Federal agents staged a lightning raid Saturday morning on the home of the relatives of Elian Gonzalez, removing the boy by force and reuniting him in Washington with his father. The sudden raid ended a months-long standoff, triggered minor disturbances and calls for a general strike from some in Miami’s Cuban-American community.
At 5:15 a.m. EST, several white vans of the Immigration and Naturalization Service roared up to the small house in Little Havana, surprising a group of some 30 protesters holding vigil outside. About 20 INS agents in commando gear jumped out, some of them carrying rifles and some wearing cloth masks over their faces.
The agents, wearing riot gear, pounded on the door demanding entry, and when they were refused, they broke down the door and stormed the home of the family which had defied INS orders to relinquish the child. According to Attorney General Janet Reno, a team of eight agents entered the house and spent only three minutes inside.
A Spanish-speaking female agent wrapped the 6-year-old boy in a white blanket and, with the help of a male agent, carried him outside to a van. Her expression was anguished as she faced the glare of reporters cameras and protesters outside the house. Protesters threw chairs and other objects at the agents, who responded by firing pepper smoke into the crowd. No serious injuries were reported.
Elian was then whisked to Watson Island, near Miami Beach, where he was transported by helicopter to Homestead Air Force Base, some 20 miles south of Miami. He was then flown in a U.S. Marshal’s plane to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, where under extraordinary secrecy, he was reunited with his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. The site was closed to the media, and officials said the family would likely remain there for several days.
By early afternoon, at least three of the boy’s Miami relatives — including his cousin Marisleysis and great uncle Lazaro — had followed suit, boarding a plane for Washington. Once there, they planned to request meetings with Juan Miguel and President Clinton.
A hearing is scheduled in federal court May 11 to consider the Miami family’s petition that the boy be allowed to stay in the U.S. A federal district court in Atlanta has also ordered that the boy not be removed from the U.S. before that hearing. Juan Miguel Gonzalez’s attorney said the father had no intention of trying to do that.
“Juan Gonzalez has made a commitment to stay in the United States during this appeal and he will live up to that commitment,” said Gregory Craig.
The raid came two days after President Clinton stated the boy should be reunited with his father. But when asked Saturday if he had ordered the raid, he denied having done so.
“She (Reno) managed this, but I fully support what she did,” the president said.
Accordingly, members of the Miami Gonzalez family and their supporters attacked Clinton.
Speaking to reporters inside the family’s house, an emotional Marisleysis Gonzalez had harsh words for Janet Reno and the president. “He dishonored his own family and now he has dishonored mine,” she said, with a reference to Clinton’s sex scandal with intern Monica Lewinsky.
Marisleysis Gonzalez said the raid took the family by surprise. “We were talking to them,” she said of the Justice Department negotiators. “Then they put us on hold and when we were on hold they pounded on the door.”
In the house at the time was Donato Dalrymple, one of two fishermen who rescued the boy from the sea on Thanksgiving Day after his mother and other rafters drowned in an attempt to escape Cuba. Dalrymple was hiding with the boy in a closet. Marisleysis accused the federal agents of pointing a rifle at the boy, but Reno later denied that. Dramatic news photos taken by an Associated Press photographer who was inside the house, also indicated that weapons were brandished but were not pointed at the boy and the INS agent did not have his finger on the trigger.
Reno and other Justice Department officials had conducted negotiations by telephone all night with Gonzalez family attorneys and other Miami community leaders who were in the Little Havana house. But she said those negotiations failed and she had no alternative but to order the raid.
“Up until the last we tried anyway we could to encourage Lazaro Gonzalez to deliver the child to his father,” she said at a Washington press conference after the raid. “But every time we thought we had achieved what they wanted, it was not enough.” She said Gonzalez consistently placed “roadblocks” in the negotiations.
Reno defended the use of armed agents. “We had received information there were guns perhaps in the crowd, perhaps in the house,” she said. “We knew this could be traumatic. We set it up in a way to minimize that.” INS’ Doris Meissner said the boy had been given toys to play with on the plane, including Play-Doh, which children can squeeze to reduce stress.
Meissner said the unidentified female agent who took the boy from the house also accompanied him to Washington. The agent was prepared to talk to the child and tell him he was being reunited with his father, and to assure him that he was not being sent back to Cuba or put back on a raft — a fear the child had expressed, according to his Miami relatives.
Back in Little Havana the mood turned ugly quickly. Police cut off traffic for blocks around the house and by 6 a.m. angry Cuban-Americans flocked to the roadblocks to protest. Rocks, pieces of concrete and bottles were thrown at police who answered with tear gas and pepper smoke.
Lt. Bill Schwartz, head of media relations for the Miami Police Department, was mobbed by protesters outside the house and hit in the head with a bottle of water after it was revealed that the federal agents had been accompanied by a high-ranking Miami Police official during the raid. The Miami Police had promised the Cuban exile community that the department would not assist in any raid, and Schwartz explained that the official was only there to make sure Miami Police on guard duty understood who the raiders were and not to interfere with them.
