CUBA-US: Havana Seeks to Build on Momentum Built by Elian Case

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Jul 7 2000 (IPS) - In the wake of the return of six-year-old shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez, Cuban President Fidel Castro’s new “patriotic crusade” will involve weekly demonstrations at different spots around Cuba to protest the nearly four-decades-old US economic embargo as well as US immigration policy toward Cubans.

The almost daily massive protests held here since early December to demand Elian’s repatriation from the United States tested the government’s capacity to mobilise people in support of its causes, as well as the internal cohesion of the people of this Caribbean island nation of 11 million.

Castro’s socialist government is now taking measures to keep up the momentum, at the beginning of the summer vacation period.

Starting this week, the demonstrations held in a different municipality every weekend will be known as “Open Tribunes of the Revolution”, according to official sources.

The government-monopolised media, meanwhile, will continue broadcasting “instructive” and informational panels or “round tables”, at peak viewing times.

In the past few days, televised panels of experts, including government officials and academics, have been discussing the economic embargo introduced by the United States in the early 1960s, just one of the myriad shows of Washington’s hostility toward the island since the 1959 triumph of the revolution headed by Castro.

Another big debate is focused on the US Cuban Adjustment Act, passed in 1966, which grants permanent residency status to any Cuban emigrant who sets foot on US soil. The Castro administration charges that the law encourages Cubans to risk the dangerous sea crossing to Florida, and that it is directly to blame for tragedies like the one in which Elian’s mother drowned.

Elian was rescued by fishermen on Nov 25, when he was found clinging to an innertube off the Florida coast two days after the boat in which he, his mother and 12 other Cuban emigrants were heading toward the United States. Only Elian and two adults survived.

Thanks to a change of scheduling — 18:30 instead of 17:00 local time — the “round tables” have put a damper on the entertainment expectations of the average Cuban, accustomed to enjoying special summertime programming.

The announcement that the demonstrations would not end with Elian’s return last week, but would continue as part of “a new stage of struggle” against US policy toward Cuba, was widely met — although very much in private — with exasperation and complaints like “how much longer?” and “more of the same…”

Nevertheless, Elian has continued to draw the attention of most Cubans, who are also interested in seeing what the future will hold for the boy’s father Juan Miguel Gonzalez, up to now a worker in the tourism sector.

Gonzalez returned to Cuba with his son on Jun 28, after the US Supreme Court brought to a close the protracted legal process in which Elian’s great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez tried to keep the boy in the United States.

Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who enjoyed Castro’s full support throughout the custody battle over his son, was decorated Wednesday with the ‘Carlos Manuel de Cespedes’ award, which according to the president “did justice by one who fulfilled his duties as a father and a patriot in such an exemplary manner.

“The wisest move by the revolution was to have full confidence in Juan Miguel. The biggest error of the ‘mafia’ and the imperialist power was to believe that Juan Miguel could be bribed and led to betrayal,” said Castro, referring to the hard-line anti-Castro Cuban exile groups in Miami.

After pinning the medal to Gonzalez’s breast, Castro said that although discrepancies and even legal confrontations had cropped up between the Bill Clinton administration and the Cuban exile community, neither the US government nor the anti-Castro activists ever abandoned their belief that Juan Miguel Gonzalez could be bought or otherwise persuaded to stay in the United States.

“No one, from either band in the heart of the imperialist power, gave up the hope that Elian would stay in the United States with his father,” Castro said in his speech.

He said that was the explanation for the delaying tactics used in the lawsuit brought by Lazaro Gonzalez, because “they were dreaming that the battle they had already lost would be resolved by a blow of that kind.”

Only when everyone became convinced “that Juan Miguel’s honour and steadfastness were unshakeable” did they resign themselves to his return to Cuba with Elian, said Castro, who confessed that he felt “extremely moved” when he saw father and son — “converted into moral giants” — arrive home.

The president of the Cuban parliament, Ricardo Alarcon, lashed out harshly against the “shocking impunity” with which Elian was kept in the United States, running counter to all laws and the government’s decisions.

Alarcon said the only explanation for that situation was “the hatred of Cuba….and the arrogance of the empire, which has never accepted” the independence of this Caribbean island nation.

Castro’s speech and the remarks by Alarcon — who headed the migration talks with Washington that led to the signing of accords in 1994 and 1995 — were out of sync with recent speculation by analysts of a thaw between the two countries, partly as the result of their agreement that Elian belonged with his father.

Cuban authorities continue to maintain, in fact, that the conditions are not right for renewing the talks in which the two countries assess compliance with the migration accords every six months.

The round of talks scheduled for late June in New York were suspended by Cuba in what was initially read as an attempt to pressure for Elian’s return.

However, a new date for talks on the only issue that has brought the governments of the two countries to the negotiating table has not yet been set.