By Randal C. Archibold. The New York Times. April 28, 2000
HAVANA, April 27 -- His classmates blow kisses into the camera and promise hearty hugs when he returns. His relatives clown for the camera, with one donning a wig to the delighted squeals of the clan. Two cousins splash about in a swimming pool, show off karate moves -- in slow motion as dreamy
violins play -- and romp with three puppies in an idyllic park that could be in, well, Miami.
But it is not. It is Cuba, and it is a home video, shot in and around his hometown, Cárdenas, and sent to Elián González in Maryland as a sort of letter from home.
The ostensible reason is to counteract any homesickness Elián may feel as he and his father await court rulings to determine whether the boy should remain in the United States as is the wish of Miami relatives who had cared for the boy after his shipwreck last November. He was removed
from their home by immigration agents last Saturday after they refused to turn him over.
But the indisputable message for Elián -- and perhaps Cubans who saw excerpts of the 41-minute video last night and this morning on television -- is that, whatever impressions they may have of Miami, life is good here, too.
The video is part of the propaganda campaign President Fidel Castro has waged almost since the inception of the case.
Every night for over two hours Cuba's two television stations, which are state run, broadcast round-table discussions in which a panel of six or seven people -- journalists, law professors and psychologists -- often citing news reports in the United States, dissect the latest turns in the case
before an studio audience that often includes Mr. Castro.
One of the fixtures in the broadcasts has been Yasmani Betancourt, Elián's 10-year-old cousin who arrived in Washington on Wednesday for a visit with Elián. Cuban television has broadcast interviews with the boy in which he expresses how much he misses his cousin and playmate.
Yasmani is at center stage in the video, doing the karate kicks, and speaking at a demonstration before thousands of people last Saturday in a rural town, Jagüey Grande, after Elián was returned to his father.
"The demonstrations, the video, the round-table discussions all are calculated to whip up patriotic fervor, with this boy at the center of it all." a Western diplomat said of the fight over Elián.
To a large extent the propaganda war is aimed at answering the Cuban-American community in Miami, routinely referred to here as the Miami mafia by party stalwarts. And so Cuban news media have taken unusual steps, replaying CNN, NBC and CBS interviews -- faithfully translated into Spanish --
with Attorney General Janet Reno, the immigration commissioner, Doris Meissner, and other officials.
Cuban television has shown extensive images of Miami and anti-Castro demonstrators, glimpses rarely seen here except by those with the illegal satellite dishes or antennas.
The images shown on Cuban television, however, seem intended less to present the other side than to set up incendiary commentary. The pictures are usually accompanied by analysis from Cuban journalists ridiculing things like the weeping visage of Marisleysis González, Elián's
cousin, who has fought for his custody, and the "total failure" of demonstrators to shut down the city on Tuesday in protest of Elián's seizure.
Cuban commentators on the round-table discussions have often repeated an important criticism of Mr. Castro by the Cuban-American community in Miami, that Elián will be brainwashed upon his return, though such remarks have been quickly and arduously disputed by Cuban psychologists.
In the Cuban video, images of horse and buggies clattering by stone bungalows on the streets of Cárdenas are interspersed with clips of neighbors and relatives in their homes wishing him a quick return. A cousin reports how much he has grown.
After its broadcast, a beaming Cuban commentator pronounced it "moving."
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company |