Published Thursday, June 29, 2000, in the Miami Herald
Castro enjoys propaganda victory
Dissidents fear harsh campaign to boost Cuba's communist zeal
By Juan O. Tamayo . jtamayo@herald.com
Ever the master tactician, President Fidel Castro of Cuba has scored a powerful propaganda victory with Elián González' return following a campaign that he compared to the impact of U.S. public opinion on the Vietnam War.
The long-term effect of the Elián saga is uncertain with dissidents fearing that Castro may now launch a harsh campaign to resuscitate Cuba's ideological spirits, flagging since the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989.
But in the short run, Castro has unquestionably managed to spin the drownings of Elián's mother and nine others in a desperate attempt to leave the island into a case in which Cuba became the victim and exiles became the victimizers.
``Even those of us who see him as one of the most bloody and repugnant dictators that Latin America's authoritarian fauna has produced must tip our hats,'' Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa wrote recently.
With ``chilling cynicism, he manipulated the Elián case so that for . . . months no one talked of the satrapy he created or the catastrophic economic condition that the Cuban people suffer, only of the boy martyr,'' he added.
Elián's saga eclipsed even the black eye that Castro suffered in November when five heads of state attending an Ibero-American Summit in November met with leading dissidents, giving Cuba's small opposition movement the most international recognition it had ever received.
Castro achieved victory with typical intensity and abandon, like a general at war, calling virtually every shot in the seven-month-long campaign and committing scarce resources to the battle.
He closed factories and schools so that millions of Cubans could join demonstrations demanding Elián's return and ordered all television and radio stations to devote at least four hours a day to the case.
Castro appeared on almost all of the nightly programs, sometimes sitting quietly in the audience, most often giving long explanations of everything from the U.S. legal system to the anti-depressant pills seized by U.S. Customs from a Cuban doctor who treated Elián in Washington.
He has acknowledged spending $2 million on T-shirts, posters and in other ways to aid the protest. He even built an amphitheater, known jokingly as a ``protest-o-drome'' in front of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana.
``We're always mismatched. Castro commits all his resources, and we don't take him seriously,'' said Richard Nuccio, a former Clinton administration adviser on Cuba who favored Elián's return to Cuba.
And when visiting U.S. journalists didn't publish Cuban officials' tips of sexual misconduct by two Elián relatives in Miami, he made the allegations public himself, in effect forcing the media to publish them.
Cuban exiles meanwhile appeared to play right into Castro's hands, stubbornly opposing the boy's return to his father, Juan Miguel González, and to Cuba in the face of personal entreaties from Attorney General Janet Reno.
Many Americans came to see exiles as radical right-wingers and ungrateful immigrants, willing to defy U.S. laws and then launch street protests when federal agents removed Elián from his Miami relatives' home in April.
ANTI-EMBARGO MOOD
The anti-exile wave in turn boosted the anti-embargo lobby in the United States, which won a major victory Tuesday with a congressional agreement to ease restrictions on food and medical sales to Cuba.
``The more isolated Cuban exiles become, the easier it is for the anti-embargo lobby to operate in Washington,'' said Pamela Falk, a City University of New York law professor who is writing a book on Cuba.
The Elián case has been, Castro said last month, ``a lesson for us [that] public opinion in the United States deserves much more consideration. . . . For me, there have been two important moments in which public opinion has played a key role -- during the Vietnam war, and in the case of
Elián.'' Beyond the propaganda victory, Castro managed to mobilize many Cubans around a nationalist cause at a time when some analysts were saying that his decision to legalize dollar remittances from exiles had left the 73-year-old leader looking increasingly irrelevant to the island's daily
life.
``Many Cubans now praise Castro for again proving that he can protect the country's children, and protect the nation itself,'' said Vivian Mannerud, owner of Airline Brokers Co., a Miami firm that charters flights to Cuba.
