Other Latinos More Divided Over Fate of Cuban Boy
By Philip P. Pan and Michael A. Fletcher. Washington Post Staff Writers. Monday, April 10, 2000; Page A02
The midday crowd had just begun arriving at the Arte Latino Beauty Salon in Mount Pleasant yesterday when the casual conversation among the hairdressers and their clients turned, as it has so often these past weeks, to little Elian Gonzalez.
"He should go back to Cuba with his father," said stylist Maria Sarabia, 59, who was born in Bolivia.
"No, he should stay! His mother died for him to be here. She made the ultimate sacrifice!" cried a co-worker, Janira Soriano, 24, a Salvadoran immigrant.
Customer Orlando Conde, 49, interrupted: "The boy should be with his father. Family is more important than anything."
"It's like this all the time," said Eva Hernandez, 31, the salon's owner, during a break in the debate. She believes Elian should remain here because "this is a free country with opportunity for us all. If I died, I'd want my children to be raised here too."
In the barrios of Washington and other cities across the country, Latinos are following the saga of Elian Gonzalez like a real-life soap opera, one full of political intrigue and family strife. They know all the characters--the father Juan Miguel, the uncle Lazaro, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro
looming in the background--and they understand the plot all too well, particularly how immigration can separate parent from child.
But the non-Cuban Hispanics are much more divided, and much less passionate, about the issue, than are Cuban Americans, most of whom are adamant that the 6-year-old should remain here rather than return to Cuba with his father.
Among Hernandez's clients at the beauty salon, for example, opinion has been running only slightly in favor of allowing Elian to stay. And although tempers flare occasionally, Hernandez said the level of emotion doesn't approach that among Cubans, either in the United States or Cuba.
The plight of the boy rescued from the sea on Thanksgiving Day has dominated the front pages of Spanish-language newspapers in the United States for weeks, as well as Spanish Internet sites and newscasts on Univision and Telemundo. But except for Cuban Americans, it has not sparked significant
Latino political action.
"There's a lot more Latino interest in this story than Anglo interest, because Latinos can relate to the immigrant experience, the possibility of losing a parent, of a kid being left alone," said Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount
University. "But it's like a telenovela or soap opera. They're following it as a human drama rather than a political drama. The interest hasn't translated into strong political views."
Guerra said that explains why most Hispanic political leaders have remained on the sidelines. "The attitude is, 'If it were up to me, send the kid home. But why alienate other members of the Hispanic coalition over an issue my constituents don't really care that much about?' "
Neither the National Council of La Raza nor the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), two of the nation's most prominent Hispanic advocacy groups, has taken a stand on the Elian affair. Nor has the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Many Latino officials have avoided
questions on the subject altogether.
An exception has been Rep. Jose E. Serrano (D-N.Y.). After Vice President Gore broke with the White House and endorsed a bill to grant residency to Elian and his Cuban family, Serrano let loose on national television with a remarkable attack, saying Gore had infuriated Hispanic voters.
"I'm very bitter and angry about this," he said. "If he wants to pick up support from the Latino community, the proper way to do it is to talk about the family value of reuniting this father with his son. . . . Last year, [the U.S. government] threw out 150,000 people from Mexico,
the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Africa, and not one of those people got a special bill."
A Miami Herald poll published yesterday showed a sharp divide in South Florida over the Elian case, with more than 80 percent of Cuban Americans saying the child should remain in the United States and a similarly large share of whites and blacks saying the opposite. But non-Cuban Latinos were
almost evenly split.
Elsewhere in the nation, Hispanics are more likely to believe Elian should be returned to his father, according to interviews with community leaders and others. But few expect their elected representatives to pick a fight with the Cuban American leaders who have been allies on other issues.
Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.), whose district includes El Paso and is nearly 80 percent Hispanic, said his constituents "just aren't focused on this issue."
"This is not an all-consuming issue in the Latino community at large," said Reyes, who favors returning Elian to his father. "This is only all-consuming in the Cuban Latino community."
Raul Yzaguirre, president of La Raza, said many Latinos feel Elian should be returned to his father, but his organization has chosen to remain silent. "Cuban Americans have been traumatized by Fidel Castro in ways that most of us don't understand," he said. "Even though we think
they are wrong on this . . . we are reluctant to alienate those who feel so strongly."
There has long been an undercurrent of tension between Cubans and other Latino groups, partly because Cubans are more conservative and Republican than other Latinos and partly because U.S. immigration policies have favored Cubans, because they are refugees from a Communist regime.
Cubans make up only about 5 percent of the nation's 31 million Hispanics, but higher citizenship and voter registration rates--as well as their heavy concentration in Miami--have earned them political power beyond their numbers. Such clout helps explain why Cubans who reach U.S. soil are
generally granted residency, while other immigrants who arrive illegally face deportation.
The continuing commotion over Elian has only highlighted this disparity. Yzaguirre said many Latinos are upset that thousands of children in circumstances like Elian's, many of them from Mexico or Central America, never get any attention. Instead, they are quietly detained or returned home.
Washington attorney Jose Petierra, host of a national call-in show on immigration law on Spanish-language radio, said his Central American clients are "bemused" by the Elian case but also worried it will distract Congress from acting on immigration bills that would help them and their
families.
"It's quite a common concern. I hear it again and again," he said.
But many Latino leaders are convinced they have nothing to gain by stepping into the controversy--and much to lose. Immigration laws favorable to Hispanics often prevail with the support of the Cuban lobby--or as amendments to similar laws enacted first to help only Cuban immigrants.
