By Julia E. Sweig. Los Angeles Times. Sunday, June 4, 2000
WASHINGTON--It's no surprise that Elian Gonzalez's Miami relatives are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to keep the boy in the United States for the duration of any remaining appeals. At its core, their fight has been a battle against Fidel Castro.
But even if they exhaust every legal remedy, it's safe to say the Gonzalez clan, in Washington, Little Havana and Cardenas, will now begin to recede from the public eye.
Who could have predicted their impact on the Washington political class--and the entire country? Picking a fight with Castro by politicizing the fate of one little balsero, or rafter, struck at the heart of a Washington policy community that usually seems rather heartless in matters of
state. The result: a dramatically new debate over U.S. policy toward Cuba.
The discussion no longer focuses on how best to overthrow Castro, nor even over whether the United States should lift or tighten its embargo. Instead, the debate is over how and at what pace Washington should draw down the sanctions. While such considerations began before Elian arrived,
after years of stasis, his saga has widened an aperture in and around the halls of power.
The fault lines in the debate defy strict party lines. Some of the staunchest advocates of a new Cuba policy are Republicans and social conservatives, uncomfortable with contradictions to their free-trade outlook; some of their adversaries come from the Democratic Party's most liberal wing.
Still others, even those with Cuban American constituents, are eager for detente, especially as Latin America begins to pose far more serious security challenges.
One line suggests removing sanctions unilaterally, starting with humanitarian trade, travel and communications, followed by U.S. investment and Cuban access to international financial institutions, foreign aid and trade preferences. Another view links ending sanctions to a quid pro quo for
Cuban concessions on democracy, human rights, political prisoners and free speech. Still others note that, in 41 years, Washington has yet to succeed in leveraging change with the promise of loosening the embargo. They propose getting rid of most restrictions and allowing the winds of U.S. freedom
and enterprise to blow through the island. Meanwhile, a minority in Congress and the policy community insist that a significant departure from the status quo would hand Castro a victory and keep him in power longer.
But as much as Cuban exile leaders such as Jorge Mas Santos, Jose Basulto and Ramon Saul Sanchez suggested otherwise, the array of developments that coincide with Elian's stay in the United States have little to do with ideology, here or in Cuba.
For example, in December, as hundreds of thousands of Cubans marched in Havana clamoring for Elian's return, Cuban inmates at a Louisiana prison took guards and prisoners hostage. The inmates are among several hundred "excludables," Cuban refugees who committed violent crimes
here, making them ineligible for asylum. Without a bilateral deportation agreement, they remain in legal limbo. With little fanfare, the United States accepted a surprising Cuban offer to take them back and end the hostage crisis.
Continuing a measure of security cooperation, the Coast Guard last month stationed an officer in Havana after the two countries agreed this would provide the Cuban government technical and logistical support in counternarcotics activities, including searching suspicious vessels.
After the Immigration and Naturalization Service raid removed Elian from the Miami house, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) called for hearings to investigate the action. But the
idea of hearings met the same fate as the one to make Elian a U.S. citizen: Both initiatives collapsed under the weight of public opinion.
However jarring the images, guns and high drama did not diminish the U.S. public's support for Elian's return to his father. But the raid raised a troubling question: If portions of the Cuban exile community were willing to force a military confrontation in Little Havana, what's to stop
them from attempting such a provocation in Havana itself, especially if a chaotic transition unfolds when Castro dies or leaves office?
As a result, it is no longer unthinkable that the United States might benefit from military-to-military contacts with Cuba. Even as the Elian debate raged, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), co-sponsor of the Helms-Burton law, succumbed to pressure and allowed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
he chairs to vote on legislation ending the ban on the sale of food and medicine to Cuba, Libya, Iran, Sudan and North Korea.
Once Helms opened the floodgates in his own party, the Senate and House appropriations committees also voted to end sanctions on food and medicine. DeLay, who had stopped the legislation last year, could no longer block it. Most vote counters today believe that if and when legislation goes
to a floor vote, both houses will pass it.
Part of the new momentum in Congress stems not only from Elian but from the debate over permanent normal trade relations with China. Since China free-traders in the White House and Congress successfully argued that the stakes include internal reform and regional security, maintaining a
trade ban on Cuba is becoming intellectually and politically unsustainable.
But how to enter into an era of good feeling remains the key question. Few want to give the Castro regime a pass on human-rights violations. Last spring, the U.N. Human Rights Commission again condemned Cuba. Meanwhile, the international community has become increasingly vocal in its
disapproval of the lack of civil liberties in Cuba, even as it restructures the country's debt. Moreover, many U.S. conservatives who understand the inefficacy of current U.S. policy and have endorsed some minor openings resist further change because they do not want to signal any fondness for the
Cuban regime.
Finally, the Elian episode has provoked some profound soul searching within the Cuban American community. On the one hand, Cuban Americans of all ideologies are reeling from the negative backlash. Organizations like the Cuban American National Foundation are considering whether to moderate
their positions and remain relevant, or capitalize on the INS raid's unifying effect among Cuban exiles and attempt to shift the debate to the deficiencies of the Castro regime.
An indicator of which path the CANF might choose came recently when its general counsel, George Fowler, told Politico magazine "he would support lifting the economic embargo against Cuba as long as U.S. business owners weren't forced to sell their goods to Castro's government."
This suggests a new consensus that might satisfy conservatives and liberals. Lift the embargo--the president has the executive authority to license trade and travel--but leave diplomatic recognition for future consideration. *
Julia E. Sweig Is a Fellow and Deputy Director for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations
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