Published Monday, April 3, 2000, in the Miami Herald
Mom: 'My daughter or death'
By Eunice Ponce. eponce@herald.com
A few blocks from where Elian Gonzalez lives, a former Cuban dissident is in the 14th day of a hunger strike that she vows won't end until her 9-year-old daughter is allowed to leave Cuba.
``It's either my daughter or death,'' said Milagros Cruz Cano, 32. ``If Castro, without any moral right, can claim Elian Gonzalez, then I, with all the rights of a mother, am claiming my daughter.''
As a swarm of media gathers daily at the Gonzalez family home in Little Havana, hardly anyone has taken notice of Cruz, who whiles away the time crafting a pompom with a long piece of black yarn.
She doesn't look down as she threads her needle through the center, but each section of yarn is perfectly spaced. She doesn't look down as she reaches for her scissors. She doesn't need to -- she is blind, afflicted with glaucoma when she was 10.
Since March 21, Cruz has lived inside a tent propped in front of the headquarters of the militant anti-Castro group Alpha 66, at 1714 W. Flagler St. Cruz, a member of the group, has been surviving on water and Gatorade only to draw attention to her efforts to bring her 9-year-old daughter,
Nohemi Herbello Cruz, to Miami.
``If I draw international attention, they'll let her go,'' she said. ``The government always like to stay clean, that they're into families.''
But two weeks into her protest, Cruz is frustrated. ``My emotional state is not so good. It's hard when you see people being indifferent.''
Nancy Perez, 45, visited Sunday after hearing about her on Cuban radio talk shows. ``The people are thinking of her, but now everyone is wrapped up in the Elian case,'' she said.
Others had urged Cruz to pick another time for her strike. Then there are some who think the timing is perfect.
``Fidel Castro is alleging [Juan Miguel Gonzalez] has a paternal right. Here, we're alleging a maternal right, and she's not even well,'' said another supporter, Maria Rosa de Armas, who visited her Friday. ``Nevertheless, [Castro] has no compassion for her.''
The Cuban government apparently was more than happy to be rid of her.
Cruz has been speaking out against Castro on the streets of Havana since 1992. ``I thought that if I spoke out, things would get better, but they got worse -- much worse.''
She complained about earning next to nothing in her state-provided job -- making paper cups at five Cuban pesos (about $5 at the official exchange rate) for every 1,000 cups she finished a day. If she made more than 1,000, she said those were considered her ``donation'' to the government.
Cruz ended up playing her guitar in the streets, but was frequently harassed by state security agents.
``They took away my first guitar in front of the Cathedral of Havana, then they taunted me, saying, `Guess which one of us took your guitar,' or `You can't turn us in because you can't read our badge numbers.' ''
Other times, she said, the security agents would steal her guitar money, then march around jingling the change in their cupped hands.
For her run-ins with the state, she said state security agents yanked her around by the hair, beat her publicly, jailed her eight times and sent her to psychiatric hospitals twice.
The last time was in 1998, when she was thrown into the Mazorras sanitarium after yelling ``Abajo Fidel'' (``Down with Fidel'') in public. Although she passed a mental test, Cruz said the psychiatrists wouldn't release her. So she began a hunger strike and threatened to have her mother call
Radio Marti.
``The Cuban government always wants to look innocent -- they don't want to look bad in the eyes of the world,'' she said.
The next day she was released.
Soon afterward, Cruz and her daughter were granted political asylum by the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. But her problems with the Cuban government were far from over.
When she went to Cuban immigration officials to apply for exit visas and passports, she was told it would be ``doubtful'' her ex-husband, Alfredo Herbello Linares, would sign for release of their daughter -- even though he hasn't seen her since the couple separated shortly after her birth.
The next day, Cruz said, Cuban officials told her Herbello wanted $2,500 in exchange for the signature.
``It's just another way that the Cuban government collects U.S. dollars -- through the sale of children,'' she said.
Cruz said government officials then told her, ``Don't think you can take your daughter with you.''
She decided she could do more to help Nohemi from Miami, so she came here in October 1999. Her daughter continues to live with Cruz's mother in Alturas de San Miguel Del Padron, a district in Havana.