Some analysts also say that Castro's ability to keep his relations with the Clinton administration on an even keel throughout the seven-month battle may have won him some good will in Washington.
``There's been a maturing of bilateral relations,'' said John Kavulich, head of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, a New York group that monitors business opportunities in Cuba.
What else Castro may have achieved with Elián's return is in question, however.
Castro can hardly be said to have won a victory over the Clinton administration, since Washington began backing Elián's return to Cuba since shortly after his rescue from an inner tube on Thanksgiving Day.
IMPROVED RELATIONS?
``This was a victory for Elián's father and the rule of law, not for Fidel,'' said Robert Pastor, a former Latin American adviser to President Jimmy Carter and now at Emory University in Atlanta.
State Department officials have been quick to reject speculation on improved relations following an Elián settlement, saying that Havana's lack of democracy remains at the root of the animosity between the two countries.
``They just built a permanent protest center in front of our mission and we slammed them in Geneva'' over a U.N. resolution condemning Cuba's human rights record, one department official said. ``Gee, I don't think this signals major changes.''
In Havana, meanwhile, Cubans have been awaiting Elián's return with mixed feelings.
``First there will be relief that the child is back and that . . . the endless propaganda on television will end,'' said one Cuban journalist in Havana. ``We are tired, very tired of all this.''
But the journalist and other Cubans interviewed by telephone cautioned that the initial relief could be followed by a tough campaign to pull up Cuba's revolutionary socks, drooping since communism's collapse in 1989.
``I now perceive an overgrown sense of triumphalism within government circles, said human rights activist Elizardo Sánchez. ``It looks like Fidel is heading for a tropical version of China's Cultural Revolution.''
Mao Zedong was in his early 70s, about the same age as Castro, when he launched his disastrous attempt to revive China's flagging revolutionary zeal.
At a time when Cubans are growing increasingly frustrated with the economic crisis left by the end of Soviet subsidies in 1991, Sánchez added, any new tightening of government controls ``could strip the thread.''
Questionable U.S. choices steered saga
Some say wrong moves turned family quarrel into political crisis
By Alfonso Chardy . achardy@herald.com
The prelude to the saga of Elián González was a frantic telephone call from Cuba three days before Thanksgiving.
Juan González Hernández, Elián's grandfather, was on the line from Cárdenas alerting his sister Georgina Cid in Little Havana that the boy and his mother were at sea.
Elián's Miami relatives would later cite the call -- at 9:01 p.m., Monday, Nov. 22 -- as evidence that the boy's father, Juan Miguel, wanted his son to stay in Miami. But Georgina Cid months later would recall the conversation as merely one passing on and seeking information.
``It was to say that they were on their way and to be on alert and that if we learned something of their arrival or whereabouts that we should call them,'' Cid said.
Three days later, Elián would be pulled from the sea by a pair of men out on a fishing trip and a seven-month family squabble over the 6-year-old would blossom into an international crisis.
A review of key events in the Elián case chronicles how misunderstandings and miscalculations contributed to creating that crisis.
Some U.S. officials now admit that two decisions made in the first days after Elian's rescue at sea contributed to the problem:
Releasing Elián into the care of Lázaro González, the boy's great-uncle, without first checking with the father. This happened despite the fact that contact was established with the family in Cuba while the child was still being treated at Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital
in Hollywood.
Not moving quickly enough to remove the boy from Lázaro's care once immigration officials decided he had to be reunited with his father. That decision was made Jan. 5, but it wasn't until months later -- on April 22 -- when federal agents took Elián from his great-uncle's Little
Havana home by force.
From the outset, Washington's position in the case was inconsistent and filled with miscalculations.
Immigration officials departed from normal procedure by giving the child to Lázaro Nov. 26, the day Elián was released from the hospital. Normally, when an unaccompanied migrant child arrives in South Florida, he is sent to Boys Town -- a facility for unaccompanied children --
pending a check for next of kin.
``They acted too hastely,'' a Clinton administration official said.
