POLITICS-CUBA/US: Castro Appeals for Calm upon Elian’s Return

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Jun 29 2000 (IPS) - The Cuban government called on the island’s population Wednesday to maintain “the utmost serenity and discipline” as it responds to the imminent return of six-year-old Cuban Elián González, after the United States Supreme Court denied an extension of the court order that has kept the boy in that country.

The highest US court rejected an request Wednesday presented by Elián’s Miami relatives two days earlier, which requested a review of the rulings made by lower courts that had denied the boy’s ability to apply for political asylum.

“Now more than ever our people must behave with maximum serenity, calm and discipline,” said an official statement broadcast over state-run radio and television on the island.

Elián survived a shipwreck last November of a boat carrying undocumented Cubans attempting to reach the US coast. His mother died in the accident. He was then caught up in a complex political and legal web after his Miami relatives and the Cuban exile community in the United States launched a battle to keep him in the country.

The US government backed the return of the boy to his father, Juan Miguel González, who arrived in Washington from Cuba on April 6. Two weeks later he regained custody of his son after armed federal agents seized Elián from the Miami home of his great-uncle Lázaro González.

Elián, his father, step-mother Nersy Carmenate, half-brother Hianny and a group of schoolmates who stayed with the family since April had made their way to Dulles International Airport in Washington by the time the court order keeping Elián in the United States ran out at 4:00 pm local time.

The Cuban population, some 11 million people, has anxiously awaited the conclusion of the Elián case.

President Fidel Castro reacted last Saturday with caution to the unanimous ruling of the judges on the bench at the Federal Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Georgia, which had rejected a petition the day before to review the decision made by that same court on June 1.

The Atlanta court did not extend the order that prevented Juan Miguel González from returning with his son to Cuba while legal proceedings were pending on the case.

“There are still latent risks that must not be underestimated,” Castro had said in a message to the state-run press, referring to the fact that a decision by even one of the Supreme Court judges would have been enough to keep the boy in the United States.

Castro, who has dedicated himself for the last seven months to the “patriotic battle” for the return of the shipwrecked boy, repeatedly rejected the idea of receiving Elián in Havana with a rally of thousands, even though the boy’s case is the number-one drama on the island.

Several dozen journalists, primarily from the United States, have arrived in Havana in the last few days to cover the arrival of Juan Miguel González and his son, to be broadcast live by Cuban State television.

In mid-April, Castro announced that a mansion in the capital, belonging to the Communist Youth Union, was being remodelled to receive Elián, his family and schoolmates for their first few weeks back in Cuba.

The president has not mentioned the issue since, though it is unlikely that the boy will return immediately to Cárdenas, his hometown, located 150 km from Havana.

Elián was rescued off the Florida coast last November 25. The next day he was turned over to the temporary custody of his great-uncle Lázaro González, who cared for the boy until April 22, when federal agents seized Elián by force and turned him over to his father.

This followed the original January 5 ruling by the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) that Juan Miguel González, as sole surviving parent, should have custody of Elián, who was to return to Cuba by January 14. But the Miami relatives then initiated legal measures to prevent the boy from leaving the United States.

Cuban authorities have consistently pointed out that the problem in the Elián case is that “political concerns have prevailed over legal concerns” and also the “continued and premeditated delays” to satisfy the demands of the radical sectors of the Cuban exile community in the United States.

But Castro has assured there will not be “one minute of rest,’ even after the boy and his family return to the island, because the battle will continue against the trade embargo imposed by the United States and “its incessant policy of subversion and destabilisation” against the island.

Among the challenges Cuba faces, the president included the ongoing fight against the Cuban Adjustment Act, a US migration law in effect since 1966 that he says promotes illegal emigration of Cubans to the United States.

For Castro, this law is “a killing machine” because it encourages thousands of Cuban citizens to take to the sea in flimsy watercraft in hopes of obtaining the US residency promised by the law if they are able to set foot in US territory.