Schwartz had to be rescued from the crowd by helmeted officers and taken from the scene in a police car. He was not seriously hurt.
Miami Police also reported that at least two of its officers were
injured when they tangled with a demonstrator wielding a bat. And the
Florida Highway Patrol said one of its officers was also injured. Neither agency reported how serious those injuries were.
Other protesters blocked intersections in Little Havana, threw newspaper racks into the street, destroyed a bus stop and built bonfires. Other demonstrators, waving the Cuban flag, briefly blocked a major highway leading to Miami International Airport, but were dispersed by Florida Highway Patrol officers. By evening, police had detained at least 180 people; it was not known if charges were being filed against them.
For the most part, the crowds were small and scattered. Cuban exile leaders, meanwhile, were meeting to pick a site for one large protest and there was also talk of a work stoppage Tuesday in South Florida.
“Clinton and his people will pay for this,” screamed Cuban exile Magali de la Cruz, 48, at a police roadblock just blocks from the house. “Our children will know who to vote for and who not to vote for in the future.”
Angela Perez, 50, stood in the middle of the street weeping. “Both my father and brother were put in prison by the Castro regime,” she said. “Cuban state security would break into our house that way to search. When I saw that on television it made it all come back. It’s horrible.”
“It looked like a drug bust,” said Ivian Perez, 38.
Rudy Lopez, 35, issued this threat to police: “If they want action, they’re going to get action.” “This ain’t over yet. Wait till Tuesday. Everything is going to freeze. Payback is a bitch. And tonight we’re going to make Miami police earn their money. It’s going to be a late night.”
Gabriela Caparos, 41, a government social worker argued with other protesters at a roadblock, begging for calm.
“We built this neighborhood, we own these buildings and these businesses,” she said to another angry protester who had been threatening violence. “We can’t let Castro win. We need to show the world we believe in the law. Please, no violence, no blood.”
The drama in the Elian Gonzalez case grew and grew all day Thursday, the colorful horde outside the house getting larger and louder, until you sensed something had to give. And finally it did, when a federal court in Atlanta countermanded the Justice Department and it was decided to not move the boy from Miami, at least not yet.
The surreal scene outside the small stucco home had taken on the look of a Hollywood premiere by then, as Cuban-American celebrities arrived to throw their support behind Elian’s Miami family. The crowd included thousands, and those in the front lines oohed, aahed and applauded actor Andy Garcia, singer Gloria Estefan, television talk show maven Cristina Saralegui and countless Cuban-American politicians on cell phones. They all arrived before the 2 p.m. EDT deadline the Justice Department had set for the family to deliver Elian to a local airport, from where he would be flown to Washington to be reunited with his father. But the family had refused and the standoff was on.
Word spread quickly over Cuban radio that Cuban-Americans should report to the little house in Little Havana. All day long, more and more massed around the home of Elian’s great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, until thousands jammed the narrow side streets of the neighborhood where the 6-year-old boy has lived since being rescued at sea on Thanksgiving Day. It was by far the largest crowd to gather at the home during months of protests. With the temperature climbing into the 80s, several protestors fainted.
The Cuban community had woken to television reports that included a new feature in the continuing saga: a home video of a defiant and angry Elian, sitting on a bed, munching on a snack and addressing his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. “I don’t want to go back to Cuba,” the boy said more than once, occasionally looking beyond the camera to someone else in the room. “I want to stay here.” Twice, Elian tells his father, “If you want to, stay here.” The edited video was shot by the family, and released to Univision, a Spanish language network.
Some supporters of the boy’s father have accused the family of manipulating the child. But that didn’t occur to the crowd Thursday. Waving Cuban and American flags, hoisting crucified effigies of Fidel Castro and placards denouncing President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno, the crowd suspiciously watched police helicopters that appeared intermittently overhead, afraid that agents would swoop in and try to grab the child. Rumors ran rampant that federal officials had cut holes in fences behind the house, so exiles surrounded the block to cut off any rear action by the feds.
Government sources have said that if the relatives didn’t deliver the boy, the Justice Department would be prepared to eventually send U.S. marshals and immigration agents into the house to remove Elian. Some protestors have vowed to resist, and at least one angry man was arrested before dawn Thursday for attempting to pass through a police barricade in front of the house.
Estefan, who along with Garcia visited Elian inside the house, also insisted that the government not force the child to go back to his father and to Cuba. “We stand together as a Cuban-American community and offer the father sanctuary as well. He will be safe in Miami. He will be safe anywhere coming to get this child because we understand that he is also a victim here,” Estefan said. The singer also urged Juan Miguel Gonzalez to accept a proposal suggested by Reno earlier Thursday to reunite with his son at a location in Miami where Elian could remain with his Florida relatives as he readjusted to life with his father.
Wearing a guayabera and sporting a moustache for a role in a new movie being shot in Miami, Garcia begged the crowd for calm. “This is a very delicate issue. I plead to the local community to support this peacefully and in a democratic manner,” said Garcia, who was born in Havana and grew up in Miami Beach. “(Elian) has things to say about what his desires are. If (Elian) expresses the wishes to his father to go back, then that’s between them. But up until now he’s only expressed the wishes to stay here and to seek asylum,” Garcia told the crowd.
