When a Venezuelan prisoner escaped last year and fled to the United States, the Caracas government called him a fugitive. Raul Diaz Pena had been convicted of helping bomb two diplomatic missions — “a terrorist,” according to President Hugo Chavez.
But when the 36-year-old Diaz Pena arrived in Florida, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R) declared him something else: a hero.
“Raul was able to escape the violent grip of Hugo Chavez,” said Ros-Lehtinen, standing next to Diaz Pena at a news conference in her Miami office. “But countless others remain vulnerable to the whims and abuses of the tyrant in charge in Caracas.”
Ros-Lehtinen’s six-year effort to free a man she considered an innocent political prisoner — despite what the Venezuelan courts ruled — was emblematic of her crusading political style. A tough critic of left-wing governments such as Venezuela’s, she believes U.S. leaders should be a voice for freedom and aggressively call out human rights violations.
As the new chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ros-Lehtinen now has a high-profile platform for her staunch anti-communism. She is attacking abuses by such countries as North Korea, Cuba and China, and they are, at times, attacking her.
Fidel Castro has called her “la loba feroz” — the big bad wolf — and her appointment has prompted warnings in other leftist Latin American countries that relations with Washington could further sour.
Ros-Lehtinen is unperturbed.
“I take it as a badge of honor that tyrants like Chavez, and [Bolivian leader] Evo Morales and the Castro thugs say bad things about me,” she said in an interview. “That means I’m doing my work and attacking them for their record.”
Ros-Lehtinen, 58, is the senior Republican woman in the House, but a newcomer to the top foreign affairs job, which she got after her party won control of the House.
In many ways, she is the opposite of John F. Kerry, the patrician Democrat who heads the Senate Foreign Relations committee. He is Yale; she is Miami-Dade Community College (though she eventually earned a PhD in education). He is a stiff Yankee; she is warm and earthy, “not afraid of hugging someone who is hurting,” Cuban-American activist Frank Calzon said.
But she is no stranger to bare-knuckle politics. Her husband, attorney Dexter Lehtinen, helped produce the “Swift boat” ads attacking Kerry during his presidential campaign.
Ros-Lehtinen’s political philosophy is grounded in her family’s traumatic flight from Cuba when she was 8. They moved into a two-bedroom house in Miami’s Little Havana, where anti-communist exiles regularly crashed on the living room floor. After a career as an educator and a state lawmaker, Ros-Lehtinen won election to the House in 1989.
“For me, it was very natural to fit in to Congress, fit in to our Foreign Affairs committee, and become a voice for freedom and respect for human rights . . . because that’s how I grew up,” she said.
Ros-Lehtinen continues to loathe Cuba’s Castro; she told a filmmaker in 2006 that she would welcome his assassination. Cuba remains the prism through which she sees the world, said several current and former congressional staff members.
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