Maria Cardona, an Immigration and Naturalization Service spokeswoman, said her agency released Elián to Lázaro because officials felt the boy needed a caring family environment after losing his mother in the tragedy at sea.
Then, after Elián's father made his first public demand for the boy's return -- three days after the rescue -- the U.S. government wavered.
Initially, INS said custody was up to the courts.
But the Clinton administration abruptly changed course a few days later after Fidel Castro, on Dec. 5, gave the United States 72 hours to agree to return Elián or Cuba would boycott migration talks eight days hence. A Cuban boycott of the talks could have led to the disruption of
U.S.-Cuba accords that prevent another refugee exodus.
Forty-eight hours after Castro's threat, the State Department signaled a willingness to return Elián.
Clinton administration officials now say the reason the United States reversed course was a Cuban diplomatic note containing the father's demand -- not Castro's threat.
``That's when we realized there was a father claiming his son,'' said Cardona, the INS spokeswoman.
Raúl Hernández, program coordinator for the United States Catholic Conference, which assists the INS in placing unaccompanied minors, said the decision to hand over Elián to Lázaro when doctors released the boy from the hospital was not business as usual.
Typically, Hernández said, INS places unaccompanied migrant children in detention pending a ``suitability assessment'' of the household of a local relative willing to care for the child.
In Elián's case, the child went to live in Lázaro's house without a prior assessment. The assessment was conducted after Elián was already living there.
Cardona defended the INS' decision to allow Lázaro to take Elián home, citing the traumatic circumstances of Elián's arrival.
Elián's father insists that he made it clear he wanted his son returned from the outset. The first documented instance of that, however, is not until Dec. 11, when a phone call between Juan Miguel and Lázaro's daughter -- Marisleysis -- was taped in Cuba. A transcript of the call
was later published in the Communist Party daily Granma.
``I want that child to be next to me,'' Juan Miguel reportedly said.
Marisleysis replied that Elián did not want to go back to Cuba.
``Before the Virgin of Charity and the Sacred Heart of Jesus, I swear to you, that I asked him if he wanted to go back there with his father, and you know what he said to me? `Let him come here if he wants.' ''
Over the next few weeks, U.S. officials would twice interview Juan Miguel in Cuba to determine what he wanted to have happen. On Jan. 5, the INS announced that it had concluded that Juan Miguel was sincere in his desire to have his son returned to Cuba and that the INS would honor his request.
They gave the family until Jan. 14 to come up with an agreement for the boy's return.
``Not removing the child immediately was a mistake,'' one Clinton administration official said.
``I disagree,'' said Cardona, the INS spokeswoman. ``From the beginning, we were very sensitive to Elián's needs and balanced that with the Miami family's desire to review our decision in court.''
Lawyers for Elián's Miami relatives began taking legal steps to block any INS attempt to return the boy to Cuba.
They sued first in state family court and Judge Rosa Rodríguez barred removal of Elián from Miami peding a custody hearing. Another family court judge later nullified that ruling.
On Jan. 12, Attorney General Janet Reno stepped in.
She rejected Judge Rodríguez's authority to rule in the matter -- but in a concession to the Miami family she encouraged it to take the case to federal court.
A week later, lawyers sued in federal court asking it to order INS to give Elián a political asylum hearing.
On March 21, Judge K. Michael Moore ruled for the INS. The Miami family lawyers appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.
Elián's father, meanwhile, suddenly agreed to travel to the United States arriving in Washington on April 6 with his new wife and their baby. Things came to a head April 12 when Reno herself flew to Miami to make a personal appeal to Lázaro.
Spurning Reno's appeal, Elián's Miami relatives challenged the government to send in federal agents to take the boy by force.
In the predawn hours of April 22 armed federal agents raided Lázaro's home and flew Elián to Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington where his father awaited.
Since Elián's Miami family was still appealing Judge Moore's decision, INS ordered Juan Miguel not to leave the United States with the boy.
