Thursday's headline in Cuba's Granma newspaper says "Goodbye to martyrdom" and the story below it describes Elian's stay in the U.S. as a "long captivity"
From staff and wire reports. CNN. June 29, 2000. Web posted at: 11:19 a.m. EDT (1519 GMT)
HAVANA (CNN) -- Elian Gonzalez and his family are spending their first full day back in Cuba on Thursday at a government-assigned house outside Havana, while the 6-year-old and several schoolmates catch up on their studies.
The two-story home was Elian's first stop upon his return to Cuba on Wednesday from the United States, where his father Juan Miguel Gonzalez had won a seven-month battle to regain custody of his son from relatives in Miami.
U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno on Thursday expressed satisfaction that the boy was finally and permanently reunited with his father, but, "I just wish he were with his father in a democratic and free country," she added. ( 419 K/38 sec. AIFF or WAV sound)
Reno said she planned to revisit U.S. regulations soon to determine if future legal battles involving child immigrants could be avoided.
Cuban security forces have cordoned off the home where the 6-year-old boy, his father, stepmother and infant half-brother and schoolmates who had been visiting Elian were expected to be secluded for two to three weeks.
The boy's teachers must "undertake the masterful work of making him a model child," said a Cuban government statement.
Afterward, the family was scheduled to take a brief vacation, before returning to their home in Cardenas, according to a government statement.
Cuban rally set for Saturday
The Communist Party daily newspaper Granma on Thursday announced a rally scheduled for Saturday in Manzanillo to protest the decades-old U.S. trade and travel embargo against Cuba.
The rally, called a "tribunal" by the Cuban government, was expected to be similar to past mass demonstrations organized by Havana during Elian's time in the United States.
About 800 of Elian's classmates rallied to welcome the boy on Wednesday when his chartered plane touched down at Havana's Jose Marti International Airport. The Gonzalez family was smothered with hugs and kisses from welcoming grandparents, uncles and cousins.
Cuban President Fidel Castro did not appear at the airport to welcome the family back home, confirming announcements from Cuban officials that the reception would be "low key."
However, Cuba's National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon, who had been advising Elian's father during the court battle, did appear for the airport arrival, although he made no official remarks.
'I am extremely happy'
"I am extremely happy ... being able to return to my homeland," Juan Miguel Gonzalez said before departing Washington for Cuba on Wednesday. "I don't have words really to express what I feel."
He said he has met "beautiful and intelligent people in this country" and he hopes "this same friendship" will some day exist between "both our countries, Cuba and the U.S."
He closed his remarks in English, saying, "We are very happy to go home. Thank you."
He then walked to the plane with Elian, picked him up and they waved goodbye, both smiling broadly.
Minutes later, Elian left the United States, seven months after he was rescued off the Florida coast, one of three survivors of a Cuban shipwreck that caused his mother and 10 others to drown.
U.S. relatives: 'We are devastated'
In Miami, outside the house of Elian's U.S. relatives, a small crowd watched Elian's departure on a television.
"Frustration, sadness, tears," Ramon Saul Sanchez of the anti-Castro group Democracy Movement said in describing the mood.
Many Cuban-Americans had supported Elian's great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, in his fight to keep the boy in the United States.
In a brief, two-sentence statement, the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a request by Elian's Miami relatives for a political asylum hearing on Elian's behalf and refused to extend an injunction requiring him to stay in the United States.
"This is a very rough time for us," family spokesman Armando Gutierrez read from a statement.
"We are devastated that at this very moment Elian is going back to live in a country where he'll never be free, to a country where his father will simply not be allowed to give him the freedom that his mother, Elizabeth Brotons, wanted so desperately and died for," Gutierrez said.
Gutierrez has urged supporters to remain calm in Miami's Little Havana enclave. After Lazaro Gonzalez refused to turn the boy over to his father, Elian was whisked from his great-uncle's home by armed federal agents on April 22 to be returned to Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who was staying in
Washington.
Authorities said they were not expecting violence or major demonstrations.
Legal issues and decisions
At a news conference a few hours after the Supreme Court decision, President Clinton expressed satisfaction at the outcome of the international custody battle.
"Do I wish it had unfolded in a less dramatic, less traumatic way for all concerned? Of course I do," Clinton said. "I have replayed this in my mind many times. I don't know that we had many different options."
The lawyers for the Gonzalez family in Miami argued that Elian had been denied his constitutional right to an asylum hearing.
They filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court on Monday after the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta unanimously rejected their request to reconsider its ruling that the Immigration and Naturalization Service did not have to grant Elian a political asylum hearing.
The appeal said the legal issues "boil down to a single straightforward question: Can the INS deprive an alien child of his statutory and constitutional right to apply for asylum without conducting any hearing of any kind -- or even interviewing the child himself?"
The U.S. Department of Justice had argued that Elian's Miami relatives' last-ditch appeal was without merit and said, "prohibiting Elian's departure would only cause him harm."
Immigration officials have consistently maintained that the desire of Elian's father to repatriate the boy to Cuba must be respected, a position backed by a succession of court rulings.
But Cuban-American leaders said that while the battle was lost, they would continue to oppose Cuba's communist leadership.
Sanchez told CNN, "We're very disillusioned with the Supreme Court decision. However, unfortunately, it's something that we already expected. The fight for Elian Gonzalez continues because we must fight for the rest of the children of Cuba, and he's going to be returned to that place where
oppression has endured for 41 years."
CNN Miami Bureau Chief John Zarrella and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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