Reno Decides To Remove Elian From Miami Kin
By Karen DeYoung. Washington Post Staff Writer. Friday, April 21, 2000; Page A01
Attorney General Janet Reno has decided to remove Elian Gonzalez from the home of his Miami great-uncle and has instructed federal law enforcement officials to determine the optimum moment to do so based on variables ranging from Miami traffic to the weather forecast, officials said yesterday.
Once she is told the time is right on the ground, Reno will decide. Officials said Reno's primary concern is the safety of Elian and of the government agents involved, and that they expected to move by the middle of next week.
Reno's decision was bolstered--some said pushed--by President Clinton, who for the first time took a firm public position on the controversy yesterday. "He should be reunited with his son," Clinton said of Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. "That is the law."
Clinton's remarks came after an emotional public appeal by Gonzalez for American citizens to "please help me" by calling, writing letters or "doing whatever you can" to press for Elian's return. "My son is only a 6-year-old child," Gonzalez told reporters camped
outside the Bethesda home of a Cuban diplomat where he has been staying since arriving from Havana two weeks ago.
"He's a son like every other son or child in America. No different. Anyone who has feelings, who knows the love of parent for a child, please help me. Don't let people put politics first." Gonzalez said "it hurts me a lot to see what they're doing" to Elian in Miami.
Clinton's remarks came in a planned question-and-answer opportunity in the Rose Garden as he welcomed Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for Middle East peace discussions. Choosing his words carefully, he said that Wednesday's appeals court order preventing Elian from leaving for Cuba until court
challenges are resolved had removed "any conceivable argument" from Miami to delay the reunion. He said that it should happen "in as prompt and orderly a way as possible."
Asked about the appeals court suggestion that Elian may have rights independent from his father's wishes, Clinton said such a conclusion would be "a dramatic departure from the law." Even if that became an issue during the appeals hearing next month, he said, the court had said nothing
to prevent Elian from being with his father "while all this legal process plays out."
Clinton has kept the controversy at arm's length since it began nearly five months ago, saying that decisions were up to Reno and the courts. But as Reno has set and let pass a series of deadlines for the child to be relinquished by the Miami relatives and courts have ruled, White House
officials privately have complained that the government has seemed cowed by the potential ire of the Cuban American community.
Aides said Clinton and Reno spent 45 minutes discussing the Elian case Wednesday night as they flew back on Air Force One from ceremonies commemorating the fifth anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing.
Yesterday morning, Reno met with Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris M. Meissner and senior legal and law enforcement officials from the department. Among the options discussed was delaying enforcement action until after the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals deals with the
question before it--whether the INS must consider a political asylum request for Elian. A federal district court last month rejected the Miami relatives' challenge to an INS ruling that only Elian's father could make such a request.
The appeals court has scheduled a preliminary hearing on the matter for May 11, but could take weeks after that to reach a decision.
Reno rejected that option and instructed law enforcement officials, including U.S. marshals and INS agents, to prepare to activate long-standing plans to remove Elian from the home of his Miami great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, and to inform her when the time is right do it. Although they are
depending on local police to deal with potential violence from demonstrators, federal officials have long been monitoring the crowd gathered around the Gonzalez home in Little Havana.
Juan Miguel Gonzalez was said to be encouraged by yesterday's developments, particularly Clinton's statement, but he was scheduled to meet with his attorney, Gregory B. Craig, today for what sources described as an "options meeting." Among those options, the sources said, was "more
self-help," including the possibility of launching court action on his own to press for Elian's return if the government continues to delay.
In a letter after Wednesday's appeals court decision was announced, Craig reminded Reno that Lazaro Gonzalez already had defied an INS order to turn Elian over to the INS on April 13. Saying that Lazaro Gonzalez had "resisted all efforts to accomplish a peaceful transfer of Elian's custody
to his father," Craig told Reno "there is no reason to expect any cooperation from that quarter, and no more time should be wasted in any such effort."
For their part, the Miami relatives continued to ask to meet with the father "with no preconditions," and for an independent psychological evaluation to examine allegations that the father is abusive and that Elian is afraid to return to him and to Cuba.
"With the allegations that the boy has made, have been made with respect to the father's temperament and past behavior . . . this is the opportunity to evaluate the boy professionally," Jose Garcia-Pedrosa, an attorney for the relatives, said yesterday on NBC's "Today" show.
Craig, appearing on the same show, said: "There's no evidence whatsoever that this father abused that child in any way, shape or form. . . . For them to be raising these allegations at this late date is just simply outrageous."
In terms of a family meeting, he said, the relatives "still claim that they will not give custody to the father, that that's something for them to decide. If there was a commitment by them that the very first thing they would do would be to hand Elian Gonzalez to his father, then anything
is possible."
Meanwhile, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) yesterday told Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright that he hopes she will "respond vigorously" to an alleged assault on demonstrators by Cuban diplomats outside their government's mission here last Friday
night. If the Cuban government refuses to cooperate, Helms wrote Albright, she should consider "expelling those personnel suspected in the attack."
D.C. police and the Secret Service have said they are investigating the allegations.
Staff writer John F. Harris contributed to this report.
Seeing Mystery and Miracles in Miami
By April Witt. Washington Post Staff Writer. Friday, April 21, 2000; Page A14
MIAMI, April 20 –– A woman in a wheelchair holds aloft a color poster dominated by the innocent face of Elian Gonzalez--the Cuban exiles' littlest messiah--while in the background a bloody figure of Jesus Christ hangs on the cross.
