Why Cubans in Miami Are Taking to the Streets
By Maria F. Durand. ABC News, April 21, 2000
M I A M I, April 21 Lazaro Calas left Cuba just two months before Elian Gonzalezs mother embarked on the tragic boat trip that would take her life and unleash, for the Cuban exile community here, the most tense confrontation with Fidel Castro since the Bay of Pigs.
After years of waiting, Calas, 38, recently got one of the handful of visas the United States government gives Cubans who want to live in the United States.
As he stands in the hot South Florida sun seven months later, just feet from the house where Elian Gonzalez has been living for five months, he is one of hundreds of Cubans and Cuban-Americans who vow not to let the child return to the communist nation. The reasons that Calas and people
like him have been coming to this Little Havana street day after day are simple.
They say Cuba holds no life for a 6-year-old boy, who if returned, would get his milk ration eliminated next year when he turns 7.
"Do you know what its like having to go get your ration of food every day?" Calas asks in Spanish. "The Cuban child does not have a good breakfast every day."
As his voice rises above the loud prayers of other supporters lined up behind metal barricades in the street and the constant debates over the evils of communism, Calas begins to list an adults ration of food in Cuba.
"You get six pounds of rice a month, six pounds of sugar a month. Oil, well, cooking oil, you only get four ounces every three months," says Calas, who weighs 138 pounds and says he is still underweight. "400 grams of bread a day," he continued, "and if the bakery
assigned to you is closed, you dont get your daily ration."
Calas, a dissident journalist, says he has been imprisoned in Cuba and was marked by the government as a troublemaker.
I Knew the Difference
As Calas talks, a woman, who refused to give her name because she still lives in Cuba and is afraid of retaliation, says she has seen children go hungry.
"If our stomachs havent exploded, its thanks to a miracle," says the 63-year-old woman, who has been visiting her nephews since April 6. She says rationed food is always of bad quality and if the milk is sour, there are no returns.
But this woman says she is lucky because she has relatives in the United States and buys many products in the black market with U.S. dollars.
For years, the Cuban government has blamed the need for rationing on the United States embargo against the nation, and some admit that if the embargo was lifted it would make their lives easier.
But they say it would take a long time for that to change and for Elian, time is precious.
"Let no one say that a 6-year-old cant tell the difference because I remember," said one 22-year-old woman who joined the conversation.
"Ever since I was that age I wanted to come to this country," said Maria Rosa Rodriguez, who finally moved here thanks to a visa when she was 14. "I knew the difference. I wanted to come."
Little Sympathy for Juan Miguel
A video released by Elians Miami relatives last week, in which the boy he said he doesnt want to return to Cuba with his father, is proof for many here of Elians true feelings, despite a government psychologist saying publicly that the tape is proof the child is being
traumatized.
In this Miami neighborhood, among the older women who sit under a tent all day long as they sip water from a giant cooler, and the teenagers who hang out at the end of the street, there is little sympathy for Elians father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez.
"The father is behaving very badly," says Maria Valdesuso, a 66-year-old Union City, N.J., resident, who was in town visiting family and came to the house for the first time. "He doesnt deserve to have his son because he is not willing to give him the best life
available to him."
Juan Miguel said recently in a television interview that he wants to take his son back to a country where parents dont worry about school violence in school and where education is guaranteed to every citizen.
"I will admit that is true," says Lazaro Calas. "but what good is an education when you cant do anything with it?"
No Sacrifice Too Large
Many of the people who have come here say they would be willing to lay down their lives in order to keep the boy in the country.
Carmen Perez, 71, takes three buses every day to come to what has become a small tent city in front of the house.
"Its going to be one of these days when we get tired and are not paying attention that the federal marshals will come in and take Elian," Perez said. "We are not going to let that happen."
Maria Rodriguez, 45, repeats the promise. The others follow.
While many realize Elian would probably live a privileged life if he returned to Cuba, they are convinced nothing compares to the opportunities in this country.
"They may turn him into a privileged child but it wouldnt last long," said the Cuban woman who refused to give her name "He wont have more than any of us. I just hope his father realizes this before it is too late."
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