POLITICS-CUBA/US: A Year after Elian, Jonathan Makes Reverse Trip

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Nov 24 2000 (IPS) - The custody battle over a young child is once again at the centre of relations between Cuba and the Cuban- exile community in the United States, just as Elián González reaches the one-year anniversary since he was shipwrecked off the coast of Florida.

In the two cases, a five-year-old boy has crossed the Florida Straits without the permission of one of his parents. But this time, the destination was Cuba, not the United States.

Arletis Blanco and her son Jonathon Loren Colombini left the United States in a speedboat earlier this month, seeking refuge in Cuba. They headed in the opposite direction of thousands of Cubans who leave the island every year in unsound boats or by paying as much as 8,000 dollars to immigrant traffickers.

“I am not dead. I am alive and quite willing to fight for my children, both of them,” Blanco told the accredited foreign press in Cuba, rejecting any similarities between her son’s situation and Elián’s.

In Jonathan’s case, luck was with all of the boat’s passengers. A year ago, Elián was one of three who survived the capsizing of the boat that left 11 people dead, including the boy’s mother, Elizabeth Brotons.

US authorities gave temporary custody of Elián to his great- uncle in Miami, while the boy’s father, in Cuba, demanded his return.

For the next several months, Elián was at the centre of a legal and political battle that entangled his extended family, the Cuban and US governments and the more radical wing of the Cuban exile community, ending with the boy’s return to the island last June.

In response to the new case, involving Jonathon, Havana has assured it is willing to provide whatever facilities necessary to handle the case concerning the child brought to Cuba by one parent without the consent of the other.

Blanco told journalists she was surprised by claims on the boy made by her former husband, John K. Colombini, and asserted that “he did not take care of Jonathon.”

“I didn’t expect a claim from the father. In order to get his father to give Jonathon a plate of food I had to take him to court, and he even owes something like 7,000 dollars in paternity payments,” said Blanco, who is now living with her two children at a relative’s home in Pinar del Río, 140 km from Havana.

They are staying with the family of her current husband, who is under arrest in Pinar del Río, along with his cousin. The two men are currently being investigated, according to an official notice published in ‘Granma’ newspaper, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party of Cuba.

Blanco, whose parents took her to the United States in 1980 when she was eight, affirmed that in Cuba she feels content and peaceful, thanks to the love of her family and the help she has received from everyone.

The three adults and two children who made the trip from Florida voluntarily went to the police station in the town of Bahía Honda to notify authorities of their illegal entry into the country, says the article in ‘Granma.’

Blanco reportedly told officials that Jonathan’s father had withdrawn custody because he is an alcoholic and that her decision to return to Cuba was the result of death threats received by her employers in Florida.

The official story, about which Blanco made no comments, indicates she was caught while recording a conversation about the alleged sale of petroleum for a boat belonging to ‘Movimiento Democracia’ (Democracy Movement), a Cuban exile organisation.

According to the story, the profits from the operation were not deposited in account but were being used to finance the purchase of weapons and explosives for military operations against Cuba planned by another exile group, Alpha 66, something Blanco was apparently attempting to prove.

Blanco, who had discovered that 150,000 dollars were missing, recorded conversations in order to provide evidence of the financial mismanagement of the company JS, whose owner, Juan Emilio Suárez, has links to Alpha 66, according to ‘Granma.’

Meanwhile, the president of Alpha 66, Andrés Nazario Sargén, denied Friday that he knew Suárez or that the businessman was a registered member of the organisation.

“Our funds come from donations by individuals and organisations, and we ensure that its origins are completely clean,” Sargén told the Miami Herald.

Ramón Saúl Sánchez, president of ‘Movimiento Democracia,’ also denied any ties to the JS company and commented that Cuba was using such a story “to manipulate public opinion and cast doubt on the non-violent strategy” of his organisation.

Since 1996, ‘Movimiento Democracia’ has organised flotillas that approach the island’s coast to protest against the Fidel Castro government.

Blanco, meanwhile, stated that she will not prevent her former husband from seeing his son. “His father can come here (to Cuba) tomorrow, if he wants, because no one is going to prevent him from doing so, and he knows it,” she said.

“The Cuban authorities are willing to provide all necessary measures to handle any petition presented, or corresponding lawsuit, in order to resolve the problem as quickly as possible,” says the article in the state-run daily.