On June 1, a three-judge panel of the appeals court in Atlanta upheld Moore's decision. Miami family lawyers then appealed to the full court, which rejected the appeal on Friday.
On Monday, the Miami family appealed to the Supreme Court, which turned down the case on Wednesday -- the day Elián returned with his father to Cuba.
Herald staff writers Andrés Viglucci, Elaine de Valle, Jay Weaver, Ana Acle, Frances Robles and Sandra Marquez Garcia contributed to this report.
Clinton 'inclined' to sign bill that eases embargo
By Jodi A. Enda. Herald Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- President Clinton said Wednesday that he would probably sign a bill to allow the sale of food and medicine to Cuba, easing sanctions designed to isolate the communist regime that have been in place nearly 40 years.
Before he commits himself to an agreement reached Tuesday by House Republicans, however, Clinton said he needs to make sure the measure does not tie the hands of U.S. presidents in conducting foreign policy, and also that it does not place new restrictions on travel to Cuba.
``If I believe that the legislation essentially allows for the sale of American food and medicine to Cuba, or to other countries, but has some protection for us for extraordinary circumstances that foreign policy might require, then I would be inclined to sign the bill,'' the president said in a
White House press conference.
``I've always wanted to sell more food and medicine not only to Cuba but to other countries as well,'' Clinton said, adding: ``I have some concerns about it, and I just have to analyze the bill as it passed, and whatever legislation finally makes its way to my desk.''
Clinton said he was not prepared to fully normalize relations with Cuba ``until there is a bipartisan majority which believes that there has been some effort on the part of the Cuban government to reach out to us as well.''
As he has in the past, Clinton blamed Cuban President Fidel Castro for turning the tide against normalization in 1996 by shooting down airplanes flown by four Miami-based Cuban exiles, all of whom were killed. The incident led Clinton to sign the Helms-Burton law, which codified an embargo
against Cuba.
Speaking shortly before 6-year-old refugee Elian Gonzalez left Washington for Cuba, Clinton defended his administration's decision to seize the boy from his Miami relatives in order to return him to his father.
``If he and his father decided they wanted to stay here, it would be fine with me,'' Clinton said. ``But I think that the most important thing is that his father was adjudged by people who made an honest effort to determine that he was a good father, a loving father, committed to the son's
welfare. And we upheld here what I think is a quite important principle, as well as what is clearly the law of the United States.
``Do I wish it had unfolded in a less dramatic, less traumatic way for all concerned? Of course, I do,'' he said, alluding to the early-morning April raid in which agents removed the boy from his great-uncle's home. ``I have replayed this in my mind many times. I don't know that we had many
different options than we perceived, given how the thing developed. But I think the fundamental principle is the right one, and I am glad we did.''
In other news, the president was asked several times to assess Vice President Al Gore's presidential campaign in light of polls that consistently show him trailing his Republican opponent, Texas Gov. George W. Bush.
The president defended his second-in-command, saying he had accomplished more than any vice president in history and -- not excluding himself -- that, ``therefore, in my lifetime, he's the best qualified person to serve.''
The president insisted voters would not hold Gore accountable for the scandals that have plagued his administration, saying the vice president had been implicated only in one, involving fundraising.
The word ``scandal,'' he said, ``has been thrown around here like a clanging teapot for seven years.''
The president then repeated a refrain of the Gore campaign, saying, ``My instinct is that people are still trying to figure out what they think about this race.''
Clinton said he saw no reason for Attorney General Janet Reno to appoint a special counsel to investigate whether Gore told the truth about his role in the 1996 campaign fundraising controversy.
Last week, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., revealed that the Justice Department official in charge of the campaign-finance task force had recommended that Reno appoint an independent investigator.
``It seems to me that the best thing to do is for the American people to make their own judgments about it,'' Clinton said.
