CUBA-US: Fate of Shipwrecked Boy Strains Relations

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Nov 30 1999 (IPS) - The future of a five-year-old Cuban boy, caught up in an illegal immigrant smuggling case, pits Cuba and the United States against each other just two weeks before they are to begin a new round of migration talks.

The boy, Elián González, survived the shipwreck of a boat carrying 14 people during an attempt to reach the US coast from Cuba. His father, Juan Miguel González Quintana, is still on the island and demands his son’s return.

But the boy’s family members in Miami, a sanctuary of Cuban exiles in the United States, have said they will launch a legal battle, if necessary, to prevent his return. The case threatens to aggravate the already complicated relations between the two countries.

The boat capsized November 25 near the coast of Florida, 180 km from Cuba. It began its journey from the island three days earlier with “excess weight” and despite “poor weather conditions,” according to a communique from the Cuban foreign affairs ministry.

Only Elián and two other passengers survived the disaster that killed his mother, Elizabeth Brotón Rodríguez. She had taken the boy out of Cuba “illegally and without consultation,” according to González Quintana, whose demands for the boy’s return are backed by Cuban authorities.

“In correspondence with this personal request, the Ministry of Foreign Relations has begun official procedures through the United States Interests Section in our country, so that the detained boy is returned to his father as soon as possible,” states an official letter.

Havana could resort to international legal forums such as the United Nations or the International Court at The Hague, according to legal experts.

Elián has family members, including aunts and uncles, who are US residents. They have the support of Cuban lobbyists in Washington DC and the influential Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), which apparently has chosen to use the case in its campaign against the Fidel Castro government.

The anti-Castro organisation printed posters with Elián’s photograph to distribute this week in the US city of Seattle, Washington, where the Cuban president planned on attending the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) ministerial conference, which began Tuesday.

Castro, however, announced at the last minute that he would not participate in the four-day international trade meeting.

CANF representatives affirmed that the tragedy is “the direct result” of Castro’s 40-year-old revolution and declared they will support the boy’s relatives “using all efforts at our disposal,” according to The New Herald, a Miami, Florida newspaper.

In a declaration disseminated by the state-run media, the foreign affairs ministry placed responsibility for the tragedy on the US government “for the senseless way the country promotes, stimulates and rewards illegal emigration.”

The 1995 Migration Accords, which prioritise the status of Cuban citizens who are able to reach US soil – even if illegally, are “stupid,” according to the foreign ministry document.

The communique says that the US promotion campaign includes the “incessant exhortation, through subversive (radio) broadcasts transmitted to Cuba more than 1,000 hours per week, to disobey Cuban emigration laws.”

The increase in the smuggling of illegal immigrants has already taken many victims this year and is an unresolved aspect in Cuba- US migration, the only issue Washington and Havana have ever agreed to sit down to discuss.

Cuban officials confirmed that the case should be included in the conversations between the two nations, to begin December 13 in Havana.

The meeting will be one of a series of talks involving the two nations, alternating between New York and the Cuban capital, that began with the signing of migration accords in September 1994 and May 1995.

The agreements commit the United States to grant Cuban citizens no fewer than 20,000 visas each year, in order to achieve a legal, orderly and safe flow of migrants between the two neighbours.

Since 1994, the accords have permitted nearly 100,000 people to emigrate from Cuba without endangering their lives, but the agreements have not been able to halt illegal departures from the island.

The US Coast Guard service has intercepted more than 1,200 Cubans this year in the Florida straights, while an estimated 600 have reached US soil.

The accords establish that illegal immigrants who are intercepted must be repatriated to Cuba, which in turn has promised not to take reprisals against the individuals. Those who reach US soil are allowed to stay.

The law facilitates residency status for Cuban immigrants to the US, as well as work permits, in contrast with immigration laws for citizens of other nations that establish sharp restrictions on entrance and permanence in the United States.

The Cuban government considers these privileges a major push for the illegal but lucrative business of smuggling people, and has established harsh penalties for those found guilty of the crime.

Some 30 to 40 alleged emigrant smugglers are currently in Cuban prisons, most are US residents.

In September, Cuban courts meted out 30-year and life prison sentences for two US citizens of Cuban origin involved in a smuggling case that cost the life of a 45-year-old man and endangered the lives of several children.