He also may be recalling his recent horseback ramblings through the plush pasturelands of Cuba.

Over the past several years, Florida ranchers - some from famous old families - have toured ranches on the communist island and saddled up with their cowboy-hatted counterparts. They marvel at the beauty of the Cuban countryside.

They also have shipped heifers and breeding bulls to those Cuban "friends" to help replenish the island's depleted cattle supply. They have even hosted Cuban officials on their Florida ranches to select the animals.

These ranchers are among a growing number of U.S. business owners who want to trade with Cuba. Some of them favor an out-and-out end to the 45-year economic embargo and travel restrictions against the island so they can form closer business ties with Cuban cowpokes. And they don't see the Cuban government as a barrier.

"When we go to Cuba, we don't talk politics," says Jim Strickland, 52, owner of the 6,000-acre Strickland Ranch in Manatee County, who has been to the island at least eight times.

"We're just vaqueros and ganaderos - cowboys and cattle ranchers - talking about our animals and our ranches with cattle people down there," he says. "We speak the same language. Cattlemen historically have always looked for new markets, and that's what we're doing."

Castro's brother a friend

Strickland is a fourth-generation Florida cattle rancher, grandson of Andrew Jackson Strickland. One of his traveling partners to Cuba has been Alto "Bud" Adams, 81, patriarch of the 16,000-acre Adams Ranch near Fort Pierce and 40,000 more acres in the state. Adams is the son of the late Alto Adams, a former chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court.

Both were encouraged to visit Cuba by John Parke Wright IV, a descendant of the Lykes family of Tampa, famed for its cattle, citrus and shipping interests, starting in the 19th century.

All of the men come from old, conservative political traditions. They are hardly the type who might be easily branded as commie sympathizers.

So what are they doing riding with cowhands from Cuban cattle-raising regions Pinar del Rio and Camaguey? Why are they risking the wrath of conservative Cuban exiles who believe the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba should be gospel?

The Florida ranchers say they sympathize with anyone anywhere who has lost family land. But that doesn't mean they are going to allow someone from South Florida to tell them where they can and cannot ride horses.

"How is it that Cubans in Miami can tell us what to do if we're Floridians, too?" Adams asks. "If it isn't illegal or immoral, I see no reason I shouldn't go to Cuba. I can't please everyone."

For Adams, trips to Cuba have been legal since 2000. That was when Congress passed an exception to the embargo against Cuba, the Trade Sanctions Reform Act. It allows direct sale of food commodities to the island and permits individuals in related businesses to travel there.

That change came in response to political pressure exerted by U.S. farmers, many of them conservatives. It was also partly a result of a Clinton administration agenda for more "people-to-people" and humanitarian contacts with Cubans.

Wright, 57, of Naples has been to Cuba dozens of times since and has visited dozens of cattle ranches, he says.

He proudly displays photographs taken with cattleman Ramon "Mongo" Castro, 82, the older brother of Fidel Castro, 80, and Raul Castro, 76.

On Tuesday, it will be one year since Raul Castro became acting president of Cuba, while longtime leader Fidel Castro convalesces from abdominal surgeries. Not much has changed in Cuba in that year, and the forays by the Florida cattlemen have continued.

"Ramon and I have become good friends over time," Wright says, a statement that would make blood boil over whole blocks in Miami.

Despite opposition in the exile community, Wright has a history of breaking down trade barriers with communist nations and hopes to do so in Cuba.

In 1972, just as partial diplomatic relations were being resumed with the People's Republic of China, Wright, then 22 years old, was dispatched to Asia by his family firm, Lykes Bros., to try to reopen shipping routes to China. The company, like other U.S. firms, had been out of China since the 1948 communist takeover.

Wright, who had studied Mandarin Chinese at the University of Florida, was ready. He went to work in the Hong Kong office of a British firm that represented Lykes and by 1974 had been transferred to Beijing. He began to forge relationships with Chinese officials, and by 1979 Lykes ships were allowed in Chinese ports, the first U.S.-flagged vessels to enter there in 30 years.

"The idea today in Cuba is the same as it was back then in China," he says, "a resumption of trade facilitated by friendship and understanding."

Loophole allows visits

The Lykes family had amassed considerable holdings in Cuba before Fidel Castro took power in 1959. They had shipped cattle to Cuba since the 19th century and eventually owned ranches and the largest meat-processing plant on the island.

The revolutionary government confiscated the family holdings, several million dollars' worth, as it did with other foreign firms.

Despite that, Wright says he feels no rancor toward the regime. In fact, given his experience in China, he says he has long opposed the embargo and other punitive measures against Cuba.

When the embargo exceptions became law in 2000, he started immediately to resuscitate the old relationship, with hopes of shipping cattle to the island out of Tampa.

He found other Florida cattlemen who were interested in the Cuban market, like Adams and Strickland, whose families also raised cattle that had been shipped to Cuba before the revolution.

"We were invited to go to Cuba, saddle up and make friends," Wright says. "We are following the economic footsteps of our ancestors and renewing the friendships between here and Cuba."

Along the way, they also have delivered some of the benefits of modern cattle breeding that Cuban ranchers, largely cut off from technological advances since 1960, had heard about but had not been able to access.

Breeding animals sent to Cuba have been developed with the help of DNA engineering. They are made to be raised in the tropics: breeds with short hair that don't lose great amounts of weight in the heat. Better animal feeds and veterinary practices are also part of the new know-how.

Professors from the University of Florida Department of Animal Sciences have traveled to Cuba to share what they know.

The Florida cattlemen want to sell more cattle to Cuba, and some would even consider partnerships with Cuban cattlemen once the embargo is lifted.

Their visions go beyond Cuba. Adams says that outside the tropics, most cattle breeders have "maxed out" on how many cattle they can graze in their location. The tropics are the next big source of meat for the world, and the breeds that he and other Florida ranchers have developed are the vehicles, he says.

"The new breeds we are working will do well in places like Africa, warmer parts of Latin America, etc.," Adams says.

Cuba, only 90 miles away, is a convenient place for Florida cattlemen to start making that work. In 1960, the island had 6 million head of cattle for 6 million people. Today it has 2 million head for about 12 million people, Wright says.

"When Castro came in, he said, 'Before only the rich people ate beef. Now everybody eats beef,' " Adams says. "They ate up all their cattle. Everybody ate beef for a year, and nobody has eaten beef since."

Critics of the communist government say Cuban agricultural officials compounded the problem by importing cattle that were wrong for the climate and by mismanaging ranches.

"Cuba has food, but it's all low-protein," Adams says. "Cuba has excellent pastureland and could be a big producer of high-protein beef for its people. Apart from doing business, this is an opportunity to do some good."

So far, Adams, Wright and others have provided about two dozen breeding animals. Another 275 are in the pipeline, and hundreds more have been shipped from other U.S. states. Wright also has helped the Cubans purchase more than 400 American dairy cows to increase the island's milk supply.

They are small steps toward renewing a business relationship with Cuba.

Adams recognizes that economic models would have to change in the Cuban cattle industry for any American rancher to do serious business there.

"Government people don't know how to run a farm," he says. "One thing is employment. We run this ranch with 10 people, and they would use 1,000."

None of the ranchers is trying to change the world overnight.

Adams says that for the moment they are satisfied to renew an old relationship with Cuba and start to bridge the bitter political divide.

"It's like moving a herd of cattle from one place to another. You move a herd real easy. You don't wanna spook 'em."

Source: By John Lantigua, Palm Beach Post