CUBANET ... CUBANEWS

April 27, 2000



Elian

The Saga Of Elian. Published Thursday, April 27, 2000, in the Miami Herald

Attorney: Dad was ready to go to Miami

Herald Staff Report

MIAMI TRIP: Gregory Craig said he told federal officials Friday night that Juan Miguel Gonzalez would go to Miami to demand Elian.

Hours before Border Patrol agents snatched Elian Gonzalez from the home of his Miami relatives, an ``angry'' and ``frustrated'' Juan Miguel Gonzalez was ready to come to Miami and demand that his Miami relatives give him his son, attorney Gregory Craig said.

``He had concluded that the only thing left for us to do was to travel to Miami, go to Lazaro's house, knock on the door and ask for his son,'' Craig said.

Craig said that he told the Justice Department on Friday night that Juan Miguel was willing to make the trip to the Little Havana home of Elian's great uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez.

Justice Department spokeswoman Carole Florman said U.S. officials did not know whether to take seriously Juan Miguel's idea that he would go to Miami, a move he had always resisted. It came up Friday night, she said, but it did not become a major issue because Craig did not pursue it.

The Miami relatives had often said that Juan Miguel Gonzalez should come to Miami, but it was not clear that they were willing to surrender custody of Elian to him even if he made the trip. After Juan Miguel arrived in Washington for a promised reunion with Elian, the Miami relatives insisted he come to their house for dinner to talk things over but would not commit to turning over the boy to him.

Family spokesman Armando Gutierrez could not be reached for comment.

A proposal that the Miami relatives had faxed to Attorney General Janet Reno earlier suggested the two branches of the Gonzalezes live in a facility in Miami-Dade County for an unspecified period of time, but did not say the family would surrender custody of Elian.

Craig said that Juan Miguel Gonzalez would have been satisfied only with the immediate surrender of his son.

``The plan was not to have a family reunion, i.e., to sit down, break bread and sing songs with the Miami relatives,'' Craig said in an e-mail response to written questions. ``It was a plan aimed at getting custody of Elian ourselves.''

Craig and Juan Miguel Gonzalez apparently discussed the possible danger of a Miami trip, but said the fear was overcome by the father's frustration.

``Our safety would be the responsibility of both local and federal law enforcement,'' Craig said. ``If the plan failed -- i.e., we didn't get Elian -- it would have dramatized the lawlessness of Lazaro's conduct.''

For months, the Miami relatives had criticized Gonzalez for not coming to Miami. It was not until April, four months after his son was plucked from the sea, that he came to the United States and then he went straight to Washington.

In the hours before the raid, Reno and a group of Miami mediators were debating whether a reunion of father, son and Miami relatives would take place in Miami or Washington. In the end, Reno told the primary mediator, attorney Aaron Podhurst, that such a reunion could only take place in Washington and that the family had to surrender the boy to the INS immediately.

Craig said that during the final negotiations, Reno never faxed him a copy of a proposal from the Miami relatives that called for a Miami meeting and left vague what precisely would happen to Elian during that meeting. Had he seen the proposal, he said, he would have broken off negotiations then.

``Had we been shown the proposal that he [Podhurst] submitted at 8 p.m. on Friday night signed by the three relatives, we would have had nothing to do with the negotiations,'' Craig said. ``That proposal -- which they characterized as a `joint custody' proposal and which simply did not include clear, unambiguous, unconditional transfer of Elian's custody -- was unthinkable. It was five steps backward . . . It was not a breakthrough but an invitation to capitulate. In short, it would have been impossible to use as a starting point.''

Craig pointed out that the proposal to have Juan Miguel Gonzalez join his relatives at a Miami location for an extended stay was much less acceptable than the deal brokered two weeks ago by Sen. Bob Torricelli of New Jersey.

After meetings at the Vatican Embassy in Washington, that deal was announced by the Cuban American National Foundation but rejected an hour later by Lazaro Gonzalez.

Dad asks court to boot great-uncle from lawsuit

By Jay Weaver. jweaver@herald.com

Elian Gonzalez's father made his first legal move Wednesday when he asked a federal court to bounce the boy's great-uncle from a lawsuit seeking a political asylum hearing for the child -- a strategy that could lead to the dismissal of the case.