Famed Cuban-American singer Willi Chirino sang the exile anthem “Our Day is Coming” and the crowd sang along. Cuban-born trumpeter Arturo Sandoval played “America the Beautiful.” The crowd applauded them enthusiastically and then it went back to watching the helicopters and chanting “Elian no se va!” (“Elian isn’t going”) as the deadline passed.
And he didn’t go.
Shortly after 3 p.m. EDT, Armando Gutierrez, spokesman for the Miami family, emerged from the house and announced that a federal appeals court in Atlanta had issued a temporary stay of the Justice Department’s hand-over order. The stay came barely an hour after the government deadline for the boy’s Miami relatives to hand him over had passed.
Deputy court clerk Chris Basnett said the stay was issued shortly after 3 p.m. EDT. It was not immediately clear how long the stay would be in effect, but the government was given a deadline of 9:30 a.m. EDT Friday to respond. A Justice Department spokesman said it expected the stay would cause a three or four day delay before it could execute its plan to reunite the Elian with his family.
President Clinton also weighed in. “I’ve tried to do everything I can to stay out of it,” he said in Washington. ”But it is our obligation to uphold the rule of law.”
Gregory Craig, attorney for Elian’s father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, said after the deadline passed that Elian was being held ”unlawfully … against his father’s will.” ”Juan Miguel asks that the laws of this nation be enforced,” Craig said.
Some Cuban-Americans who support the boy being returned to his father also lamented the latest delay. “This isn’t good for anybody,” said Eddie Levy, well known for his attempts to end the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba. “The boy should be with his father and also we can’t have federal laws being applied one way in California and another way here.”
The eve before Juan Miguel Gonzalez arrived in the United States in an attempt to retrieve his son Elian and take him back to Cuba, television broadcasts showed Cuban exiles in Miami barging through barricades outside the Gonzalez family house, pumping fists, shouting and spouting epithets in Spanish about the Clinton administration. The focus of the cameras was necessarily tight because, in truth, there weren’t many protesters — perhaps 150 out of South Florida’s 800,000 Cubans. But it made for good TV.
What would happen in the coming days, no one knew. Elian’s fate lay squarely in the hands of Washington, where Juan Gonzalez was to make his custody pitch to Janet Reno, and Miami, where the U.S. Attorney’s Office continued its negotiations with the arm of the Gonzalez family holding custody of the 6-year-old.
Miles away, but still in Miami, Alfredo Duran, 63, a former anti-Castro warrior, has no plans to visit the scene or get involved. One would expect a man with Duran’s past to be a participant on the front lines. A veteran of the failed 1961 exile invasion of Cuba, he spent 18 months in Cuban prison after getting captured, and later presided for two terms as president of the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association, one of the most aggressive of the Cuban-exile organizations. He has an anti-communist résumé to rival anyone’s in Miami. But Duran is eschewing the barricades.
“The boy should obviously be back with his father,” he says. “But the good thing about this is the whole country is finally focusing on Cuba and the need to change our policies, including, hopefully, an end to the embargo.”
For Cuban-American political activists in Miami, it comes as little surprise that Duran would demur from the position being taken by the hard-line anti-Castro organizations, such as the Cuban American National Foundation. Some 25 years ago, Duran, an attorney, decided the existing strategies against Castro would never succeed. Although still an anti-communist, he began to espouse contacts with the island, not isolation, and especially putting an end to the U.S. economic embargo. He and others who share his position have come to be called “moderates” in this town, where “moderate” is sometimes a bad word.
Given the reputation of Miami’s Cuban-American community for strident political discourse, it may come as a surprise that some people, like Duran, haven’t been burned at the stake in Little Havana for political heresy. Most moderates will tell you that 10 years ago they would have been much more reluctant to speak out. After all, in years past, exiles with the wrong ideas were the targets of bombs. But in the new era of Miami politics, those days have apparently passed.
Like Duran, some of those moderates have escaped direct attack, in part, because of their long and strong credentials as community activists and anti-communists. Also, those interviewed all say they believe many more Cuban exiles now share their sentiments, but are still wary to say so because of the bombastic and often threatening tone of the more militant Cubans.
“I started activity against Castro when I was 13 and still in Cuba,” says Gladys Perez, 53, a banker and a volunteer for Amnesty International. When a communist militiaman came to Perez’s Catholic school and shoved a nun out of the way, Perez fought back, jumping on his back and attacking him. “The officials then ordered the nuns to kick me out of school. Later I joined a secret group that would go out with crayons and write anti-government slogans on walls at night. It was dangerous. Finally, my parents sent me here to this country.”
Perez later became a fire-breathing, anti-Castro activist, hooking up with the agenda-setting Cuban American National Foundation and other exile political organizations. “I demonstrated and picketed. I was very conservative and very intolerant to anyone who didn’t think like me,” she says. “I saw it from the inside. The people who run things in the exile movement are really a very small group.”