Cruz said she thinks about her family a lot as she sits in the tent outside Alpha 66 headquarters, where pictures of slain paramilitary fighters line nearly every inch of wall space.
She and the setting seem oddly suited for each other.
``I've always been a rebel. When I was little, they always told me, `You're a disobedient girl,' '' she said. ``I only humble myself before God, and even then, it's hard to do.''
Elian's father under attack
Fitness defended by attorney, U.S.
By Marika Lynch . mlynch@herald.com
A day after the Miami relatives of Elian Gonzalez invited the boy's father to visit them, three of the family's attorneys went on national television shows Sunday and suggested Juan Miguel Gonzalez was an unfit parent.
The White House called the allegations baseless. And an attorney for Juan Miguel Gonzalez characterized the attacks as a sign of the Miami relatives' desperation to keep the boy.
Yet attorneys for the boy's Miami relatives said that if federal immigration authorities demand it, the child will be turned over peacefully.
Disparate statements appeared to be part of a day for public posturing for the various players in the continuing Elian saga on the eve of yet another crucial day of negotiations.
The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service has threatened to revoke Elian's permission to stay in the United States by 9 a.m. Tuesday -- hastening his return to Cuba -- if his Miami relatives don't agree to turn over the boy within three days of losing all of their court appeals.
Tense negotiations between immigration officials and the boy's Miami representatives are expected to resume at 10 a.m. today.
Max Castro, a University of Miami research associate, said the paradoxical position of the Miami family -- inviting the father to visit, then attacking him on television -- makes ''absolutely no sense.''
Unless it's viewed as a delay tactic, ''smoke screens and maneuvers to eventually get the result they want,'' Castro told WTVJ-NBC 6's Andrea Brody.
Castro was one of a myriad of academics, politicians, publicists and lawyers who filled local and national airwaves offering their spin on what will happen this week.
Despite the divisive banter and complicated negotiations, President Clinton on Sunday told reporters he was optimistic that a solution will be found.
''There are a lot of people on both sides of this issue who are more concerned with what is in the best interest of the child than the larger political issues involving [Fidel] Castro and Cuba,'' Clinton told reporters Sunday while flying on Air Force One to Las Vegas for a fund-raiser.
''That . . . gives me hope we can find a principled resolution that is not just a train wreck for the child, a train wreck for the rule of law, or a train wreck for all concerned. We'll see. I'm hopeful.''
The 6-year-old, for his part, went to the Miami-Dade County Fair and Exposition and later received a visit from the man once known as the ''littlest defector.''
CHOSE TO STAY
Soviet-born Walter Polovchak, who two decades ago defied his parents and chose to stay in the United States rather than return to the Soviet Union, arrived at Elian's Little Havana home wearing a shirt emblazoned with the American flag.
Polovchak, now 32, said he came to offer his support. He chatted with Elian in the backyard through a translator. The boy appeared stressed from media attention, Polovchak told reporters. He also said he passed along greetings to Elian from his own 6-year-old son, Alec.
''He knows the difference between freedom and not having freedom,'' Polovchak said of Elian. ''I believe the family should stay strong and hang in there. I believe in their cause and that eventually they will prevail.''
Two other visitors to the Gonzalez house created a minor disturbance when they tried to distribute leaflets urging that Elian be sent back to Cuba. Demonstrators advocating that Elian stay shouted at the pro-return protesters, and Miami police officers escorted them off the street.
While the INS has the legal right to remove the boy from his Miami relatives at any time, immigration officials say they are willing to take no immediate action as long as the family agrees to hand over Elian should they lose their appeals.
WILL COOPERATE
A member of the family's Miami legal team told ABC's This Week that they would deliver Elian to immigration officials if the government demands the boy.
That's a move that federal officials want to avoid because it could cause a confrontation with protesters who want the boy to stay.
''If INS shows up tomorrow morning and says. 'We are here to take Elian with us,' then we will, of course, comply,'' lawyer Manny Diaz told ABC.