Juan Miguel Gonzalez asked the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to allow him to intervene in the 6-year-old's immigration case so that he can take the place of the boy's great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez.

In court papers, the father called Lazaro Gonzalez ``an intruder and uninvited meddler in Elian's life.''

As Elian's ``next friend,'' Lazaro Gonzalez originally filed the suit in Miami federal court, where a judge upheld the U.S. government's decision to shelve the child's asylum application because he is so young and his father wanted it withdrawn. The great-uncle has appealed the ruling to the 11th Circuit.

If the appeals court names Elian's father as his ``next friend,'' Juan Miguel Gonzalez would likely try to have the appeal dismissed so he can return with his son to Cuba as soon as possible.

The father's 21-page pleading, filed by his high-powered Washington, D.C., attorney Gregory Craig, argues that only he can legally and morally represent Elian's best interests -- not the great-uncle in Miami.

The father also asked a three-judge panel of the appeals court to deny a request by Lazaro Gonzalez to appoint an independent guardian for the boy.

`LAUGHABLE' CLAIM

The court papers portray the Miami relatives -- who cared for the boy for five months until federal agents raided their Little Havana home Saturday to reunite him with his father -- as disruptive forces in Elian's life.

``In light of the outrageous treatment that Elian received at the hands of his Miami relatives, [their] claim that Elian is now in need of protection -- from his father, from the Cuban government, from Cuban physicians, psychologists or other medical personnel -- is laughable,'' the filing said. ``No one is threatening Elian in any way.''

The father's attorney, who represented President Clinton in his impeachment proceedings last year, also wrote that Elian's custody case has been regrettably fought with Cold War fervor at the expense of the child.

``Whatever the motives of Lazaro Gonzalez and his kin may be, it is sadly obvious that Elian indeed has been made the unwilling pawn on the chessboards of United States-Cuba relations, politics, and innumerable other agendas,'' the filing said. ``This father, however, asks only for his young child -- for the chance to provide Elian all the love and devotion he deserves.''

TRY FOR DISMISSAL

If the appeals court in Atlanta allows Elian's father to intervene in the case and replace the boy's great-uncle as his ``next friend,'' Juan Miguel Gonzalez's lawyer would likely move to have the child's appeal dismissed.

``The father wants to replace Lazaro Gonzalez as the appropriate person representing his son so Lazaro no longer has legal standing in the court,'' said Miami attorney Richard Milstein, who specializes in family law.

Ever since the Saturday raid, the Miami relatives have been rebuffed in their efforts to meet with the boy, who is now staying with his father at the Wye Plantation, a privately owned compound on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

On Tuesday, their lawyers asked the appeals court in Atlanta to bar anyone from taking the boy to the Cuban mission in Washington, D.C., or to a Cuban official's home immune from diplomatic immunity on grounds that Elian could be whisked away to Cuba or unduly influenced by Fidel Castro's government.

FAMILY'S REQUESTS

That request was immediately granted by Circuit Judge James L. Edmondson, but he asked the U.S. government to respond by Wednesday to the relatives' other petition seeking an independent guardian to look after Elian in the dispute.

The Justice Department on Wednesday opposed the relatives' motion because his father has custody. Justice lawyers pledged to provide the court with regular reports from a psychiatrist and social worker who have been hired to monitor Elian.

The legal team for Elian's Miami relatives could not be reached late Wednesday, but one of the family's attorneys previously said the boy's legal rights have been stolen from him and that he needs a court-appointed guardian to represent him.

``Elian can't have an appeals court hearing because his lawyers don't have access to him,'' Miami attorney Kendall Coffey said. ``When the government seized control of him, it destroyed the boy's right to seek an asylum hearing.''

As Elian's ``next friend,'' Lazaro was allowed to bring the original suit on his behalf in Miami federal court and pursue the boy's appeal. A ``next friend'' is defined in Black's Law Dictionary as ``one acting for the benefit of an infant, married woman or other person . . . without being regularly appointed guardian.''