Clinton laughed when a reporter raised questions about Bush's intelligence and his reliance on advisors, and asked the president how important brain power is to his job.
``That's a dead-bang loser, isn't it?'' the president said. ``No matter what I say, I'm in a big hole.''
Without impugning anyone's intelligence, Clinton went on to say that ``it's more a question of curiosity and willingness to learn what you think is important.''
Boy returns to a 'tranquil' Cuba
Herald Staff Report
HAVANA -- Family, classmates, a government functionary -- but no Fidel Castro -- greeted Elián González with hugs and tears Wednesday, capping a choreographed campaign to contain Cuban glee over the resolution of the 6-year-old's seven-month shipwreck saga.
No popular street parades were held.
No press conferences were called.
Not even Castro came to the arrival ceremony.
All three had been near daily fixtures of the child custody drama since soon after the boy was found in November floating on an inner tube, near Fort Lauderdale.
Instead, the child's grandparents and about 800 flag-waving schoolchildren greeted a slightly dazed looking Elián as he emerged from a chartered jet at José Martí International Airport.
Relatives swept up the boy with hugs, some smoothing down his hair.
Cuban television captured Elián, who recently lost his two front teeth, nibbling his grandfather's ear -- before he waved to the crowds from inside a small sedan car that carried him, his father, stepmother and half brother away.
Elsewhere, the people of Cuba stuck to a more-or-less ordinary daily routine -- class, work, baseball chatter in Havana's Parque Central -- against a backdrop of nearly minute-to-minute broadcasts of the denouement of the international child custody drama.
``We await with tranquillity the triumph of justice and the end of the kidnapping,'' said a headline in Wednesday's Granma, the official daily of Cuba's Communist Party.
The low-key reaction by Cubans was clearly part of a government effort to make Elián's return a stark contrast to the so-called ``circus'' atmosphere that officials here scorned as surrounding the boy's life in the United States.
The highest ranking Cuban official spotted at the airport was Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's National Assembly, who the official Cuban media said had befriended the boy's father, Juan Miguel González.
Earlier, Granma instructed the public:
``Now more than ever, our people must behave with the greatest dignity, serenity and discipline. The pertinent exhortations will be made regarding the manner in which we must behave.''
But, privately, people said while they were glad the child was back with his immediate family they weren't inclined to celebrate anyway: A Cuban family's tragedy had exploded into a political tug-of-war and in the end, they said, it was a family affair.
``Since the revolution was triumphant, we've been in a war with the United States and celebrated each victory. But there's no reason here'' to celebrate.
``It may be a victory for the politicians but this is a family case,'' said University of Havana law student Yadarigo Castillo, 24.
``What emotion! My heart is racing. I can't take the happiness,'' said Andrés Soroa Hernández, 62, who runs an amusement park-style shooting gallery in Central Havana, where children shoot BB guns at old cans.
Soroa, whose father fought in the Cuban War of Independence, clamped his ear to a radio throughout the day, then closed up shop early to watch what he called ``a historic moment'' on TV.
``I'm Cuban,'' said Soroa, who was sporting a Communist Party pin and cast the struggle for Elián as a patriotic battle.
``Elián is Cuban and you can't take the homeland away from anyone.''
Former elementary schoolteacher Tamara Garcia added that Elián would likely be ``too nervous'' for a big celebration.
Throughout the day, official Cuban television and radio offered a minute-to-minute stream of updates:
The Supreme Court decision, the family's departure for the airport, the plane's takeoff, and finally the arrival. In between, they offered local reports, interviews with Elián's classmates, live readings from U.S. Web pages and, at one point, television broadcast a taped Channel 7
interview from Miami with Ramón Saúl Sánchez, standing outside Lázaro González's former Little Havana rental house.
People could hardly help but pay notice. A home on the Prado, a main street in Havana, had a sign hanging on its second-floor balcony early Wednesday:
``Let's Save Elián,'' it said.
