By Rick Bragg. The New York Times. June 29, 2000
MIAMI, June 28 -- As a jet rumbled down a runway in Washington, bound for Havana, Cuban exiles in Miami sank to their knees today to pray for Elián González.
Outside the house in Little Havana where Elián lived with his Miami relatives during most of the international custody battle that drew the attention of the world, an old woman with white hair clutched a rosary and mumbled through tears that slipped down her cheeks and onto her lips.
Young men shouted and shook their fists and old men said bitterly that the boy was being sent back into slavery, as a few people watched the plane's progress intently on a small portable television.
They hunched in close to it, as if they could somehow will it to stop, to turn around.
Then, as the jet's wheels cleared the runway, people here cried, "No! No! No!" until the plane climbed into the clouds, until it was clear that, at last, the struggle was lost and the child they held as a miracle, as a symbol of freedom and victory over Communism, was gone.
Ramon Saul Sanchez, the unofficial leader of street protests to keep Elián here in the United States, wept quietly as the plane vanished from the television screen, and -- after seven months of speeches and countless press interviews -- did not say a word.
People tried to hand portable telephones to him, but he brushed them away.
"We will not abandon Elián, even when he is returned to Cuba," he had said, just before the boy, his father, Juan Miguel González, and other family members and friends from Cuba began boarding the planes that would ferry them home.
They had been drawn to him since he arrived in South Florida on Thanksgiving Day, one of three survivors of a failed crossing from Cuba that drowned his mother and 10 others.
"My soul has been broken," said Rosaris Quinones, 17, a student at Coral Reef High School. "I've watched that little boy play here. I believe he knows where he's going. I believe he knows he's going to a bad place. It's such a nightmare. I still can't believe it's true."
The first time they lost Elián was on April 22, when armed federal agents, acting on the orders of Attorney General Janet Reno, crashed into the house and took the boy at gunpoint from his relatives here, touching off a day of street protests, vandalism and violent clashes with the
police. Thousands filled the streets and clogged the roads, honking and singing.
But that time, court injunctions and a series of appeals left Cuban exiles here with some hope that the boy would be returned to his Miami relatives, even though everyone except for the relatives, their lawyers and others in their camp warned that it was highly unlikely that Elián would
be taken from his father and returned to them.
This time, there was no hope. Only about 50 people came to protest, a tiny fraction of the number that had gathered to demonstrate against the raid.
"I feel betrayed," said Maruchy Lachance, an Internet researcher.
Lazaro Gonzalez, Elián's great uncle, and Lazaro's daughter, Marisleysis Gonzalez, had been on television almost every day for months, as the saga wore on. But when approached by a television cameraman outside Our Lady of Charity Church in Coconut Grove today, Lazaro Gonzalez angrily
demanded that the cameraman "shut it off."
"We are devastated that at this very moment Elián will go back to live in a country where he'll never be free, where his father would simply not be allowed to give him the freedom that his mother wanted so desperately, and died for," said Armando Gutierrez, the spokesman for the
boy's Miami relatives.
In Tallahassee, Gov. Jeb Bush said the case had been "mishandled from the very beginning" and should have been settled in a family court. For seven months, federal judges have found that family courts -- state courts -- have no jurisdiction in the case.
Away from the Little Havana house, which has always seemed to draw the most passionate responses to the Elián saga, Cuban-Americans said they had resigned themselves long ago to the inevitable, and saw no reason to become emotional now.
But outside the house, Cuban exiles blamed the United States government for caving in to the hated Fidel Castro, accusing the federal courts of corruption, and saying they had lost all faith in this country.
"If this country punishes all those who violate laws, why doesn't it punish itself," said Frank Basque, 42, a veterinarian.
Mr. Sanchez said he is planning a flotilla to Cuba in two weeks, in protest. But for many people here, the Elián saga is over.
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company |