If the appeals court sides with the father, his next step would be to end his son's court appeal, Milstein said.

PARENTAL AUTHORITY

``The father's goal is to take control of the litigation to the point where he is going to ask the court to dismiss the lawsuit, or to the point where he is recognized as the parental authority and has the only right to speak for the boy.''

If the father succeeds, Juan Miguel Gonzalez and his son could be returning to Cuba sooner than anyone expected. As the case stands right now, oral arguments are set for May 11.

Exiles' world needs broadening for us to grasp their view

Leonard Pitts Jr.

It should never have come to this.

The confrontation between the United States government and the Miami family of Elian Gonzalez was as avoidable as it was predictable. And let no one doubt that, for all the second-guessing of the government's decision to take the child by force, that decision was nevertheless the correct one. Indeed, the only one left the government by a family whose high-handed intransigence and willingness to flout federal deadlines effectively closed the door on peaceful resolution of this standoff.

In concert with the more vociferous protesters, they presented a picture of damn-you arrogance that virtually forced the government's hand and said, in effect, to the watching nation, ``We could not care less what you think.''

It's a message heard loud and clear by people like those I had dinner with a few weeks back in Milwaukee, the ones who asked me to explain Cuban Miami, to make them understand the strident, irrational image they've been seeing nightly on the evening news. And though that picture surely does not represent the whole of Cuban Miami, here's the point: To those people, it does.

Take it as further proof -- not that any is needed -- that the community has done a less than stellar job of explaining itself to the outside world. Maybe it never saw the need before. Maybe that will now change.

I'm encouraged to hope so by a thoughtful e-mail I received a few days ago from Bill Gato, a Cuban-American writer from Miami. Bill sees a parallel between the behavior of the exile community and that of Malcolm X, initially an angry firebrand who felt that black people ``didn't need the support of nonblacks to further their cause.'' Eventually, writes Bill, Malcolm realized his error, realized that black people needed to care what other people thought. The implication being that the more strident members of the exile community will someday come to the same conclusion.

WALK THEIR PATH

So it troubles Bill that, in the criticism of black pundits like yours truly, he finds ``perfectly logical arguments'' but also what he calls ``a certain void of sympathy'' for the overarching struggle of the exile community. ``It's hard to understand their passion and anger,'' he says, ``unless you've been in their shoes.''

An interesting argument. But here's the thing: Malcolm's change came amid moral pressure from other prominent black leaders who condemned his separatist approach. There has been no corresponding pressure on the loud voices of Cuban protest.

It's also important to remember that neither Malcolm nor, for that matter, any other angry voice of black militancy ever brought about systemic change. Yes, they offered a necessary jolt of defiance and pride, but the folks who opened the voting booths, the job market, the schools, the people who changed things, were those who, like Martin Luther King, reached out to the wider world and made it feel their suffering.

POLITICAL PRESSURE

Granted, the analogy is imperfect. The Cuban-American issue is less about gaining entry into a closed system than it is about influencing the U.S. government and the people on the question of how and whether to maintain pressure on communist Cuba. Every flash point of Cuban discontent -- Elian, Los Van Van, whatever -- comes down to that larger issue. But if the ends are dissimilar, the choice of means is not: Martin and Malcolm, after all, offered the nation the option of carrot or stick. The more strident voices of Cuban America, by contrast, offer only the stick or the other stick.

So what Bill senses is not a ``void of sympathy.'' It's an impatience for that element of the exile community to understand that hatred of Fidel Castro does not justify doing whatever whenever to whomever. Moreover, to understand the value of managing public image so that what you're trying to say does not get drowned out by the way you choose to say it.

For whatever it's worth, I've made the exact same point in this exact same space on those occasions when I've felt that some faction of the black community was guilty of that same mistake. I won't hold Bill's folks to a lesser standard than I hold my own.

Because the frustrating part is that Bill is exactly right. The rest of us have not walked in the shoes of his community. But tell me: Whose fault is that?

Podhurst entered a doomed 'minefield' in mediation effort

By Amy Driscoll. adriscoll@herald.com

The odds were stacked against lawyer Aaron Podhurst from the start -- too many people doing too much talking, from locations too far apart, deep into the night.