Then, in 1997, after becoming disillusioned with the conservative hard-line, Perez decided to visit Cuba. “What I did there was meet with dissidents,” she remembers, speaking of anti-Castro activists on the island. “They sounded much different than I did. They were fighting for democracy but were much more moderate. The foundation had always said that many of these people were Castro agents, but I could see that wasn’t true. I understood that the effort they were making was the one that mattered most.”
Perez told no one of her change in sympathies — at least not at first. “I didn’t come out of the closet immediately,” she says. But she quietly began supporting the dissident cause, helping to raise money and later as a member of Amnesty International to try to draw international attention to the plight of people imprisoned in Cuba for their political beliefs.
“Eventually, in my old circle I became an outcast,” she says.
At the Ibero-American summit in Havana last November, some of those Cuban activists were able to meet with heads of state and other high officials of some visiting delegations. They received more press coverage than ever before.
But then came Elian, and all the cameras have since been turned on the little boy.
“Every time something good is happening in Cuba, the exile leaders here find a reason to shift the attention away from those dissidents,” Perez argues. “There is no real interest here in creating democratic change in Cuba. These leaders here receive a lot of money from the U.S. government to run different programs, but really all they are doing is promoting themselves.”
Perez believes Elian should be reunited with his father as soon as possible, and that the father should then be able to decide if he should stay in the United States or return to Cuba. The same position is taken by Elly Chovel, who came to the United States when she was 14 as part of the Pedro Pan program. More than 14,000 children were sent to the United States in the early 1960s by parents who were afraid of what the Castro regime would bring. Most of those parents were later allowed to come to the United States and were reunited with their children. Chovel and her younger sister spent almost four years in Buffalo, N.Y., with a foster family before their parents were allowed to come.
Now, Chovel worries about intolerance in the Miami Cuban community. “My parents did what they did so that we would not be indoctrinated in Cuba,” says Chovel, who 10 years ago founded an organization of Pedro Pan kids to help needy children. “That made me extremely conscious of what it is to live in a democracy. To be confronted today by people who have come from Cuba and then don’t defend the First Amendment, that is disturbing to me. What they are trying to do may have validity, but the way they go about it is wrong. They do the cause great harm.”
Chovel, whose first husband was killed as an Army reconnaissance pilot in Vietnam, says Spanish-language radio commentators often make virulent attacks on more moderate Cubans. “Either you do and say exactly as I do or say, or you are a communist. That is the message,” she says.
Cuban-American John de Leon, president of the Greater Miami chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, actively defends the rights of those who insist on saying what they believe. But he wasn’t always so liberal. De Leon’s conversion came at Columbia University, where he went to obtain a master’s degree in international affairs in 1990.
“My views were those of mainstream right-wing exile politics,” de Leon says. “I was strongly in favor of the embargo. Then I took a couple of courses on Cuba at Columbia and it was a different perspective on what was happening there. Also the Berlin Wall was falling, the communist governments in Eastern Europe were in transition, but nothing was happening in Cuba. It was clear that the policies in place weren’t working.”
It was while he was at Columbia that de Leon went to Cuba for the first time to see for himself. It caused a crisis with his parents, who like many conservative exiles refuse to step foot on the island as long as Castro is in power. “It was a tremendous let down to them,” he says. “But I wasn’t going to let Fidel Castro determine if I would see the land of my ancestors. The trip opened a whole Pandora’s box of issues for me. I understood the depth of my parents’ feeling of loss because it is such a beautiful place. But I also still didn’t agree with them on how to get it back. The embargo wasn’t the way.”
While de Leon believes that Elian should be reunited with his father, he also criticizes Reno and the INS for its heavy-handed dealings with the González family in Miami.
“I’m also sensitive about Cubans being seen as a monolith,” he says. “People need to be less one-dimensional in their view of the hardline Cubans. They are easily caricatured as lunatics and they aren’t lunatics at all. Those of us in Miami need to understand where everybody is coming from. We have to stop demonizing each other. It comes from the left, not just the right. We need greater empathy on all sides.”
The 62-year-old grandmother wearing a sun visor and holding a parasol outside the house of Elian Gonzalez made the heightening tension in Miami starkly clear. “If what Janet Reno wants is another Waco, she could have it here,” Cuban exile Elena Aguilar said Thursday. “We won’t let her take the child. Not now, not ever.”
Though lawyers for Elian’s Miami family met for the second day with the Immigration and Naturalization Service and secured an extension until Tuesday of the deadline for the latest legal proceedings, many Cuban exiles have already come to their own verdict: The legal system under President Clinton and Attorney General Reno can not be trusted, and no matter what the federal courts might decide they say they will not honor those decisions.
“Reno killed children in Waco and Clinton marched with people who burned the American flag during Vietnam,” said Aguilar’s friend, Maria Alonso, 73. “Who are they to speak about justice and patriotism? If justice is done, the boy will stay here.”
Reno has stated that only Elian’s father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who wants the boy returned to him in Cuba, has the right to speak for the child, and a federal judge upheld that decision last week. But after a television interview with the boy was screened Wednesday, during which Elian told ABC’s Diane Sawyer that he didn’t want to go back to Cuba, the resolve of some exiles against federal government grew even firmer.
