Published January 17, 2000 in the Miami Herald
Cuban minister briefs pope on Elian, but doesn't ask for intervention
By Vania Grandi, Associated Press Writer
VATICAN CITY -- (AP) -- Cuba's foreign minister said Monday he briefed John Paul II -- but did not ask for intervention -- on the case of a Cuban boy caught in a tug-of-war between the United States and Cuba.
Elian Gonzalez, now 6, was rescued at sea Nov. 25 after his mother drowned trying to reach the United States.
Foreign Minister Filipe Perez Roque said he talked to the pope about ``how Elian is being kept separated from his father -- something the pope was very worried about.''
The Vatican's communique on the meeting made no mention of Elian. A Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, said later that there would be no comment about Perez Roque's remarks.
Perez Roque said he had not asked the pontiff to intervene, but said he hoped the meeting would help raise international concern for Elian. Perez Roque also plans stops in France, the Netherlands and Russia.
The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service has ruled the boy must be returned to his father in communist Cuba. But Attorney General Janet Reno last week lifted an INS deadline so Elian's relatives in Miami can fight a federal court battle to keep the boy. A Florida judge also has scheduled
a hearing in the case.
Some U.S. politicians and Cuban-Americans have suggested congressional action to give Elian permanent residency or even American citizenship.
``If it had been a Haitian or Mexican boy, they would have thrown him back into the sea,'' Perez Roque said after meeting with Italian Premier Massimo D'Alema.
The Vatican used the papal audience and the minister's sessions with the Vatican secretary of state and foreign minister to push for more religious freedom in Cuba.
Regarding church-state relations, ``the minister has restated the will of his government to favor a mutual, harmonious collaboration,'' Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said.
``For its part the Holy See has expressed a wish for ever greater religious liberty in the wake of what the Holy Father affirmed in his historic visit in January 1998,'' the Vatican spokesman said.
During his visit to Cuba, John Paul made blunt calls for more freedoms, including that of expression.
After nearly 40 years of tensions following the 1959 Cuban revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power, church-state relations have improved over the last few years, especially following John Paul's visit. Christmas, for example, has been reinstated as a permanent holiday on the island thanks
to the pope's visit.
Textbook is guide for kids at Elian's school
Values, behavior, life in Cuba taught in main textbook
By Meg Laughlin, mlaughlin@herald.com
Here's what Elian Gonzalez, 6, will learn at the private school he now attends in Little Havana: He lives in a Christian society and should support prayer in public and private schools. He should oppose abortion, homosexuality and racism. He should love the American flag and realize that ``the
influence of The United States in the world has been beneficial to all.''
The child has completed two weeks of kindergarten at the Lincoln-Marti School. If he stays in Miami and his great-aunt and great-uncle continue to use the $3,000-a-year full tuition scholarship offered by school owner Demetrio Perez, Elian will graduate from the school in Little Havana when he
is 18.
This means that the boy will more than likely be influenced by the school's main textbook, Citizens Training Handbook, subtitled Discipline, Moral, Civism, Urbanity, which students use from kindergarten through 12th grade. Perez, the author, who also serves on the Miami-Dade County School Board,
says he wrote the 315-page guide for parents, teachers and students at the private school to ``produce the worthy citizens our society so badly needs.''
The $25 book is divided into 57 chapters ranging from ``Foreign Policy'' to ``Serving a Formal Dinner'' to ``Friendship.'' Elian, like his classmates, will study the book and be tested on its contents every nine weeks during his 12 years at the school.
``The book and the practice of it is a very important part of the Lincoln-Marti education,'' says Amelia Estrada, 22, a former student.
While at the school, Elian will learn from the main textbook that Cuba, where he came from and where his father and grandparents still live, ``has not been able to provide for people's most basic needs such as food, clothing and housing.''
``We want Elian to know that in this country, we in no way support Cuba or people in Cuba who believe in that system,'' Perez says.
At Lincoln-Marti, the book will teach Elian that, according to immigration laws, certain undesirables are not allowed to come to this country: ``habitual drunks, adulterers and sexually immoral people.'' Elian will read that Richard Nixon got a raw deal when he was forced to resign as President,
and that Americans now regret this and honor him.
John Krutulis, associate director of The Gulliver Schools and a board member of the Dade Association of Academic Nonpublic Schools, to which Lincoln-Marti belongs, says that what is taught at any private school is up to the school. The state can monitor the facility, the teacher-student ratio
and the general curriculum, Krutulis says, but not what goes on in the classroom.
``Parents choose a private school,'' Krutulis says. ``Besides the school itself, they are the only ones with any say about what their children learn.''
FORMER STUDENT
Letrease Clark, a Lincoln-Marti graduate who now sends her 5-year-old son to the school, said that her parents wanted her to go there because the school taught conservative family values and diversity.