That's how professional mediators described the daunting task that faced Podhurst in his all-night role as mediator between the Miami family of Elian Gonzalez and the U.S. Justice Department in Washington, D.C.

``You had the irresistible force meeting the immovable object as emotions ran higher and higher,'' said Paul R. Marcus, a family lawyer for 32 years and professional mediator for the last six. ``You had input from so many people. It was a minefield on both sides.''

Trying to conduct negotiations by phone, he added, would further strain patience and willingness to compromise.

``I have mediated cases on the telephone, and it's a very different way of mediating. The people involved have to be motivated to make it work,'' he said. ``Distance complicates things.''

Most mediators prefer to meet with each side separately and then bring the sides to a single location -- for both psychological reasons and convenience.

``You attempt to get to the underlying issues, because frequently that is driving the dispute,'' said Frank Zotto, vice president for case management at the American Arbitration Association in New York.

He offered an analogy: Two daughters are fighting over an orange. Their mother resolves the dispute by cutting the orange in half. One girl promptly eats the fruit and throws out the peel, while the other grates the peel for a recipe and throws out the flesh.

``By not understanding the underlying issues -- why do you want the orange? -- any mediation can fail,'' Zotto said. ``As a mediator, you have to ask why.''

But for mediation to work, Zotto noted, both sides must want it.

``If one side is not going to participate, there's not much point in trying mediation,'' he said.

Another key point in the failure of the Elian negotiations may have been the late hour, some mediators noted.

``At that time of day -- 3 or 4 in the morning -- people are a lot more vulnerable, their emotions swing,'' said Bobbie Heiman, a relationship counselor who has worked as a mediator for three years.

When she conducts mediations in child custody cases, she posts the pictures of the children on the wall of the meeting room, to keep the parties focused on what's at stake.

``It's a technique to keep their minds on the issue at hand. When it comes to children, it's so easy to let emotions get the best of you,'' she said. ``I put those picture right in front of them, so they don't forget.''

She said the number of people doing the negotiating in the Elian case was ``really wrong.''

``You had too many people on both sides of the equation, everybody second-guessing everybody else. How can you make any progress in that situation?'' she asked.

She said the abrupt end of negotiations -- followed by the seizure of Elian from his Miami relatives' home -- did not unduly surprise her.

``In mediation, you can be going along, thinking everything is going really good, and then -- bam -- the whole thing falls apart. Usually, that's when one side had an agenda and they just weren't going to agree to a compromise,'' she said.

FIU students to share Elian view in Capitol

Mireidy Fernandez. mfernandez@herald.com

UPSET OVER RAID: Alex Espinoa puts a Cuban flag on his car as he prepares for a trip to Washington, D.C.

Passionate about the plight of 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez, and feeling a lingering sense of outrage over Saturday's predawn raid in Little Havana, a busload of Florida International University students left for Washington Wednesday to lobby on behalf of the Miami family.

``This whole deal with Elian doesn't just pertain to Cubans. How much authority have we given the federal government where we are all subject to violations of privacy,'' said 20-year-old Carlos Hernandez, president of the Cuban American Student Association.

About 50 students, including many from Nicaragua, Honduras and other Latin American countries, will spend the day today protesting in front of the Justice Department building and the Capitol.

``The seizure itself raises a lot of suspicion,'' said Hernandez. ``There's a lot of speculation and this needs to be investigated so the public knows the ultimate answers.''

The caravan will meet university students from New Hampshire, Connecticut and New York.

At first, the students had difficulty chartering a bus to Washington, Hernandez said, because so many buses already were reserved for graduating high school students headed for the annual Grad Nite event at Disney World.

The $4,000 trip was funded by various members of the exile community, said Hernandez, who organized the journey.

FIU spokeswoman Maydel Santana-Bravo confirmed that the students were using private funding to travel to Washington.

Alex Segura Jr., editor-in-chief for the university's newspaper, The Beacon, said student reaction to Saturday's raid was split.

``Everyone here was talking about it, and there was a lot of uproar about how the INS did it,'' he said. ``But, some students thought it was the right thing to do.''

The students are scheduled to return Friday morning, Hernandez said.