"After the crucifixion Elian and Cuba will rise up too," reads the legend of the glossy poster, which shimmers in the tropical glare outside the modest Little Havana home where throngs of praying, chanting demonstrators gather daily to try to prevent the Clinton administration from
sending the shipwrecked boy back to Cuba with his father.
On this Good Friday, while Christendom is reflecting on the suffering of Jesus Christ and preparing to celebrate his resurrection at Easter, many Cuban exiles here are meditating on Elian, the 6-year-old boy being hailed variously as a messenger from God, a Cuban Moses sent to lead them out of
exile or the embodiment of an Afro-Cuban deity who appears as a child and foretells the future.
In some Roman Catholic churches, in small shops selling the accoutrements of Santeria practice and along the protest barricades, Cuban exiles are groping for meaning in the long-running saga of El Nino Milagro--the Miracle Child--asking what message he brings about the fate of the Cuban diaspora
and the downfall of Fidel Castro.
"God has made a gift to us in this community of a miracle, of saving this kid who was two days in the sea and was not hurt," said the Rev. Jose Luis Menendez, pastor of Corpus Christi Catholic Church here and one of several priests ministering to the boy and his relatives. "Now
the problem is, if God gives us this gift, they want us to return it back to Herod?
"Herod--Castro--is waiting in Cuba," Menendez said. "Pontius Pilate is washing his hands in Washington, and that is President Clinton. And the suffering of this child is the suffering of the Cuban people."
The exiles' Holy Week victory in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has strengthened their conviction that the boy is some kind of miracle and God is on their side.
"The human beings have lost control of this," said Maria Elena Quesada, a Roman Catholic of suburban Kendall who keeps vigil outside the home where Elian is ensconced.
"Castro has lost control of it. Clinton has lost control of it. Reno, even the family, has lost control of it. Whatever happens now is in the hands of God," she said.
"Elian is a sign from God saying to the exile community: 'I haven't forgotten you.' "
The Rev. Francisco Santana, a popular Cuban American priest, said he has prayed and an improbable notion has come to him: If the boy's battling family, his communist father and his anti-communist Miami relatives, can make peace, then Castro will fall.
"I am absolutely certain that communism began in Cuba by dividing the family and communism is going to end in Cuba when this family is reunited," Santana said. "I haven't heard voices or had a vision. I am a man of hope. Maybe it's wishful thinking."
Among Cuban exiles in Miami, diasporic religion has long mixed mysticism with hatred of Cuban President Castro. When Cuban American Catholics gather to venerate their patroness, a mantilla-draped image of the Virgin, Our Lady of Charity, they often pray the rosary, sing the Cuban national anthem
and ask her intercession to destroy Castro.
"In the Cuban community where politics and religion are joined, political figures, and that's what Elian finally is, can become saints," said Thomas Tweed, an associate professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina and author of "Our Lady of the Exile."
At the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Miami, the hierarchy has remained conspicuously noncommittal about the legal battle for Elian, the attending religious fervor and popular accounts of Elian miracles--from dolphins protecting the boy as he floated for two days at sea in an inner tube, to an
image of the Virgin Mary appearing in a Little Havana bank window in the wake of his arrival here. "Hooking a spiritual message to a political agenda can prove to be very shortsighted," the Rev. Thomas Wenski, auxiliary bishop, said in an interview today. "The political is always a
temptation."
But demonstrators are undeterred.
"Whether our leaders agree with us or not, it's not pertinent," said Ana Maria Lamar, a Roman Catholic who celebrated the federal appeals court victory earlier this week by wrapping herself in a large American flag and shouting: "It's a miracle! This is the power of prayer!"
At a flower-festooned shrine down the block from the home of Elian's relatives, Christian symbols--palm fronds tied in the shape of a cross and drawings of the Virgin Mary--mingle freely with ritual offerings, such as cigars, associated with the Afro-Cuban religion of Santeria. Some followers of
Santeria believe that Elian is the embodiment of a spiritual emissary named Ellegua, and if Castro doesn't get the boy back he won't have a political future.
Demonstrators pause from their chanting and sign-waving to ponder the question: Just who is Elian?
"God's will is absolutely inscrutable to man's mind, but the characteristics of this case point to Elian being something like Moses," said Octavio Carbo, a Catholic who was a political prisoner in Cuba.
Menendez, the priest, said simply: "This is a special kid. He was lost for two days without anyone else. But his skin was like a baby. It was not burned by the sun. I am not going to make a mythology. I will only say he came in a strange way."
Menendez is struck that three waves of Cuban immigrants--the earliest exiles, those who followed during the Mariel boatlift, and others who arrived recently by raft--are united in trying to prevent Elian from returning to the island. "It's like a miracle," the priest said. "What
he has accomplished in a few months--the unity, the identity, the sense of pride--is more than we have accomplished in 40 years.
"We know we have alienated ourselves from the rest of the world. . . . Perhaps he has a message he brings to the Cuban community: that we are alone and what we don't do for ourselves nobody will do for us."
In a lull in the protests this Holy Week, Quesada, the Roman Catholic woman from Kendall, said she will accept whatever happens next. "Whether we like it or not, we might have to go to Gethsemane," she said, referring to the place where the Bible says Christ was arrested by the Roman
soldiers before his crucifixion.
"We might have to say, 'Let it be. You were not mine.' "
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