One other politically significant fact about Diaz: He’s Cuban-American. I would not be at all surprised to find him playing a role in normalizing Cuban-American relations–something Obama has already begun to do, and which the Vatican, with its own religious agenda, wants to foster. Diaz brings to the table a particular sensitivity to the role of religion in creating communal identity in the Cuban-American community, whose support will be essential for any Obama-led normalization. To give a sense of this, here’s some of Diaz’s review of Tom Tweed’s 1997 book on a Marian shrine in Miami, Our Lady of the Exile:

 This book provides an excellent but limited introduction in the social, cultural, political, and religious landscape that shapes the identity of Cuban exiles in Miami. Although few would question that the Miami shrine to Our lady of Charity serves as a central gathering place for remembering and reconceiving an exiled identity, there are other landscapes in Miami associated with the exiled Virgin of Charity, the exiled Cuban community, and the children of those exiles equally worthy of scholarly consideration. First, there are places heavily populated by subjects not represented in high numbers in Tweed’s work (e.g. younger Cuban American exiles and exiles from the eastern provinces of Cuba). Second, and most signifancly, Tweed needs to emphasize and explore more the centrality of the home as it shapes Cuban religious experiences. More attentiveness to this place and the way it has formed the identity and religious worldview of of Cuban exiles as well as their relationship to and interpretation of the Virgin and her Miami shrine (and not just the other way around) would expand, deepen, and modify Tweed’s enthnographic theory regarding religious, place, and displacement, especially as it applies to Cuban exiles. (Journal of the American Academy of Religion 70 [December 2002], 935-36.)

Nor, of course, will this appointment hurt Obama as he works at prying Cuban-Americans, especially those susceptible younger ones, away from their allegiance to the GOP.nt Definitions */
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