``I graduated from the school. I know what is taught there,'' Clark says. ``I know what's in the citizens guide, and I wanted the same thing for my child.''
Elian will learn that he should try to be happy and remember to smile in an interested way when people talk to him. He should not be dogmatic, and he should never invite enemies to the same party.
The book will also teach Elian that, when he is an adult, he can miss a dinner party but never a funeral. He can send flowers to women but never to men. He can serve cocktails at his parties and should serve wine with dinner. His wife should make sure the dinner plates do not clash with the
tablecloth, and should quickly respond to written invitations.
The small children at the school will put on skits to learn from the guide, the book says.
At the Lincoln-Marti School, Elian Gonzalez will never be spanked. If he misbehaves, he will be separated from his classmates and told to sit in silence for a short time, as the book advises. He will pray every day before lunch. He will stand when an adult enters the room.
STUDY AND PLAY
He will mix outdoor play with serious study by going to the school's playground -- a small, fenced, mulched playground, wedged between two busy streets. As an older student, he will play on a fenced, concrete lot, which has two basketball hoops with torn nets and electrical transformers on a
platform over it.
The school was founded by Perez's father, the late Demetrio Perez Sr., who was an educator in Matanzas, Cuba, where he and Demetrio Jr. grew up. In 1968, the father started the first Lincoln-Marti School in Miami, named after Abraham Lincoln and Jose Marti, two Perez family heroes. The school
now has 15 branches in Miami-Dade County.
Over the past decade, students from the school have marched in yearly Calle Ocho parades to commemorate the Bay of Pigs invasion. They also have marched to honor the memory of Jose Marti and in support of the trade embargo against Cuba. Several times, they marched in front of Brigade 2506, a
Cuban exile paramilitary group, and chanted in Spanish: ``Down with Fidel'' and ``Liberty for Cuba.''
Estrada, the former student, says that her views ``broadened'' after she went to public school, college and graduate school, after attending the private school. But, she says, certain teachings remained with her: ``Lincoln-Marti taught me to participate in the community,'' she says.
Two other former students, a sister and brother who asked not to be named, gave the school mixed reviews. The young woman liked it; her brother didn't. Their mother summarized their experiences: ``My daughter was very well-behaved and dutiful and did well at Lincoln-Marti. But my son, who was a
bit restless and questioning, did not.''
DIFFERENT OUTCOMES
The mother says the daughter graduated. The son was asked to leave the school.
``We want children who think in a healthy way,'' Perez says. ``We would not want a child who leans toward the communist way of thinking.''
A few years ago, Lincoln-Marti was cited by Florida's Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services because of problems at a couple of its branches. Parents complained that there was no milk for small children and no air conditioning in the summer, and that they were not allowed inside the
classrooms.
A 1994 HRS report says the Hialeah Lincoln-Marti School (not the Little Havana branch where Elian is) had to be closed because it was ``run down'' and ``dilapidated'' and ``unsafe for children.'' It was reopened, the report says, when improvements were made.
In 1997, the Hialeah school again received a critical evaluation, along with another branch of the school in North Miami: ``No toys, books or puzzles, only a few broken crayons. Broken plumbing. Children left unsupervised.'' At another branch, a parent filed a complaint saying there was rotten
garbage, with maggots in it, in the lunchroom.
Perez calls the problems ``minor'' and says they were all quickly corrected. Indeed, a few months after the first critical reports, subsequent reports said: ``Schools meet minimal standards.''
The branch in Little Havana, which Elian Gonzalez attends, has received satisfactory ratings from the state for the past two years.
``All of our schools are in full compliance with state standards,'' Perez says.
CHILD PROMOTED
Recently, Elian's first-grade class learned about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in anticipation of the holiday honoring King. Perez says the child was put ahead to first grade, even though it is the middle of the school year and he just turned 6, because he is such a good reader of Spanish.
But he read about King in English.
``Dr. King tells people to love, not to hate,'' a picture caption said.
``We want the children to love as long as they understand they must love the liberty in this country, and not a communist system,'' Perez says.
The school guide gives advice about how children learn to love: ``From birth, children desire and need their parents' attention. They need their parents to speak to them, hold them and caress them.'' The book also says: ``Children need their parents to choose the kind of education they should be
given.''
But this advice is not meant to suggest that Elian should be with his only living parent, his father in Cuba, Perez says.
``The father is not really the father,'' Perez says. ``In Cuba, Castro thinks for everyone. He is the father, and the child does not need Castro to care for him or make decisions.''
In two weeks, Lincoln-Marti students will march in a parade to honor Jose Marti and will again sing and chant slogans with Brigade 2506. Perez hopes Elian will participate.
``It is a way for him to fight indoctrination,'' Perez says. |