By Karen DeYoung. Washington Post Staff Writer. Sunday, July 2, 2000; Page A18
HAVANA, July 1 –– The Cuban government unveiled its plans today for the "post-Elian" battle against the United States, claiming the support of world opinion and a majority of Americans in its opposition to U.S. immigration and trade policies toward the island.
Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque announced that the mass Elian rallies that have been held in a different city around the country each Saturday since December would continue indefinitely, along with round-table discussions among senior government members and Communist Party faithful broadcast
live every weekday afternoon. But instead of Elian, the focus will be on trade and immigration.
"What's going to happen now that the boy is back home?" Perez Roque asked a crowd of more than 250,000 at this morning's rally in the southern city of Manzanillo. "We're going to continue the struggle with more force than ever against the causes that led to the cruel kidnapping of
Elian Gonzalez."
Today's rally marked the culmination of intense government discussions over the past several weeks on how to channel public emotion over the 6-year-old's plight into the more familiar propaganda against the decades-old U.S. trade embargo and the Cuban Adjustment Act.
Havana maintains that the 1996 law, which grants special immigration privileges to Cubans, encourages them to flee the country.
It is always difficult to gauge reaction to government pronouncements here beyond the enthusiastic crowds bused in for official events such as this morning's in Manzanillo. Havana residents seemed to go about their usual Saturday business, and satisfaction expressed over Elian's return last week
appeared matched by relief that the daily round-table discussions would be reduced from three hours to 1 hour 45 minutes and would preempt regular programming on only one of Cuba's two television stations.
President Fidel Castro did not attend the rally, spending the morning instead at a graduation ceremony for military students. The ceremony was held in an amphitheater that was specially constructed for Elian rallies facing the U.S. Interests Section, along the Havana waterfront.
But in a message read at the Manzanillo rally, Castro said: "It has only been a few hours since the emotional homecoming of Elian and [his father] Juan Miguel . . . and the renewal of our ceaseless struggle into a new, extended phase. We are not people who rest on our laurels or flaunt our
victories."
"We don't care who becomes the next U.S. president," he said. "None of the aspirants inspires confidence in us. It's useless for them to try to win a few voters by investing unnecessary time in declarations and promises against Cuba. . . . Four decades of underestimation and
humiliating failure should be enough" for Washington to realize that "Cuba was, is and will continue to be free forever."
Cuba carefully monitored U.S. public opinion throughout Elian's seven months in the United States. Repeated statements noted with approval U.S. polls indicating that the majority of Americans favored the boy's return to Cuba, including as many as 90 percent of African Americans, and that the
tide of opinion had begun to turn against U.S. sanctions.
Government media have given extensive coverage to the U.S. controversy over the death penalty and described condemned or recently executed African Americans as revolutionary martyrs. A surprise guest at today's rally was Mazia Jamal, the son of Mumia Abu-Jamal, whose death sentence in connection
with the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia policeman has become a cause celebre among anti-capital punishment activists in the United States.
"I feel sad to live in a nation that claims to have been created in the name of freedom," Jamal told the cheering crowd.
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