Deal sunk by false assumptions

Recollection of talks shows misperceptions

By Juan O. Tamayo. jtamayo@herald.com

Herald Publisher Alberto Ibargüen says Attorney General Janet Reno and four Miami community leaders appear to have tragically misunderstood each other during their last-ditch effort last week to broker a deal on Elian Gonzalez's future.

Ibargüen participated in a conference call Saturday between Reno and the Miamians -- lawyer Aaron Podhurst, University of Miami President Edward T. Foote II and Cuban-American businessmen Carlos Saladrigas and Carlos de la Cruz -- that reexamined many aspects of the failed negotiations.

Ibargüen said he had not participated in the group's negotiations last week but had agreed to help the Miamians on Saturday as they put together ``a contemporary record of the best recollection" of their negotiations with Reno over the previous 44 hours. Podhurst and Foote were going to the Heat game later that day and Ibargüen's Herald office was close to the AmericanAirlines Arena.

Podhurst received a message at the start of the meeting that Reno wanted to talk, and both sides agreed to a conference call that turned into a post-mortem of the failed negotiations and the raid by armed federal agents to remove Elian from his relatives' Little Havana house.

Although the 1 1/2-hour conversation was originally off the record, Reno and the Miamians later gave Ibargüen permission to reveal its details after lawyers for Elian's Miami relatives mentioned it in a court filing.

The conference call showed that while the Miamians believed Reno had been ``a decision maker" in their negotiations over the Elian case, she had been in fact ``only a broker" between them and Elian's father in Washington, Ibargüen said.

That false assumption may have led the Miamians to misperceive Reno's encouraging -- but personal -- reactions to their negotiating proposals as definitive replies, he added.

And although the Miamians believed they had made great progress during their 44-hour negotiating effort, by the end Reno was clearly frustrated from her months of fruitless talks with Elian's Miami relatives, he added.

Adding to the confusion, the negotiators had been at three different locations, talking by phone.

``At one point Reno said that had they been in the same room the night might have ended differently," Ibargüen recalled.

``I believe a number of false assumptions were made in good faith," Ibargüen said. But, he added, "I came away convinced that all five of the people in the conversation acted in good faith.''

Ibargüen recalled the conference call as ``direct but never argumentative," a respectful talk between people who clearly cared deeply about Elian's case, its impact on Miami and the Cuban-American community.

De la Cruz, who along with his wife was at the home of Elian's Miami relatives when the federal agents launched their raid at 5:15 a.m., opened the conversation with a ``heartfelt complaint," Ibargüen said.

``De la Cruz told her that he believed . . . they were very close to what could have been an agreement that would have satisfied the parties, told her that he was . . . extremely disappointed and felt that she had done something very detrimental for Miami," Ibargüen said.

Reno replied that she had believed the Miamians had been negotiating in good faith, Ibargüen added, ``but she said her view was that she had been negotiating over a long period of time with a lot of different people and that the negotiating targets were always moving."

``She said that not only had their time run out, but that the progress that the Miami group thought they had made was obviously not that much progress," the Herald publisher said.

The name of Gregory Craig, lawyer for Elian's father Juan Miguel, never came up in the Saturday conversation, Ibargüen said. Craig later confirmed to reporters that he had been in contact with Reno throughout her conversations with the Miami group.

One of the most emotional moments of the Saturday conference calls came when de la Cruz complained that the federal raid had shown Reno's ``disrespect" for Miami's Cuban community, prompting a passionate defense by the attorney general.

``She said anyone who thinks that . . . cannot know the kinds of threats, harsh comments and pressures she had had to endure," Ibargüen said. ``It was a pained and painful response."

Ibargüen said another sensitive moment came when Podhurst, Reno's friend of 30 years, complained that her failure to tell him the raid was imminent had kept him from alerting de la Cruz at the Lazaro Gonzalez home.

``Reno said that the 10 minutes before the raid were the worst 10 minutes of her life," Ibargüen recalled. ``He said, `Well good, because the 10 minutes after the raid were the worst of my life, with worry whether my friend had been harmed.' "

Copyright 2000 Miami Herald

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