Miami relatives want a family court to hear the case and insist that Elian's father has been abusive and misleading in recent telephone conversations -- at one time telling the boy his mother was alive and waiting for him in Cuba.
Elian's mother and 10 others died on the trip across the Florida Straits. The boy survived and was rescued while clinging to an inner tube Thanksgiving Day.
Linda Osberg-Braun, another attorney for Elian's Miami relatives, speculated that the boy's father was under the influence of the Cuban government when he allegedly told him that his mother was in Cuba.
'FORCES IN CUBA'
''That's cruel, and we understand that that's because of the forces in Cuba coaching him and coercing him to say these horrible things to his son,'' Osberg-Braun said on CBS' Face the Nation. ''That needs to be discussed. It needs to be explored.''
Supportive members of Congress backed up the attorneys' theories.
''They do take kids away from fathers and keep them away from them where there's child abuse or problems. We don't know what the situation is,'' Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., said on CNN. ''All the facts should come out in a family court. That's the only way to know for sure that this boy's going to
be safe going back to Cuba with his father.''
Sen. Connie Mack, R-Fla., said the father should not be allowed unrestricted visitation with his son unless a court grants him that right.
''I would ask questions. Why did the mother and the father separate? Why did they divorce? What were the circumstances?'' Mack said on Fox News Sunday. ''The only way to really find that out is in a custody court.''
Gregory Craig, Juan Miguel Gonzalez's Washington attorney, questioned why the Miami relatives were raising these issues now. The claims of abuse are ''outrageous,'' he said.
Juan Miguel was ''a loving father, who raised this boy for six years,'' he insisted.
READY TO TRAVEL
Craig also told CNN that Elian's father is ready to travel to the United States on a moment's notice, as long as he can take custody of the boy. Fidel Castro on Sunday night reaffirmed what Craig said by reading a letter from Juan Miguel.
''If the boy will be immediately allowed to return to Cuba, I am ready to leave [today] completely alone, direct to any place in the United States I have to go,'' the letter said, implicitly including Miami as a possible destination.
As of late Sunday, the father still had not applied for a visa, and the Miami relatives have said that if he were to come, they wouldn't relinquish the boy to him unless immigration officials demanded it first.
Despite that, Craig told CNN that Juan Miguel was prepared to work out arrangements for an orderly transfer of the boy.
''We care about his transition as much as anyone else,'' he said, and are ready to find a way to ''make it smooth, make it sensitive, make it humane.''
Meanwhile, Miami family spokesman Armando Gutierrez issued a statement criticizing Craig and asking that Clinton remove himself from the case because Craig represented the president during impeachment proceedings.
Their relationship presents a conflict of interest, Gutierrez said in the statement. Judges previously involved in the Elian case were criticized for connections to Gutierrez, a well-known local political consultant.
Herald staff writers Jay Weaver, Tere Figueras and Daniel A. Grech and Herald wire services contributed to this report.
Coast Guard stops 5 Cubans
Published Sunday, April 2, 2000, in the Miami Herald
The U.S. Coast Guard intercepted five Cuban rafters about four miles east of Miami Beach at 11:45 a.m. Saturday after a Coast Guard helicopter spotted the group on an eight-foot vessel of rubber and wood.
One man was taken to Aventura Hospital after he complained of chest pains, said Petty Officer Silvia Olvera, a Coast Guard spokeswoman. A nursing supervisor said Saturday evening that the man was still being worked on but was listed in stable condition.
The other four men were placed on board the Coast Guard cutter Chandeleur, where they were given food and water. The Immigration and Naturalization Service was going to interview the rafters on board to see if they had legitimate political asylum claims.
If not, they will be repatriated to Cuba in accordance with a 1995 accord between the United States and the island nation in which Cubans who do not reach Florida shores are returned while those who do can stay -- often referred to as the ``wet-foot, dry-foot policy.''
So far this year, 145 Cuban migrants have been intercepted at sea. Most, if not all, were repatriated. In 1999, the Coast Guard intercepted 1,463 Cubans before they reached U.S. soil.
Copyright 2000 Miami Herald |