By Lizette Alvarez, The New York Times. January 10, 2000
MIAMI -- PEOPLE usually grimace and squirm when they are publicly vilified, painted as traitors and mocked as vicious animals. But for Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican and a fist-shaking anti-Communist, it's the next best thing to a shot of Cuban coffee.
Just before the new year, Granma, the state-run newspaper in Cuba, ran a full-page article that denounced her, in head-spinning Marxese, for her involvement in the Elián González case. "The ferocious wolf disguised as a woman," the giant headline read.
Then the Cuban government started showing a documentary on state-run television, morphing her image ever so slowly into that same ferocious wolf, a "loba feroz," as it called her.
Representative Ros-Lehtinen, who was born in Cuba, was so touched by the gesture she immediately dialed Tallahassee to order a vanity license plate: LOBA FRZ. "I wish I had a vowel there, like Vanna White," she said.
"I'm pleased as punch," Ms. Ros-Lehtinen said over a bagel and a café con leche at a restaurant here one morning. "I've been trying for so many years to get him to pick on me," she said, referring to Fidel Castro. "I don't know why now, and I don't know why twice.
Something I've been saying has really gotten to him lately because I've been attacking him forever. Heck, he's the reason we're all here."
Maybe it is because Elián, the 6-year-old boy whose father wants him sent back to Cuba, is living with relatives in her district in Miami's Little Havana now, and Ms. Ros-Lehtinen has seen fit to fling rhetorical lightning bolts Mr. Castro's way as often as possible.
On Wednesday, the Immigration and Naturalization Service decided that Elián's father had a right to be reunited with his son in Cuba. Ever since, Miami has been in an uproar. A Congressional subpoena has been issued to try to prevent immigration officials from sending him home by Friday.
And a state judge is deciding whether to grant temporary custody of the boy to his great-uncle here.
Representative Ros-Lehtinen, 48, was involved in the case from the start. Soon after a fisherman found Elián, his little body peeking out from under a bobbing inner tube, on Thanksgiving, the boy's relatives called her to pay a visit and find out what to do. Elián's mother was
among those who died when the boat carrying them from Cuba sank.
"I was there just about the day he was released," Ms. Ros-Lehtinen said. Her cellular phone rings with yet another interview request. " 'Burden of Proof.' Doesn't everyone shout on that show?" she asks her aide. "No. No. Tell them no."
"I could be on national news everyday," she said, after clicking off the phone. "But I go for local radio. I'm a local gal." Besides, she has to pick up her two daughters at school.
Since Elián's release by the immigration service, his family has invited her back several times. She showed up twice around Christmas, once with a monster truck for Elián and toys for the other children in the family. She also attended his birthday party.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen shrugs off her critics, who say she and others have turned the boy's case into a political circus. "I've visited many families in my district, sometimes the media comes and sometimes it doesn't," she said. "I don't pick which one is the celebrated case."
Most members of Congress get attention for the pork-barrel projects they bring home or the roads they help build. That happens in Miami, too. But the bread-and-butter issue for Ms. Ros-Lehtinen, who was first elected to Congress in 1989, is reminding the United States government that Mr. Castro
is a dictator.
Battling Mr. Castro is not just political, it is also personal. Ms. Ros-Lehtinen was born in Havana in 1952 and was just a year older than Elián when she came here. The year was 1959; Mr. Castro had overthrown the government and thousands of Cubans, including Ms. Ros-Lehtinen's family,
were fleeing.
In Miami, she met the man she would marry, Dexter Lehtinen, a former United States attorney here, while she was a state legislator. Like so many extended Cuban families, hers is tightknit. Her mother and father live right across the street and help take care of her daughters when she is in
Washington.
Her constituents are smitten. She has run unopposed during her last three elections. Janitors and yard workers and businessmen recognize her on the street, something that cannot be said for most members of Congress.
The waiter, who arrived here from Cuba four years ago, asks if she wants more coffee, then leans toward her.
"That kid can't go back," he said.
"We hope not," she told him.
"Hope nothing," he said. "It can't happen. That kid is too important to the exile community."
A T a Little Havana senior center, her fans rush her with flowers and well-wishes. "Elián, Elián," they shout. She slips from Spanish to English and back again, whatever the moment requires. A few old Cuban men play music and Ms. Ros-Lehtinen, who says she has two left
feet, shuffles around.
"No one talks about Elián's mother, about her sacrifice, so he could reach liberty in this beautiful country," she tells the crowd in Spanish. It is something they love to hear.
But, away from the hubbub, here in the cafe, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen tones down the rhetoric and shows a pragmatic streak. How can the community justify separating a 6-year-old from his father, who by all accounts was a good parent?
"I've never said in any way that Elián should be here or Elián should be with the father," she said. "All I've ever said and continue to say to this day, is that the family wants a fair, impartial court procedure. This is a nation of laws, and we should be ruled by
that, and we shouldn't rely on secretive administrative decisions."
"It's become such a huge issue," she said, "But we have to get back to the basics that this really is about a 6-year-old child."
In Miami, and in Cuba, where politics, passion and the past make for a volatile brew, it is never quite that simple, and she knows it.
"The judge may very well decide to send Elián back," Ms. Ros-Lehtinen said. "If the family had had a fair, impartial and free open hearing, then we would understand that decision. Now it has gone so far beyond that, that I don't know what would happen."
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company |