CUBA: Elian’s Grandparents Protest US Refusal of Visas

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, May 11 2000 (IPS) - The grandparents of Cuban shipwreck boy Elián González said Wednesday that the US State Department’s refusal to issue them entry visas on the eve of the boy’s political asylum hearing was unfounded and inhuman.

“We don’t know why they refused us visas. We believe they had no reason to do so,” said Juan González, the paternal grandfather of the six-year-old boy whose future depends on the decision to be handed down by a federal appeals court in the US city of Atlanta, Georgia, which begins to hear the case Thursday.

According to an official communique released by the Cuban government Wednesday, Elián’s grandparents wanted to see him before the hearing “due to the fear that any complications with respect to the court decision could stand in the way of a reunion in the future.”

The visa application included González, his wife Mariela Quintana, Elían’s maternal grandparents Raquel Rodríguez and Rolando Betancur, and Juan Antonio Carmenate and Milagros Castillo, the parents of Nercy Carmenate, the boy’s stepmother and the second wife of his father Juan Miguel González.

The communique added that just when everything was practically set for the six to fly to the United States in a small seven-seat plane, the US State Department reported that it would not immediately grant the visas, and that it had indefinitely postponed the decision.

The grandparents told a news conference that their visit had also been planned to provide support for Juan Miguel González, who since Apr 22 has been waiting in Washington for the custody battle to be resolved, along with his wife and their seven-month son, Hianny, Elián’s half-brother.

“We have received so many blows that we don’t know where the next one will come from,” said Juan González with respect to the family’s expectations regarding the results of the hearing in which his brother, Lázaro González – Elián’s great-uncle in Miami – is attempting to keep the boy from being sent back to Cuba.

He said they would insist on their attempt to travel to the United States. When asked if he would agree to a meeting with his brother Lázaro, he did not rule out the possibility, but said “only time will tell.”

The boy’s maternal grandmother, Raquel Rodríguez, said “all I have left is Elián, and I would have liked to be with him on Mother’s Day,” which is celebrated this Sunday in Cuba.

Rodríguez’s daughter, Elizabeth Brotons – Elián’s mother – was one of 11 undocumented Cuban emigrants who drowned on Nov 25 when the boat in which they were trying to reach the United States capsized.

Only Elián – who floated for two days clinging to an innertube – and two others survived the shipwreck.

Mariela Quintana, the boy’s paternal grandmother, said it would have been good for the US public to see all of the grandparents arrive to the United States together.

Hard-line anti-Castro sectors of the Cuban exile community in Miami, who argue that the boy should grow up “free” in the United States, have alleged that Elián’s family members in Cuba are “hostages” of the government of Fidel Castro.

But “if that were true, why don’t they give us the visas?” asked Juan González.

The trial to get underway Thursday is based on an appeal filed by Lázaro González after federal Judge Michael Moore dismissed the petition for asylum on Mar 21, ruling that only Juan Miguel González could speak for his son in court.

Elián’s Miami relations, with whom the boy lived for five months before being removed from their home by federal marshalls on Apr 22 and reunited with his father in Washington, will be present at the oral proceedings. Juan Miguel González will be represented by his lawyer Gregory Craig. The court could take weeks or even months to hand down its decision.

US legal experts say the court may or may not dismiss the boy’s right to seek asylum against the wishes of his father.

If it rules that Elián has a right to seek asylum, the court would order an independent guardian to be named to determine whether political asylum would be in the best interests of the boy, whose signature is on an application for asylum written in English and submitted to the judges.

Although Cuban authorities have not ventured to predict the outcome of the trial, the president of Cuba’s National Assembly (parliament), Ricardo Alarcón, said the possibility of a son being taken from his father, who was already determined by US officials to be a fit parent, was “inconceivable” and unprecedented in US legal history.

But although Alarcón stated that “I believe that cannot happen,” he admitted that he could not be sure about what decision could be taken at any given point in the long, heavily politicised custody battle.

On Jan 5, the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) ruled that the boy belonged with his father, who was demanding that his son be returned to him in Cuba.

Although the INS set a Jan 14 deadline for Elián to be sent home to his father in Cuba, the Miami Gonzálezes blocked the boy’s repatriation by taking the case to court.

The custody battle was taken up as an ideological symbol by the Cuban exile community in Miami when Juan Miguel González sought the support of the Cuban foreign ministry to secure the return of his son. Hard-line anti-Castro movements like the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF) adopted the case in their struggle to highlight the supposed lack of freedom in Cuba.

The Cuban government, meanwhile, has given the matter top- priority attention, while stepping up its protests against the 1966 US Cuban Adjustment Act, which grants undocumented Cuban immigrants the possibility of obtaining residency permits a year and a day after they reach US shores.

The Castro administration contends that the Cuban Adjustment Act has led thousands of Cubans to their deaths as they attempt the dangerous crossing through the Florida Straits in flimsy watercraft, due to the almost sure possibility of obtaining residency permits.