“You heard what the kid said, he doesn’t want to go,” said Cuban native Ernesto Taylor, 61. “Show me where to stand so I can take the first bullet. I’ll defend his right to stay.”
The positions taken by those demonstrators, and by some exile leaders, may make a physical confrontation with federal authorities inevitable — if the case is not taken out of federal hands. In a move that distanced him from his own administration, Vice President Al Gore recommended such a move Thursday.
“It is a matter that should be decided by courts that have the experience and expertise to resolve custody cases,” Gore said. “That is why I am urging Congress to immediately pass legislation that is being sponsored by Senators Bob Graham and Bob Smith — which would grant permanent resident status to Elian, his father, stepmother, half-brother, grandmothers and grandfather, so that this case can be adjudicated properly.”
A key Cuban exile leader shared Gore’s position. “What Elian needs is for his case to be returned to family court in Miami-Dade County,” said Ramon Saul Sanchez, leader of the Cuban exile Democracia Movement. “Elian should be able to speak in open court and tell a judge what he wants, what his life was like in Cuba, to tell the judge if his father hit him, if his father hit his mother, so that a judge can determine exactly what he would be going back to. That’s exactly the kind of day in court that Janet Reno doesn’t want to give him, but if the family wants it then we will insist he get that kind of day in court no matter how long it takes. We’ll fight for that.”
Dozens of supporters kept a vigil Thursday behind police barricades in front of Elian’s Miami home. It was a loud, colorful, sometimes angry crowd on that side street in Little Havana. On recent days and nights, demonstrators have practiced creating human chains and sit-ins to block access to the house in case the federal authorities try to remove the 6-year-old boy.
The Cuban community flexed its muscles Wednesday night, when thousands crowded Calle Ocho in Little Havana as part of a candle and flashlight vigil in support of keeping Elian in Miami. The protest was the largest since the boy’s case became a cause celebri here. It was peaceful, but it also gave police an idea of how many people might take to the streets in the event of an unpopular resolution to the case.
Miami’s arch-conservative and often strident Cuban radio stations were credited with getting the crowd out and have also rallied demonstrators to the Gonzalez’s modest, salmon-tinted stucco home and to INS headquarters in Miami. Those same radio stations had a field day Thursday with a plan announced by Fidel Castro that would allow Elian’s father to travel to Washington with an entourage of 30 people, including classmates and psychologists, who would accompany the child during the federal appeal process. Radio callers warned of possible Castro plots, including one caller who was afraid the Cuban president would send Cuba’s “biotechnology experts” to poison Elian.
Attorneys for the Gonzalez family in Miami have said their clients will obey the law, and demonstrators and exile leaders have said they will honor the family’s wishes and step aside if the family asks them to. But it’s becoming clear that what the family considers lawful and what the Justice Department is demanding are two different things. Elian’s great-uncle and temporary legal guardian, Lazaro Gonzalez, has refused to sign an agreement to turn the child over to authorities if a pending federal appeal goes against him. Exile leaders are depicting the Justice Department’s demand as a heavy-handed and unconstitutional ultimatum, and the Cubans on the street agree.
Reno, the former state attorney for Miami-Dade County, is coming under the most bitter attack by the exiles. She responded during her weekly press conference Thursday.
“It’s a community I was born and raised in,” Reno said of Miami. “It’s a community I love. And when it’s hurting, it hurts me. This case has been heartbreaking for everybody involved, but we believe the law is clear. The father must speak for the little boy because there is sacred bond that must be honored and the boy must be reunited with his father.” Asked if she was prepared to enforce the rule of law, she answered. “You bet.”
Miami politics, stormy and insular at the best of times, have grown even more so during the Elian crisis. Miami Cubans have defied both national and international public opinion to insist that the child stay in the United States. Wednesday, 24 mayors from around Miami-Dade County blasted the federal government for charting a path of confrontation with the emotional exile community.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas, a Democrat, offered the bluntest criticism: “If their continued provocation, in the form of unjustified threats to revoke the boy’s parole, leads to civil unrest and violence, we are holding the federal government responsible, and specifically Janet Reno and President Bill Clinton.” Penelas and Miami Mayor Joe Carollo also said they would not allow their police forces to assist federal authorities in any attempt to take the 6-year-old boy from the house.
The comments brought a wave of complaints from some county citizens, especially non-Cubans. The Cuban community has often been accused in the past of disregarding U.S. laws in order to fight the Castro government, and especially of insisting on providing special treatment under immigration law for Cubans, a position that has angered other ethnic groups. Penelas’ statement brought accusations that he was endangering the public order.
Seeking to calm a political firestorm Thursday, Miami Police Department spokesman Bill Schwartz clarified that plans are in place to deal with violence. “The mayor meant that we will not participate in any attempt to retrieve the boy from that house, but we are still in charge of keeping public order and we will do so,” Schwartz said. “We aren’t on high alert yet, but people know what they have to do if something erupts,” he said.
