Once among the president's fiercest critics, Cuban Americans rocked the Orange Bowl with thunderous applause and chants of "Libertad!" for his U.N. ambassador.
As soon as Madeleine Albright stepped out onto the soggy football field to eulogize four men shot out of the sky by Cuban jets, she was greeted with a roar from the crowd of 60,000.They shouted her name over and over, gave her standing ovations and interrupted her speech at least a half-dozen times with cheers.
Her hero's welcome Saturday was significant, because Florida's largely Republican Cuban exile community has often criticized Clinton's policy against Castro.
She reiterated what the president said in the aftermath of the shootdowns: that the United States would respond with a two-pronged strategy of tougher sanctions coupled with diplomacy.
"We will tighten sanctions against the government of Cuba, but without harming the people we want to protect," Albright told them. "We will employ every diplomatic strategy we can devise to bring about a transition to demo-cracy."
Jorge Mas Canosa, head of the Cuban American National Foundation and a frequent Clinton critic, said the administration's response and Albright's presence marked "a new reconciliation . . . a turning point between the exile community and the Clinton administration."
Earlier in the day, rough seas forced a 35-boat flotilla to cut short a memorial service at sea, but airplanes dropped flowers at the spot 21 miles north of Havana where four members of the exile search-and-rescue group Brothers to the Rescue were believed to have been shot down.
Cuba contends it shot down the two planes because they had violated its territorial airspace. The island's communist government has promised similar retaliation if provoked again.
President Clinton tightened economic, travel and diplomatic sanctions against Cuba and agreed to support legislation that would discourage foreign investment on the island.
Albright stunned the Cuban-American and diplomatic world last week when she angrily responded to transcripts of the transmissions of Cuban MiG pilots responsible for downing the two unarmed planes. The pilots referred to "taking out the cojones," or testicles, of their victims.
"Frankly, this is not cojones, this is cowardice," Albright said.
Former State Department interpreter Walter Villadamigo, a Republican, said he was inclined to vote for Clinton in November because of tightened sanctions and Albright's efforts to garner a strong U.N. response.
"He is doing what the Cuban people believe is the right thing toward freedom, peace and justice," he said.