POLITICS-CUBA: Cautious Reaction to Latest Ruling on Elian

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Mar 21 2000 (IPS) - A United States federal court judge’s dismissal Tuesday of a petition for an asylum hearing for Elián González filed by his relatives in Miami overcame one more legal hurdle standing in the way of the six-year-old shipwreck survivor’s return to Cuba.

Judge Michael Moore said the final decision was up to Attorney- General Janet Reno – who like the government of Bill Clinton, supports the January decision by the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) that the boy’s place is with his father, who lives in Cuba.

The INS order was to be carried out by Jan 14, but Elián’s relatives in Miami, who have temporary custody, appealed the decision in court.

On Tuesday, an official TV broadcast in Cuba urged that the “apparently positive news” on the case be analysed with “calm and sangfroid.”

“We must be objective now more than ever,” stressed the communique, which urged Cubans not to underestimate the obstacles that would still have to be overcome before Elián was returned to his father Juan Miguel González, who has been fighting for custody since the boy was rescued at sea off the coast of Florida in late November.

The communique added that “those aspects of the information received that are encouraging for our struggle must not lead us to fall into a false sense of optimism.”

The lawyers representing Lázaro González, Elián’s great-uncle, who is seeking to keep the boy in Miami, argued before Judge Moore that the INS violated the boy’s rights by refusing to grant him a political asylum hearing.

But the Attorney-General’s Office maintained that the father’s wishes took precedence over those of a great-uncle.

Almost daily rallies and massive protests demanding the boy’s return have been held in Havana since December.

In the past few days, the demonstrations have also protested the US Cuban Adjustment Act, which automatically grants residency to Cuban immigrants who set foot on US soil.

The legal ruling apparently caught the government-monopolised press in Havana off guard. The daily ‘Granma’, the official organ of Cuba’s governing Communist Party, complained Tuesday on how long it was taking Moore to rule on the case.

Elián was picked up at sea in late November, after clinging to wreckage of the boat that capsized in its attempt to take him, his mother and 12 other Cubans to the United States. His mother and 10 others drowned in the accident.

The custody battle for the boy almost immediately became part of the ideological dispute between the government of Fidel Castro and hard-line sectors of the Cuban exile community in Miami.

Elián’s relatives in Florida argue that the boy should grow up “in freedom” in the United States, while the Cuban government set out on a full-fledged political battle demanding the boy’s return.

Analysts say the boy’s father may have to travel to the United States to collect his son, despite his repeated refusal to do so.

In one of the few interviews he has granted to the press in Cuba, Juan Miguel González no longer flatly rejected that idea, but stated merely that “the day they say that they will give me my boy if I go there, I will go and get him, as I have said from the start.”