By David Gonzalez. The New York Times. July 8, 2000
CÁRDENAS, Cuba, July 2 -- The horse-drawn carriages and rickety bicycles that course through the streets lend this town an air of permanent expectation, as if it is waiting to catch up with modern life magically and suddenly.
The art of waiting was perfected here over the last seven months as friends and relatives of this city's favorite son, Elián González, put his face on posters and banners during their vigil for his return.
The posters are gone now, taken down by order of the block and people watchers from the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, who declared the town would return to normal now that Elián is back in Cuba. People have begun to reclaim their routines, just as the posters of Elián
that once adorned the main drag have been replaced with brightly colored mask paintings in preparation for this month's carnival.
But the waiting that is part of daily life continues. On Elián's street, his neighbors wonder when he will return from Havana, where he has been readjusting since his arrival on June 28. [Elián paid a brief surprise visit to Cárdenas on July 4, then returned to Havana.] Some
wonder if his fame will bring better times to Cárdenas, which has seen many people leave secretly by boat.
Along the marshy spots where Elián and his mother began their doomed voyage, police officers and soldiers stand guard in case anyone else tries to sneak out. And nearby, Juan Pedro García waits for the warm rains that will bring the crabs out of their hiding places and eventually
onto his dinner table.
"Everything will be calm because Fidel said everything is calm," said Mr. García, who had gone out early in the morning looking for crabs, only to return, tired and slick with sweat, with one lonely crab. "Let the crabs come now, so we can eat them and have a beer for
carnival. Elián is back, but they haven't come back yet."
This area is so famous for its crabs that a huge statue of one greets visitors on the road into town. And although most people had never heard of Cárdenas until they heard of Elián, people here like to point out that it was famous long before. The nation's flag was first flown
here, by a Cuban patriot who sailed from New Orleans in 1850 and raised it in defiance of Spanish colonial rule. This was the first Cuban city to have electricity, thanks to the booming sugar and coffee industries in the 19th century.
"I think after recent events we will know Cárdenas before and after Elián," said Lázaro Mirano Chirino, the town historian. "Among the symbols of the city, we have to include Elián, who became a symbol of Cárdenas who moved all honest people of
the world."
Evidence of that was in abundance in the local museum, where Miriam Torres Pérez watched over a room filled from floor to ceiling with posters, letters, poems and even kites dedicated to Elián. Pictures of visitors, including Fidel Castro himself, shared space with those of others,
like Patch Adams, the doctor whose life inspired a Robin Williams movie. The items on display had come from all over Cuba and beyond. The most recent addition was a painting of Elián with angel wings attached to the back of his Tommy Hilfiger shirt, fluttering over a book of the nationalist
hero José Martí.
"Since Elián returned I guess we'll take it down," she said. "But we should save everything. He is a boy who made history, and when he is a man he should know what was done for him. He may remember some things, but he is only 6."
"All the changes he suffered," she said. "They say you can reason at 7, but when he was 5 he went through tragedies until he was reunited with his father. Without wanting to, he became famous. And we became famous too. For us, we had the luck of his being born here."
Perhaps the T-shirt that Loinaz González wore was once as famous as the ones that featured Elián's face. His shirt, soaked in grimy sweat, read, "Together We Can Do Much," a revolutionary slogan that now seemed to refer more to the mutual help Cubans rely on to make it
through rough times. For hours, he and a dozen friends stood in a rice paddy on the outskirts of town, cutting stalks, stripping them clean and laying the grains out to dry.
"We've been out since 6 this morning," said Mr. González, who like many here shares a surname with Elián but is not related to him.
"Harvesting rice bang, bing, bang."
He has done this for 33 years now, he said, to make sure he has enough food apart from his monthly ration.
"We cleared this out and everyone has a place to plant their own," he said. "There is no rice in the stores. I eat a lot of rice. I eat three plates. To do that, you need to do this."
Mr. González, who said he retired from the Red Cross a few years ago, was satisfied that the harvest would last through the year. "A man needs more than one job," he said. "With one job you cannot live."
For some, no number of jobs would keep them here, and they try to slip out to Miami on boats. The marshes near the bus garage outside of town were a popular departure point until the world learned of Elián and Cárdenas last year. A military outpost now is along the winding road
that leads to the marshes, and a police officer patrols on a bicycle.
"It's a bad place to walk through," said Mario González, a bus driver. "It used to be the easiest way, but with Elián, it got complicated there."
Jesús Méndez, a co-worker, interrupted. "There are a lot of people who want to leave," he said. "But it does not affect us. Who wants to go, let them go. That's their business."
But if they want to leave, they now have to go farther out along the coast to avoid detection. Mario González said he was staying, even if he had family in the United States. Life, he insisted, would return to normal, for him, for his town and for Elián González.
"Time will pass and people will forget," he said. "Time will erase it. He will walk on the street one day and people will not notice him."
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company |