierrez-Menoyo has a long, complicated relationship with the Cuban leader.
Shortly after Castro rose to power with the triumph of the revolution in early 1959, the former commander of the National Second Front later broke ranks and went to Miami, where he became military leader for the newly formed anti-Castro group Alpha 66.
In 1964, he landed in Cuba with three men in hopes of launching an uprising. But he was captured and went on to spend 22 years in Cuban prisons.
Gutierrez-Menoyo says that while imprisoned he decided that peaceful dialogue with Castro, not violence, was the proper vehicle for promoting democracy in Cuba.
Gutierrez-Menoyo's views have made him unpopular among many Miami exile leaders, who insist that any engagement with the Cuban government helps Castro continue his hold on power. Some members of the Cuban government are also suspicious of him.
``It is like being in a sandwich between the extreme right and the extreme left,'' he said with a grin.
Gutierrez-Menoyo remains hopeful of a meeting with Castro, or at least some other high ranking officials as he waits it out with his wife, Gladys, and their three young sons, 9 years and younger.
``I know that the road is very difficult, very prickly,'' he said. ``I'll keep waiting.''
© Copyright 1999 The Associated Press