CUBA-US: Plan Would Remove Elian from Anti-Castro Stronghold

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Mar 30 2000 (IPS) - US and Cuban officials were meeting Thursday in Washington to discuss a novel proposal by Havana under which Juan Miguel González, the father of shipwrecked boy Elián González, would travel to the United States to live in Washington with his son until the boy was given the go-ahead to return to Cuba.

Cuban President Fidel Castro announced late Wednesday that the boy’s father “is ready to travel immediately to the United States.”

Six-year-old Elián has been living with his great-uncle Lázaro González in Miami ever since he was rescued at sea on Nov 25 after watching his mother, stepfather and nine others drown when the boat taking them to the United States capsized.

Since then he has been the star of a high-profile custody battle which has been taken hostage by the political and ideological dispute between Cuba and anti-Castro Cuban-Americans.

According to the elaborate plan announced by Castro on Cuban state-run TV Wednesday night, the boy’s father would travel to the United States with a huge delegation aimed at helping Elián to immediately begin his “readaptation” to Cuban society.

The group would include Juan Miguel González’s wife and six- month old son – Elián’s half-brother – his favourite cousin, 12 of his classmates, including his bestfriend, his preschool and first grade teachers, the pediatrician who has attended him since birth, and a team of Cuban psychologists and psychiatrists.

An adviser “familiar with US legal and political affairs” would also be designated by the government to accompany the delegation, said Castro.

Elián, his father, stepmother and half-brother would stay at the residence of the head of the Cuban interests section in Washington, Fernando Ramírez de Estenoz, while the rest of the delegation would be housed with diplomats at the Cuban Interests Section.

A classroom would be improvised for Elián and his classmates to continue their studies while the legal battle raged on.

Castro’s latest move, described as “masterly” by local observers, would mean the removal of Elián from his great-uncle, and from Miami, the stronghold of the anti-Castro Cuban exile organisations in the United States.

Hardline sectors of the Cuban exile community threatened to hold protests including blockades of Miami International Airport and the Port of Miami-Dade, while rehearsing a human chain around the home of Elián’s great-uncle to keep the boy from being taken by force from his Miami relations.

A crowd gathered in Little Havana, the heart of the Cuban exile community, to hold a prayer vigil for Elián to stay in the United States.

Anti-Castro leaders in Miami argue that the boy should not be returned to Cuba to grow up under a communist regime, pointing out that his mother gave her life to keep him from that regime.

Castro said the only condition set by the Cuban government for Elián’s father to travel to the United States is a guarantee from Washington that it is prepared to hand the boy over to his father in order to be sent home to Cuba.

The president said the passports were ready for Juan Miguel González and the rest of the delegation, and announced that entry visas would be applied for as soon as González’s lawyer, Gregory Craig, had everything ready.

US State Department officials met Thursday with the head of the Cuban interests section in Washington to discuss the proposal.

The plan is the latest attempt by Havana to get Washington to comply with a decision by the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS), which was backed last week by a decision by federal court Judge K. Michael Moore, who recognised the father’s right to custody and threw out a lawsuit to grant Elián political asylum.

The aim, according to Castro, is to “proceed, without losing one more minute, with the readaptation (of Elián) to his family and school setting while the process continues in the Atlanta appeals court” which will hear an appeal by Elián’s Miami relations.

Castro admitted that the plan had been in preparation for some time now, while Cuban officials waited for “the right time” to present it.

Up to Wednesday night, Elián’s father had said he would only travel to the United States if he was allowed to collect his son and return immediately to Cuba.

“We want his father to come and get him,” Marisleysis González, 22, one of Elián’s cousins in Miami, said Wednesday. “How can we hand him over to someone he doesn’t know, to be taken back to Cuba?”

Representatives of the Cuban exile community and US politicians have speculated that Elián’s father may be demanding custody of his son under pressure from the Castro administration.

Sources cited by US newspapers argue that Castro is afraid González will seek political asylum in the United States if he is not immediately made to return with his son to Cuba.

The Elián affair entered a critical phase this week when the INS demanded that the boy’s great-uncle Lázaro González sign a written promise to hand over Elián if the appellate court in Atlanta upholds Judge Moore’s decision.

Authorities told Elián’s great-uncle that they would immediately begin arranging for the boy’s repatriation if he did not sign the document by Thursday. But on Wednesday night it was reported that negotiations with the boy’s relations in Miami continued.

After meeting for nearly five hours with Lázaro González and his attorneys, INS director for the state of Florida Robert Wallis told reporters that Elián’s legal permission to remain in the United States would not be revoked until Friday.

The INS has threatened to revoke Elián’s temporary immigration parole in order to allow federal marshalls to forcibly remove the boy from the home of his Miami relations.

Miami-Dade county authorities, meanwhile, announced that local police would not collaborate with federal marshalls if they attempted to pick up the boy.

When asked whether federal authorities were willing to remove the boy by force, US President Bill Clinton said Wednesday that “whatever the law is, whatever the decision ultimately made, the rest of us ought to obey it.”

A few hours before Castro made his surprising announcement Wednesday night, one Democratic and two Republican lawmakers in the United States submitted a bill to Congress that would grant Elián and his entire family in Cuba permanent residency in the United States.

According to Republican Senator Bob Smith, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the bill would allow Elián’s family in Cuba to come to the United States to discuss the issues involved in the custody battle.