The Democracia Movement’s Sanchez said something will definitely erupt if the Justice Department attempts to revoke Elian’s parole. Sanchez, 46, who says his group has 16,700 names on its membership rolls, stands to be the most visible and influential exile leader on the streets if things turn nasty.
A former member of two violent anti-Castro commando groups, Alpha 66 and Omega 7, Sanchez spent four and a half years in federal prison in the 1980s on contempt of court charges, after he refused to testify about an attempt to murder Castro during a visit to the United Nations. During that prison stay he studied the writings of both Gandhi and Martin Luther King and emerged as a believer of nonviolent political action.
Sanchez said his group would try to block any attempt to reunite the child with his father before all the legal options have been explored. He said the procedures already underway in federal courts would not be enough.
“We have civil disobedience actions planned,” said Sanchez, whose organization has blocked highways in the past in support of exile causes and provoked great irritation in both public officials and many county residents. “First we will form a human chain around the house. Then we are considering blocking the airport; either sending hundreds of cars that will drive very slowly and block access there, or maybe even to stage sit-ins. We would stage sit-ins at key intersections downtown and also the Port of Miami, especially on Friday when the cruise ships are due to leave.”
Manuel David Orrio, a well-known
dissident journalist in Cuba and a
former political detainee, is about to
utter a phrase that will open the
latest chapter in the political tug-of-war over Elian
Gonzalez — one that
pits Fidel Castro’s opposition groups in
Miami and Havana against each
other on the eve of a federal court case
that will determine the young refugee’s
fate.
“Fidel Castro is right in this case,”
says Orrio, a member of the
Cooperative of Independent Journalists
in Havana. “According to
international accords on children, the
boy should be brought
back to Cuba to be with his father,”
Orrio argues when reached by phone in
Cuba. “Castro is right about that and
has used the case to rally tremendous
support here in Cuba and in the
international community. The people
pushing this have played into
Castro’s hands.”
Of course, in the eyes of the right-wing Cuban exile community, Fidel Castro has never been right about anything, and Orrio would be lucky to escape a Little Havana restaurant in one piece, despite his credentials as an anti-communist.
Dissident leader Hector Palacios, who
runs Havana’s Center for Social Studies
and has been jailed numerous times for
his political positions, says, “What we
are seeing is the extreme left here in
Cuba and the extreme right in Miami
fighting over this child. We think the
boy should be here with his father and
both sides are using him.”
The emotional battle over Elian
underscores the discord in approaches
and,
sometimes, ideologies between the two
anti-Castro camps. In Miami, the
swaggering right-wing opposition is led
by the politically and economically
powerful Cuban American National
Foundation, which, like most Cuban-Americans, supports keeping Elian in the
United States. On the other side of the
Gulfstream are the frequently more
moderate and relatively threadbare
anti-communists of Cuba, splintered
groups under constant threat of arrest.
Many Cuban dissidents believe that their
interests are being ignored, and even
betrayed, by exile leaders in Miami,
who have received far more publicity.
“On the radio here you have people who
call the dissidents spies and agents
of Cuban state security,” says Gladys
Perez, a former right-wing Miami
Cuban who came back an ally of the
dissidents after a visit to Cuba in the
mid-’90s. “It’s absolutely awful. Even
if you are fighting for Cuba, but
don’t think exactly as they do, they
won’t support you. These are people
who are risking their freedom and
possibly their lives.”
Dario Moreno, a professor of political
science at Florida International
University and a prominent commentator,
agrees. “I think the exile movement
here has been very insensitive to the
dissidents,” he says. “To speak out
in Cuba takes great courage, but in
Miami you hear people saying that the
dissidents don’t do enough. This leads
to a backlash in Cuba. The dissidents
say, ‘Hey, listen, you in Miami are not
risking your lives.’ It was an unstable
relationship to begin and has been
extremely strained by the Elian thing.”
Ninoska Perez Castellon, spokeswoman for
the Cuban American National
Foundation, by far the most powerful of
the right-wing exile groups, says her
organization supports some dissidents
and has provided them with radio
exposure in Miami and broadcasts to the
island. But Perez Castellon does not
hide her irritation with others, like
Elizardo Sanchez, who spent eight years
in a Cuban prison for political crimes,
but has also been allowed to travel
outside of Cuba. She believes Sanchez is
being used as a propaganda tool by
Castro to project an image of tolerance.
And some dissidents may be siding with
Castro on the Elian issue out of fear
of reprisals, though she concedes that
others may be expressing their honest
opinions.
“I don’t know what to make of people who
admit there are large human
rights problems in Cuba, but they still
want us to send a six-year-old boy to
live there,” she says.
As president of the Cuban Commission on
Human Rights and National Reconciliation
in Havana, Sanchez offers a different
perspective: “The laws
in Cuba are not applied evenly. That is
a major issue for us,” Sanchez says.
“The great
majority of dissidents here in Cuba
believe this case should be decided
according to the law and that law says
the child should go to his closest
relative, in this
case the father. The case shouldn’t be
decided in a way that is just to
gain a momentary political advantage and
hurt us in the long run. And
while it drags on, the whole world has
lost sight of the lack of a society
of laws on this island.”