And preserving the tenuous Hispanic coalition can be difficult. Years ago, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus informally agreed to avoid taking stands on issues that members felt too strongly about, such as the U.S. embargo of Cuba or Puerto Rican independence.
"We work closely with all the different sub-groups in the Latino community," said Marisa Demeo, regional counsel for MALDEF. "Certainly, we would not want to take a position that would be perceived as opposing a group that is our partner in many of the other efforts we are
involved in."
Family Rights Triumph . . .
By Luis Grave de Peralta Morell. The Washington Post. Monday, April 10, 2000; Page A21
Elian Gonzalez's father is now in the United States. As we Cubans in the United States demanded from the beginning, he came with his current wife and their small child. We can feel proud to have obligated Fidel Castro to meet our demands.
When four months ago the tyrant gave President Clinton 72 hours to return Elian to Cuba, what should always have been a family matter was converted by the repressive regime in Havana into a political conflict. The Cuban American community has had to struggle hard to give the Cuban father the
chance to choose what he wants for his son in freedom.
We have triumphed. Despite all the money invested in the case by Havana, despite the evident cooperation of the Clinton administration with the Cuban tyranny, we have attained our objective: to prevent anyone other than the father from deciding the future of his son.
Now that Elian's father has been placed in conditions to ask freely for political asylum and didn't do so, it is our obligation to respect Juan Miguel Gonzalez's will. From this point on, the Elian case has reverted to a case of a family dispute. We should act according to this reality.
I am myself hardly a supporter of the Havana regime. Rather, I have personally suffered the evil of the tyrant. For eight years, since I was jailed in Cuba for the crime of writing a manuscript critical of Castro, I have suffered separation from my family by the express order of Fidel Castro. In
1996 I was released with the help of the U.S. government and sent to the United States; Havana promised that my family could follow. My two sons, ages 8 and 13, do have visas to the United States and permission to leave Cuba, but their departure has been effectively blocked by the fact that Castro
denies an exit visa to their mother, Maria Bouza Fortes, who also has a U.S. visa. At this moment, my brother in Cuba has been on a hunger strike for more than two weeks demanding that the Cuban tyranny permit the reunification of the Grave de Peralta family.
It is precisely because I demand for my family the right to decide for ourselves what is best for us that I recognize that same right for the father of Elian and every other Cuban. Neither Castro, nor Janet Reno nor the Immigration and Naturalization Service--and not even the passionate
multitudes--may decide for me what is best for my family. That we decide for ourselves.
Our part in the battle for Elian is done. Let us now leave the members of the Gonzalez family to heal the wounds caused by the tyrant's evil.
We have much to do. Millions of Cuban children need our help. Let us continue supporting the nascent civil society that has been hit so hard by the tyranny in recent months. Let us fight to do away with the regime in Havana, so that Elian and all Cuban children may enjoy in their own land that
freedom that we wished to give Elian here, and so that no more Cuban mothers will drown trying to give their children what they should be able to find on their own marvelous island.
The writer, a former Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, now lives in Texas.
Tug of War: Dad Wants Elian Back. Simple? No
By Fern Shen. The Washington Post. Monday, April 10, 2000; Page C13
Elian Gonzalez's father came to the United States last week to get his son. It was the latest episode in the four-month saga of the Cuban boy. What would normally have been a private family matter has become an international tug of war over the 6-year-old. Relatives in Florida want Elian to stay
in America. His father, who is now in Washington, wants to take him home to Cuba.
How did Elian become the world's most famous 6-year-old?
The short answer is: a shipwreck. The Cuban government does not allow people to leave without permission. Elian, his mother and 11 other Cubans had been trying to leave Cardenas, Cuba and reach Florida by boat. Their boat sank on Nov. 22. Elian's mother and most of the others died. Two days
later, on Thanksgiving Day, fishermen found Elian floating alone in an inner tube.
What has happened since he was rescued?
Elian has been living in Miami, Florida, in the care of his great-uncle and cousins, who fled Cuba thirty years ago. Meanwhile, adults and officials are fighting over where he should live. His father, who was divorced from Elian's mother and lives in Cuba, wants his son to come back and be with
him. His great-uncle and other Miami relatives, whom Elian hardly knew before, want him to stay with them.
Why are others arguing about Elian?
Elian's story means a lot to some Cuban Americans, who left the island in the 1950s and 1960s. Many fled after the 1959 revolution, when the current leader, Fidel Castro, took over. These people dislike Castro's Communist government and say Elian's mother meant him to live in the United States,
where there is more political freedom and economic opportunity.
But Elian's father, the Cuban government and the U.S. government say Elian should go back with his father, that it's more important for a child to be with his parent than to be in a country with any particular style of government. Under U.S. immigration law and international law, they say, Elian
should be sent back.
What are the latest developments?
This week, the United States government will tell Elian's Miami relatives when he must be returned to his father. The relatives are scheduled to meet today with people working with the U.S. government to talk about the best and least painful way for Elian to move from his relatives to his
father.
U.S. government officials said that Elian's father, who has been staying for the past few days with a Cuban official in Bethesda, has said he will remain in the United States with his son until the relatives make one last argument before a judge later this spring.
What does Elian want?
We really don't know. Elian told a reporter that he does not want to return to Cuba with his father. But people wonder if he was coached by someone to say that. Some adults say that the small boy, who has been through so much, may not be able to make up his own mind right now.
© Copyright 2000 The Washington Post Company |