Sometime after the U.S. Supreme Court had its say in Washington, the sign was switched:
"At Last Elián'' it said.
Fallout in S. Florida: Power structure shaken to the core
By Karen Branch-Brioso. kbranch@herald.com
Elián González's stay in the United States lasted just seven months, but his impact on Miami-Dade's power structure was immense.
Gone are Miami's city manager and the police chief he refused to fire.
Fortified -- locally at least -- are the careers of Miami Mayor Joe Carollo and Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas among Cuban-Americans who did not want to see the boy returned to Cuba.
Weakened is the mayors' appeal among non-Hispanics.
And facing a top-to-bottom reorganization is the county Community Relations Board, a once-powerful group that found itself impotent in its goal to unify a community divided over Elián.
``The situation is ugly, said Sergio Bendixen, president of the public opinion research firm Hispanic Trends.
``Miami as a community is in great danger and I hope leadership at all levels -- political, civic, and religious -- will address it and not just hope time will heal. Because it won't.
DRASTIC DIVISIONS
Polls showed that the Elián case created drastic divisions among the community's major ethnic groups. Cuban Americans and some other Hispanics said they wanted Elián to stay with his exile Miami relatives rather than return to Communist Cuba with his father. Blacks felt strongly
that the boy belonged with his father and most white non-Hispanics agreed.
LOCAL IMACT
The divisions played out in local politics.
Penelas won points among the Hispanic electorate when he defiantly warned President Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno in a news conference that they would be held responsible if any blood was shed in the aftermath of the taking of Elián from his Miami family's home.
Penelas and Carollo said their local police departments would not assist in aiding federal agents if they came to Miami to remove Elián. Although Penelas clarified that police would keep the peace, his statement angered many non-Hispanics, who interpreted it to mean police would not raise
a hand to quell Elián protests.
POINTS FOR PENELAS
Penelas won approval for his actions among Hispanics, who make up 44 percent of county voters. White non-Hispanics make up 33 percent, blacks 20 percent.
So did Carollo, whose city of Miami electorate is 54 percent Hispanic, with 19 percent of city voters classified as white non-Hispanic and 24 percent as black.
``Both Penelas and Carollo have helped themselves with the Cuban base, and both of them have at least the potential of having hurt themselves with Anglos and blacks, said Bendixen, who believes the issue will nevertheless not be a political liability in the county and city.
THE FUTURE
But Penelas, viewed as an up-and-comer in national Democratic circles, likely would be confronted with the Elián issue in a run for higher office.
``The perception that his statements basically led people to believe that in this particular instance he was not going to follow the law, is a statement he will have to explain as he continues with his political career, Bendixen said. ``Time will tell.
MIAMI REACTION
In the city of Miami, the Easter Saturday extraction of Elián by heavily armed federal agents provoked a more immediate political reaction.
Carollo, angered that Police Chief William O'Brien didn't alert him to the predawn raid, made public statements that he should be fired.
Carollo's hand-picked City Manager, Donald Warshaw -- the only one with authority to fire the chief -- refused. Carollo fired Warshaw, citing management problems. O'Brien resigned the next day.
Both white non-Hispanic officials were replaced with Cuban Americans.
The ethnic divisions became the most intense in the aftermath of the predawn seizure of Elián.
HEALING BEGINS
Traditional power groups, such as the Non-Group of elite civic leaders, and the Miami-Dade Community Relations Board, individually met to work toward healing.
Bridging the divides proved to be an impossible task for the CRB, which suffered its own infighting over Elián.
``The community was split on Elián. So was the CRB, chairman Sang Whang said. ``And CRB members are not supposed to maintain neutrality. So it's very difficult for me to maintain peace within the CRB.
The ineffectiveness of the CRB, whose mission is to promote harmony among ethnic groups, prompted Penelas to urge a reorganization.
County Manager Merrett Stierheim has requested $300,000 for six new CRB positions,including a full-time director.
