By Mark Fineman, Times Staff Writer. Los Angeles Times, April 19, 2000
HAVANA--Blas Cornelio is a Cuban father who has become an expert in missing his son.
Since Cornelio last saw his boy Jorge, the young man has gotten married. Cornelio now has a daughter-in-law he has never met and a grandson he has never held.
His 35-year-old son, who left the family's home in Mariel on an illegal boat journey north nine years ago, has built a new life as a truck driver just 90 miles away in South Florida--a world Cornelio has glimpsed only in a small photo sent from Miami Beach last year.
On Tuesday, as the world's eyes continued to focus on the fate of a Cuban father and son separated for nearly five months, a human throng gathered here as it does each day in an empty lot called "the hole." Cornelio's story was just one of hundreds of tales of Cuban families
divided for years.
They have become experts not only in longing but in waiting--week after week in the broiling sun on the streets surrounding the U.S. Interests Section, awaiting their turn to pay $45 merely to ask for a chance to visit family or friends in the United States.
And as they wait, they serve as reminders of the deeper human tragedy of a people divided that is at the core of the continuing saga of 6-year-old Cuban castaway Elian Gonzalez.
Amid Heady Issues, One Simple Mission
On a day when the Cuban government expanded its "Free Elian" street-protest campaign to embrace broader issues of anti-imperialism and human rights in an angry march of 100,000 demonstrators, there were no such heady issues on the agenda among those waiting outside the U.S.
Interests Section building Tuesday.
As it is each weekday in the low-lying urban field, there was just one mission: securing a place on a waiting list that now includes the names of more than 7,800 Cubans hoping for the opportunity just to apply for a one-month visa to visit family and friends in the United States.
The result of a new system introduced in February by U.S. officials to streamline the process of issuing temporary-visitor visas, the daily scene is testimony to the hundreds of thousands of Cuban families who have become separated by Florida Straits in the 41 years since President Fidel
Castro's revolution.
Increase in Number of Visa-Seekers to U.S.
Before February, Cubans seeking U.S. tourist visas had to apply by mail through an arduous process that took up to six months just for an interview with consular officials. Under the new system, 400 visa-seekers drop off their passports or identity cards each day and are interviewed the
following day by U.S. officials, who try to determine whether applicants plan to return to Cuba when their month is up.
U.S. officials say that the new system has speeded up the process exponentially. Already, they say, the U.S. Interests Section has issued more than 10,000 temporary visas this year alone--compared with 8,500 in all of last year. At that rate, as many as 40,000 visas could be issued by
year's end.
And those are in addition to the 24,000 permanent migrant visas issued to Cubans in 1999, most of them through a lottery in 1998 in which 541,500 Cubans--roughly 5% of the nation's population--applied for the right to migrate permanently to the United States.
But the sheer demand for tourist visas has created a backlog in the streets surrounding the building, where Cuban police and volunteers have created an intricate and sometimes confounding system of lists, outdoor waiting areas and numbered tickets that, on Tuesday, meant a wait estimated at
a month or more.
The majority of them--like Blas Cornelio, a retired truck driver--are in their 60s and 70s. Most have deep roots in Cuba after living through decades of capitalism and then communism. But most now have children, grandchildren, siblings or cousins who have left for the United States--both
legally and illegally.
"I've got my kids here, my grandkids are here, my work is here," a weary 65-year-old woman who identified herself only as Lola said as she plopped down cross-legged in the center of the field. In her hand was ticket number 7,856. "I just want to see my brothers."
And so it was for Cornelio.
Hoping for a Family Reunion
As he stood in the hot morning sun Tuesday on his third 30-mile trip in as many weeks to the capital from Mariel just to check on his place on the list, Cornelio insisted that he has no intention of staying in the United States--even if he gets his visa.
"I have 22 brothers and sisters here in Cuba and just one son in the United States. My entire life has been here, and it remains here," he said, adding that he has another son and daughter who live and work in Mariel.
He said that he has applied for a temporary U.S. visa several times in the nine years since his son left on one of the illegal voyages that have increased dramatically in recent years. But each time, he said, U.S. officials have turned him down.
U.S. officials here confirmed that consular officers have been much stricter in the past. They are relaxing restrictions under the new system in the hope of temporarily reuniting families like Cornelio's, which they concede may have fallen through bureaucratic cracks.
Across town Tuesday, the Cubans were maintaining their hard line against both the United States and even their former allies as "Free Elian" T-shirts blended with shouts of "Traitors!" "Puppets!" and "Lackeys!" during the 100,000-strong march outside
the Czech Embassy. The former Soviet bloc country had co-sponsored a resolution Tuesday denouncing Cuba at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva. The resolution, which cited Cuba for political repression, passed by a vote of 21 to 18, with 14 abstentions, while the march was underway.
Another official mass protest is scheduled for Thursday at the United States' seafront diplomatic mission. State television announced that the protest "will lay bare before national and international public opinion" America's "conspiracy against Cuba."
In the meantime, at the diplomatic mission Tuesday, the Elian Gonzalez case that has become a singular national obsession, both here and in the United States, has helped many of those in line focus on their own family's lives apart.
"Every night on television, I see this Cuban father and his son still separated from each other, and I feel in my own blood what's right," Cornelio said. "Of course this father should be with his son.
"I'm missing my son for nine years. My boy is my blood, and it's been nine years. Believe me, I know what it is like to be waiting to see your son."
Copyright 2000 Los Angeles Times |