Cuban American National Foundation

The Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) is a Cuban exile organization. Established in Florida in 1981 by Jorge Mas Canosa and Raul Masvidal, CANF is an organization with numerous members in the United States and other countries. Following the death of its founder in 1997, CANF began to lose its ideological cohesion provided by Mas Canosa, which led a substantial segment of its membership to split and form the Cuban Liberty Council in 2001.

CANF used to be a strong advocate for isolation of Cuba by the USA but in April 2009 they published an article calling for lifting US restrictions on aid and travel to Cuba, and aiding civil society groups there.

CANF has offices in Miami, Washington, D.C. and New Jersey and chapters in Los Angeles, the greater New York area, Chicago, several cities in Florida, Puerto Rico, New Orleans, and Texas.

Between 1990 and 1992, it received a quarter million dollars from the National Endowment for Democracy, an organization financed by the US government.

CANF also operates the radio station La Voz de la Fundación which it attempts to transmit to Cuba and led the effort to establish the U.S. Information Agency's Radio Martí (1985) and TV Martí (1990). Radio Martí and TV Martí are official U.S. broadcasting operations directed to the Cuban people.

The foundation has been accused by the Cuban government of planning and funding terrorist attacks within Cuba, including a September 1997 bombing that killed an Italian tourist in Havana. Most notably, the Cuban-born anti-Castro terrorist Luis Posada Carriles claimed in 1998 that he received financial support from the Cuban American National Foundation for a bombing campaign carried out in 1997, although he has denied ties with the fatal attack. Posada has also been linked with the 1976 bombing of Cubana Airlines flight 455, which killed 73 passengers (all of whom were civilians). In August 1997 CANF released a statement unconditionally supporting terrorist attacks against Cuba; the CANF chairman at the time stated that "We do not think of these as terrorist actions".

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