``Nobody in this town was without trauma: Cuban-American, Haitian, Anglo, African-American -- everybody had anger, remorse, pain, Steirheim said. ``My hope is that it was cathartic. The residue from Elián will be important for many, many years. We have a lot of wounds to heal.
Despite the legacy of disharmony left in the crisis' aftermath, the issue became a rare unifying force among Cuban exiles, crossing generations and partisan ideology.
Agustín ``Gus García, vice chairman for outreach of Miami-Dade's Democratic Party, believes the creation of a more-unified Cuban-American identity was a positive fallout of Elián's seven-month stay.
PARTY SWITCH
García protested the Clinton administration decision to return Elián to his father -- and was tear-gassed by federal agents outside the home of Elián's Miami relatives the day the child was removed.
Since that day, 3,185 Democrats in Miami-Dade switched to another party affiliation -- 71 percent of them to the GOP. During the same period, 659 left the Republican Party.
García kept his Democratic Party ties.
``With Elián, we may have lost a battle, but we have won an issue in the war, García said.
``Thousands of our children came back and stood with their fathers. Cuban Americans who could hardly speak Spanish were standing there and feeling the pride of their community. And that unification is a miracle.
Case makes mark on campaign
By Mark Silva. msilva@herald.com
The seven-month saga of Elián González has left a lasting mark on an American presidential campaign -- making it difficult for Democrat Al Gore to count Florida in any electoral formula for victory in November.
From the start, the Clinton administration's insistence on the boy's return to Cuba has been contrasted by candidates of both parties arguing for a family court hearing, residency or American citizenship for Elián.
But the vice president's attempts to distance himself from Clinton distressed many who thought he was pandering for votes, disappointed Cuban Americans who wanted Elián to remain, and alienated others who wanted him to go.
`SADDENED'
Since early December, Vice President Gore and Republican Texas Gov. George W. Bush said Elián deserved a hearing in family court for his bid to remain with relatives in the United States.
``I am saddened when the land of the free sends a young boy back to communist Cuba without a fair hearing in family court,'' Bush said Wednesday, campaigning in Ohio. ``I hope that one day Elián will live in a free Cuba and be able to choose for himself whether to return to America.''
In January, Bush joined other Republicans calling for a special grant of citizenship for Elián. In late March, Gore attempted to stress his distance from the administration by voicing his support for permanent U.S. residency.
Gore's stance on March 30 immediately was taken by editorial writers from coast to coast as an attempt to ``pander'' for Cuban-American votes in a state critical to any presidential candidate's election chances this year.
``Shame on Gore,'' the Los Angeles Times editorialized.
Gore vehemently denied that politics was driving his position:
``It's a matter of principle with me. It has been from the beginning. I have not changed my view. I have been consistent throughout,'' he said in an early April interview with The Herald's Washington bureau.
FINAL SAY
Gore said Wednesday that he stands by his position on Elián, but added the Supreme Court has had the final say and it's time to put the controversy to rest.
While many voters have read Gore's moves as a blatant bid for votes, some say it has backfired doubly: It gained Gore no ground among Cuban-American voters angry at the Clinton administration, while offending others who thought the vice president was pandering for votes.
While sentiment over Elián's fate was sharply split between Cuban-American and other voters in Miami-Dade County, Herald polling found there was a striking unanimity in opinion that Gore was posturing.
``If there is a bonehead tactical move of the month, it should go to the Gore campaign for having attempted to pander to the Cuban community with Elián González. . . . He ended up hurting himself,'' said Sergio Bendixen, a Coral Gables pollster surveying Hispanic voters nationally.
Al Cárdenas, Havana-born chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, expects about 400,000 Cuban Americans to vote in Florida this fall -- nearly 8 percent of the state's electorate.
Clinton was able to claim more than one third of Florida's Cuban-American vote in his reelection. But Republicans before him collected 80 percent and more of the Cuban-American vote.
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