POLITICS-US: Elian – Symbol, Saviour, and Six Years Old

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Feb 1 2000 (IPS) - Now that his grandmothers are back in Cuba and with prospects fading for swift Congressional action on his proposed citizenship, the furor over six-year-old Elian Gonzalez appears to be dying down – at least until his next court date on Feb 22.

The little boy, who was found last Nov. 25 clinging to wreckage two days after the sinking of the small boat which his mother, stepfather and nine other people had boarded in a fatal attempt to reach the United States, has become the focus of the world’s most spectacular custody fight.

Indeed, Elian’s plight was the single biggest news story, aside from the ongoing presidential primary campaigns here, on all three major US television networks last month, according to the authoritative Tyndall Report, which monitors network news coverage. Almost 10 percent of all of the half-hour evening news shows in January were devoted to the Elian saga.

“This combined a human-interest story with a political-diplomatic story,” said Andrew Tyndall, who noted that the networks had generally been careful to give balanced coverage of the competing sides.

The case pits the boy’s father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, and his Cuban relatives against his great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, and his family, at whose modest Miami home Elian has been living since shortly after his rescue.

But the drama also is being played out far beyond Elian’s extended family, as he has become a political symbol on both sides of the Florida Straits.

In Cuba, the government has organised a series of mass demonstrations, including a heroes’ welcome Sunday for the two grandmothers, demanding that Washington take the boy from his Miami relatives and send him home.

The Cuban foreign minister, Felipe Perez Roque, even hop-scotched around Europe on a mission to marshal diplomatic support for Elian’s return earlier this month. Spain, Russia and France have all come out in support of Havana’s position.

But in Miami, anti-Castro Cubans have staged equally fervent demonstrations demanding that the boy remain in the United States to grow up in “libertad” instead of returning him to Fidel’s “totalitarian” state.

Some Miami Cubans have even taken to referring to Elian as “El Milagro” – the Miracle – rescued by God to realise the dream of finally liberating Cuba from Castro’s 40-year grip, much as Moses, who as a baby was also fished from the water, led the Jews out of Egypt.

The myth is already growing. According to accounts circulating in Miami’s Little Havana, Elian, when he was found by a Florida fisherman, was being protected from sharks by a school of dolphins, while angels could be seen hovering overhead.

The fight also is being played out within the US government. The Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS), applying US and international custody laws and after interviewing the parties in Miami and Havana, determined that only the father, as Elian’s surviving parent, could speak for the child on immigration matters.

The INS has been backed – at least rhetorically – by President Bill Clinton, but he has so far refrained from enforcing the agency’s decision.

Right-wing Republicans in Congress, outraged by the INS decision, moved earlier this month to take the case out of the agency’s hands by introducing an unprecedented bill granting Elian US citizenship – an honour previously bestowed only symbolically on Winston Churchill, Mother Teresa, and a 17th century English Quaker.

As a citizen, Elian’s custody would cease to be an immigration matter and would have to be decided by a court on the basis of what it considered to be his “best interests.”

“I don’t understand how the land of freedom can say it’s in his best interest to be sent to a place where the government can tell him what he thinks and what he’ll become,” said Florida Sen. Connie Mack, when he introduced the citizenship bill two weeks ago.

But just as the momentum for such legislation seemed irresistible, Elian’s two grandmothers, Mariela Quintana de Gonzalez and Raquel Rodriguez, arrived on a private jet in New York. They were escorted by the head of the US National Council of Churches, Robert Edgar, himself a former congressman.

The grandmothers spent most of their nine days here lobbying lawmakers to oppose any effort to “impose” US citizenship on Elian. The two women met briefly with Elian behind closed doors at the home of a neutral third party in Miami last week, and returned home Sunday, apparently having helped turn the tide on Capitol Hill.

Republican leaders had promised to steamroll the bill through Congress on its first week back in session. But they retreated from that pledge by late last week as many Democrats, and even some Republicans, began speaking out against precipitous action, or any action by the legislative branch at all.

“Should the U.S. Senate be a custody court?” asked Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, a rising foreign policy star in the party. “Let this young boy go home to his father.”

That also appears to be the view of a majority of Americans, according to recent polls which suggest that the whole controversy may actually backfire against the Miami Cubans.

The hard-line exile community’s influence in Washington has steadily waned in recent years, particularly since the death two years ago of Jorge Mas Canosa, the powerful founder and president of the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF) – which has played a leading role in the effort to keep Elian in the United States.

Indeed, some reports have suggested that all the hoopla over Elian in south Florida can be seen as a last-gasp effort by the anti-Castro factions which have dominated the Cuban-American community for 40 years to assert their political dominance, not just over the community, but over Washington as well.

The hawks have suffered a series of setbacks, of which Mas Canosa’s death was just one major event. The Clinton administration has managed to change decades of US immigration policy so that Cuban migrants or “balseros” intercepted by the US Coast Guard can be returned to Cuba.

It also has effectively gutted the toughest provisions of the so-called Helms-Burton bill to tighten the trade embargo against Cuba. The embargo itself has been modified to exempt medical equipment and pharmaceuticals.

And in the last two years, efforts to lift the trade embargo on sales of food have come within a whisker of passing in Congress. Those efforts have been led by farm-state Republicans, such as Hagel, and gained the strong support of the US Chamber of Commerce and other business heavyweights who have made eliminating all unilateral US economic sanctions a major priority.

In addition, the Cuban-American community itself is seen as less monolithic than it was when Mas Canosa’s CANF was riding high. Dissenting voices are getting louder, particularly from younger Cuban-Americans who lack the passion of those who exiled themselves here in the early 1960’s after Castro seized power.

“They have overcome the hyper-hatred of Castro – not that they support (him),” Max Castro, a sociologist at the University of Miami, recently told a US newspaper.

Indeed, the mass media have noted that even on Elian, the Cuban-American community in Miami – including Lazaro Gonzalez’ extended family there – is deeply split on whether the boy should be returned to his father.

Elian’s future is still in doubt. The INS will not move to return him at least until after Feb 22, when the parties will appear in a Miami federal court to argue an INS motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Lazaro to overturn the agency’s decision.

Lazaro’s lawyers will argue that the INS must accept petitions to request asylum on Elian’s behalf. Even if the motion is granted, however, the case could be appealed, and a lengthy process could ensue.

That presumes that Washington would actually try to carry out the INS order. Anti-Castro groups have threatened to block traffic to the airport if any attempt to return Elian is mounted – a tactic that also has backfired against the hard-liners in recent years.

Meanwhile, Elian will remain in Lazaro’s custody as he enjoys the gifts, toys and tours to Disney World and elsewhere which have been lavished on him since his arrival.