A powerful voice of the exiled

By FABIOLA SANTIAGO
Herald Staff Writer

Tomas Garcia-Fuste is known as the dean of Miami's Cuban radio.

Few controversies have brewed in Miami-Dade without his powerful voice stirring the caldron.

Whatever the issue -- a refugee crisis, voter fraud, dialogue with Fidel Castro, dueling wannabe-mayors and, now, gay rights -- ``Fuste,'' as his listeners call him, is sure to be heard.

Despite his switch last year to a lower-rated station with a weaker signal, Garcia-Fuste's talk show on La Poderosa  (The Powerful One), WWFE (670 AM), and simulcast on Telemiami, still managed to attract the protagonists of Miami's highest-rated dramas.

Though he was knocked off the air Friday in a dispute with WWFE owner Jorge Rodriguez, it will be almost impossible to keep him off.

It was on Garcia-Fuste's show, Buenos Dias, Miami  (Good Morning, Miami), in January that former Miami Mayor Xavier Suarez, sipping Cuban coffee, told city voters they didn't have to talk to state agents investigating absentee voter fraud in the mayoral race.

On Cuban-exile issues, Garcia-Fuste has long been a conservative voice, although at times he has taken risks.

A pioneer of call-in shows, his Microfono Abierto  (Open Microphone) is often a barometer of voices on the street.

At first, Garcia-Fuste would cut off people with opposing views and deliver a scathing monologue. But gradually, he began to allow opponents their say and began debating his foes in animated exchanges.

In the past couple of years, he even featured people whose views run contrary to the hard line on Castro, once a major taboo on Cuban radio.

``I let them speak, tell their side of the story, then I refute them,'' said Garcia-Fuste, who has worked in radio since 1948. ``That's what my listeners expect of me.''

In Cuba, he supported the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista's regime and was a sympathizer of Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement. Disenchanted with the totalitarian course of Castro's rule, he came to Miami in 1960.

``I didn't like Batista because it was a dictatorship. I was with Fidel, and like the majority of the people, I was betrayed,'' he once told a Herald reporter.

In the early days of exile, Garcia-Fuste worked at Miami's first Spanish-language stations, moved to New York, then returned to lead WQBA, La Cubanisima, in 1981. He directed what was then the highest-rated newscast in Miami. Politicians and candidates to elected office sought his support on and off the airwaves.

In his daily editorials, Garcia-Fuste has long criticized people whose actions he viewed as favorable to the Cuban government -- people in the travel-to-Cuba business, proponents of dialogue with Castro.

``There are many people who are Marxists and they don't even know they are Marxists,'' he once said.

His role as a newsman has always been inseparable from that of advocate. He has led scores of radio marathons to raise funds for exile causes, from La Liga Contra el Cancer, The League Against Cancer, to the rafter-rescue operation, Brothers to the Rescue.

``We fight for the rights of Cubans as a minority,'' he said. ``We are not defended by the defenders of minorities because we are not a leftist minority. Only leftist minorities get sympathy here.''

In the past year, with his radio show's link to television, Garcia-Fuste began sporting a sign in front of his microphone.

``No pierdas la tabla,'' it reads. Don't lose it.