In the past three months, the case has
taken on the dimensions of a biblical
drama. Some exiles have compared Elian
to young Moses, found floating in
the reeds, who will lead them back to
their promised island. The case has
also become clogged with real
personalities who are often peripheral
to the case:
Attorney General Janet Reno; Elian’s
grandmothers, who came from Cuba to
visit him and try to take him back; a
Cuban diplomat accused of espionage;
Fidel Castro’s estranged daughter, who
testified before a Senate hearing last
week; and various U.S. politicians who have
visted Elian and claim to have
had conversations with him, even though
he speaks no English and they no
Spanish. But Cuban observers have their
own take on the battle over Elian and
they’ve coined their own phrase for it:
“political pedophilia.”
As the Elian drama has raged in Florida
and Washington, diverting media
attention from Havana, the stakes have
increased in Cuba, where the Castro
government has waged a crackdown on
dissidents, with the arrest of dozens of
anti-communist activists. The dissidents
say the fact that their
colleagues have been dragged from their
homes and thrown into jails, some
of them facing long prison terms, is
being ignored by the press and the
world. “We are being forgotten here,”
says the Center for Social Studies’
Palacios.
Orrio agrees. He says in November,
before
the epic of Elian began, dissidents
managed to meet with Latin American
leaders during a regional summit in
Havana, achieving unprecedented
worldwide press coverage. Now no one
pays attention to the tribulations of
those on the island.
“Castro is coming out the winner here,”
he says.
It would be a stretch to say that the
Elian saga has caused a complete split
between conservative anti-Castro forces
in the United States and the moderate
opposition on the island — both are seeking radical Democratic reform — but it has
exposed their differences and dampened
already strained relations.
An overwhelming majority of Cuban exiles
support the U.S. economic embargo
against Cuba, a major building block of
the Miami effort to topple the Castro
regime. “But I’d says 85 percent of the
dissidents in Cuba are against the
embargo and see it as the main excuse
that Castro uses to justify repression
here,” says Palacios.
A document signed in February by about
50 dissidents denounced the Castro
government for human rights violations,
but also called for the end of the
embargo.
The two sides also dueled over the visit
of Pope John Paul II to Cuba in
1998. While some exiles insisted the
aging pope’s visit would legitimize the
Castro regime, the dissidents declared
that the trip offered a way to
strengthen the Cuban Catholic church,
which supports democratic change in
Cuba. The debate exposed the fact that
many exiles don’t trust the Catholic
church, even though it is led by a
Polish pontiff who is arguably the
world’s most successful and prominent
anti-communist. And Havana’s own
Catholic leader, Cardinal Jaime Ortega,
has sometimes been
reviled on right-wing Cuban radio as
being soft on the communists.
But a more fundamental truth about the
relationship between the
conservative exiles and the Havana
opposition is that, in Miami, there is
deep suspicion for any dissidents who
still remain in Cuba.
The Elian incident raises a crucial
question: Is it possible to support
both the foundation and the dissidents
in their battles with the Castro
government? Some Miami moderates, like
Gladys Perez, have already made the
break with the hardline opposition.
Florida International University’s
Moreno says the rift is important
because it underscores a split in
philosophies between the two groups
about how the agenda for Cuba’s future
should be shaped.
“The majority of dissidents want a soft
landing. They want to build the
infrastructure of a democracy and see
change come out of that,” he says. “The
extreme Cuban exiles, on the other hand,
want a violent overthrow. They want to
see a Romanian solution, an entire
regime swept aside, not a Polish or
Czech solution, an evolution. Some
exiles here want to go back to Cuba in
1959, pre-Castro. The dissidents don’t
want that.”
Donald Trump took his prospective run for the presidency of the United States on the road for the first time Monday swooping into Miami in his private 727 jet with his latest model-girlfriend, Melania Knauss on his arm.
Trump, who is obviously relishing his half-serious flirtation with the Reform Party presidential nomination, landed in Miami from the Dominican Republic, where he attended the 32nd-birthday party for baseball star Sammy Sosa at Sosa’s new pyramid-style mansion.
Trump came to South Florida to address two separate constituencies, Cuban-Americans and members of the Reform Party, in his uphill battle to convince both that Trump is the real deal. In both instances he received warm receptions, but few assurances of support.
About 1,000 supporters of the Cuban American National Foundation, the most powerful anti-Castro lobby in the United States, gave Trump several standing ovations during a speech Monday night peppered with applause lines. “Castro has jails full of dissidents, cemeteries full of patriots and a government full of thugs,” Trump said, before unveiling his highly-developed Castro policy: “Adios, amigo.” The crowd went wild.
Trump was invited to Miami by the foundation after he wrote an editorial for the Miami Herald June 25 denouncing any lifting of the economic embargo against Cuba. He wrote that he had turned down repeated offers from European investment groups to join in money-making schemes on the island. He reiterated that stance in Miami.
“Hardly a day goes by that an offer doesn’t come across my desk to go into business in Cuba,” he said. “I’ve decided I won’t do it until Castro is gone.” After the foundation president Jorge Mas Santos praised Trump’s remarks, Trump joked: “Does this mean I get the first hotel after Cuba is free?”
At least he appeared to be joking.
Trump was met at Miami International Airport by Mas Santos and other foundation officials, after landing in his jet subtly emblazoned with “TRUMP” in large gold lettering on its sides with stage prop Knauss firmly in tow. At a press conference later Knauss was asked if she was planning to redecorate the east wing of the White House. She said she would wait and see.
A police escort then led Trump’s limousine to the Little Havana section of Miami where he spoke at the headquarters of the Veterans of the Bay of Pigs invasion, to another warm reception.
But leaders of the conservative Cuban American foundation made it clear their regard for Trump did not translate into support for his Reform Party bid. “This has nothing to do with votes,” said foundation-board member Ninoska Perez Castellon. “It is simply a way to say thank you because he is willing to say no to Castro.”
“He has spoken of our cause on CNN news and Larry King and that has raised the standard for the other candidates,” said foundation spokesman Fernando Rojas. “He has gotten our message out and we appreciate that.”
Trump’s other key meeting was with Florida members of the Reform Party, some 80 to 100 of whom came from throughout the state to meet with him. Trump has been urged to run for the nomination by Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, the Reform Party’s highest ranking elected official.
Trump kept a straight face as he positioned himself as the only alternative to the current Reform Party presidential front runner, commentator Pat Buchanan. Trump has attacked Buchanan in recent weeks, accusing him of anti-Semitism, of insensitivity towards blacks and gays and for being a pro-life zealot.
Ronn Young, the national treasurer of the Reform Party, said he had come to Miami specifically to urge Trump to enter the race. “It will be an uphill battle for him,” Young acknowledged. “Buchanan has the political experience and the grassroots organization. It will interesting. The more nationally known people we have in the party the better.”
In a closed meeting with the Florida members, Trump reiterated his recently announced plan for reducing the national debt, slashing taxes and bolstering Social Security: a one-time 14.25 percent tax on the net worth of all United States citizens and trusts worth $10 million or more. The plan has been attacked by some economists and by Buchanan, who have said the scheme would cause flight of capital from the U.S.
Trump also said he was not intimidated by the $100 million campaign war chest built by GOP front-runner George W. Bush and was ready to spend more than that out of his own pocket if he thinks he can win the presidency. Trump used one of his many press conferences to attack Bush as a feudal heir to the presidency.
“The son isn’t particularly good at anything he’s done, but he’s anointed,” Trump said. Trump, meanwhile, pointed to his bank account as his primary presidential qualification. “Have any of the other candidates made a billion dollars in a short time?” he asked rhetorically. “No they haven’t.”
Florida Reform Party vice chairwoman Pauline Klein of Key Largo praised Trump’s presentation, but was worried by his offer to fund his own campaign.
“We in the Reform Party support campaign finance reform and a system where you don’t have to be a billionaire to run for office,” she said. “Our nomination is not for sale,” a strange declaration, since the only person to ever get the party’s presidential nomination is Reform Party godfather and former sugar-daddy H. Ross Perot.
Anthony Hernandez of Tampa, secretary of the state party, said he was worried by Trump’s repeated insistence that he would only run if he thought he could win. Hernandez said he and other party members were concerned of a repeat that the 1992 scenario, in which Reform Party candidate Ross Perot dropped out of the race temporarily in the middle of the campaign.
“We want somebody whose committed to leaving an infrastructure of state parties on which we can build,” said Hernandez.
State party chairman Frank Goldman welcomed Trump to the fray against Buchanan. “In the Reform Party we could have a real race,” he said, “not like the other two parties.”
He said he hoped the two well-known figures would engage in meaningful debate. “I’d like to see the celebrity circus evolve into a meaningful discussion of the issues,” he said.
Trump advisors said the candidate is in the process of developing positions on issues to do just that. Trump has scheduled two more meetings with Reform Party members this year: Hartford, Dec. 1 and Los Angeles, Dec. 6-7. He is also planning a similar foray to the Midwest, possibly St.Louis, early next year.
Douglas Friedline, former campaign chairman for Ventura, was in Miami for the events. He said he had been invited by Trump to discuss the structuring of a possible campaign. “The challenge he has is the same we had with Gov. Ventura in the beginning, that he be taken seriously as a candidate,” Friedline said.
Friedline said Trump had made three positive moves in that direction in the past month: the naming of a presidential exploratory committee; the naming of a political director, Roger Stone; and the forming of a media team. “Now what he needs to do is develop stands on key issues,” he said. Friedline said he expected Trump to construct a position on health care before long. He also said that Trump had hired Phil Madsen, who ran Ventura’s campaign Web site, to do the same for the Trump effort.
Whether or not Trump is to be taken seriously indeed seemed to be the issue with the editors of the Miami Herald Monday. They assigned a regular news reporter to the events, but for the press bus they assigned nationally known humorist Dave Barry. “Where else would I be today but here,” Barry said.
