Published Thursday, November 23, 2000, in the
Miami Herald
Cash found in rooms of 4 suspects in Castro plot
By Glenn Garvin. ggarvin@herald.com
PANAMA -- Police found a large sum of cash, tens of thousands of dollars, in
the hotel rooms of four Cuban exiles arrested here last week in connection with
a supposed plot to kill Cuban President Fidel Castro.
Sources familiar with the investigation said the men claimed the money was
to buy advertising on Panamanian radio and television stations denouncing
Castro's visit to Panama last weekend.
The four exiles -- Luis Posada Carriles and Miami residents Gaspar Jiménez,
Pedro Remón and Guillermo Novo, all veterans of numerous anti-Castro
plots -- were arrested Friday after the Cuban leader accused them of planning to
assassinate him during last weekend's Ibero-American summit here.
None of the men have been charged. But the Cuban government has asked for
their extradition to face charges there stemming from their decades-long war on
Castro.
No weapons were found when the men were arrested. But police believe they
are connected to 18 pounds of plastic explosives discovered Sunday near Panama
City's international airport. Two Panamanian residents -- Cuban-born businessman
César Matamoros and chauffeur and José Hurtado -- have also been
arrested in connection with the alleged plot.
Sources close to the investigation say the two men have admitted knowing the
four exiles, but denied being part of any plot.
The two Panamanian residents "say Posada Carriles came to them and
wanted to buy a water pump to take back to his home in El Salvador,'' a source
said. "But they say they never heard any talk about killing Castro.''
Boy has quiet life in Cuba
By Vivian Sequera. Associated Press
CARDENAS, Cuba -- President Fidel Castro of Cuba appears to be keeping his
word that Elián González, the 6-year-old castaway who became the
center of an enormously magnified international custody battle, would return to
a private life.
Today, Elián lives the quiet life of a second-grader -- though
uniformed police still protect him from reporters. In Elian's hometown of Cárdenas,
a police officer outside the Gonzálezes' modest home told journalists the
family would not grant any interviews. Another officer stood outside Elián's
elementary school.
By all accounts, Elián, who will turn 7 on Dec. 6, is doing well. His
grandparents take him to school every day on their bicycles.
Elián's father, Juan Miguel González, works as a waiter at an
Italian restaurant near Cárdenas.
Inside the restaurant, there is a picture of the man who traveled to the
United States to claim his son posing with co-workers.
Elián's story waits for ending
A year later, exiles remember
By Andres Viglucci. aviglucci@herald.com
One year ago today -- can it be? -- two unlikely characters out for a
Thanksgiving Day fishing trip happened upon a little boy bobbing in the ocean on
an inner tube.
The boy was Elián González, and soon the world knew his story:
He was 5 years old, almost 6, and he had come from Cuba on a boat with his
mother, who drowned, and 12 other adults, all but two of whom also perished
trying to escape from their impoverished island and its Communist government.
Before he was allowed to go back to Cuba with his father seven months later,
Elián would be anointed savior, victim, cause and symbol. The struggle
over his fate would mesmerize and polarize Miami and much of the country, and it
would engulf two long-hostile nations, Cuba and the United States, in tense
legal and political brinksmanship.
Ultimately, it would set Cuban exiles on a collision course with the U.S.
government, culminating in an armed raid by federal commandos in Little Havana
and rioting in the streets of Miami.
The spectacle became a media orgy that at different times seemed absurd,
appalling, inspiring, even comical. Above all it was riveting.
To most Americans, the melodrama came to a fitting close when the U.S.
Supreme Court on June 28 declined to review the legal pleas of Elián's
Little Havana relatives, who wanted to keep the boy in Miami, and cleared the
way for Juan Miguel González to take his son back to Cuba.
But in Little Havana, the spiritual center of the Cuban exile community, Elián's
government-enforced repatriation is a story waiting for an ending.
Today, Elián's life and whereabouts in Cuba are shrouded in
obscurity. His name has disappeared from official speeches, and his face has
been erased from billboards along the capital's main thoroughfares.
The last the world saw of Elián was in September, when he returned
from Havana and began the second grade at his old school in Cárdenas.
Leaders of the National Council of Churches, a U.S. group closely involved in
efforts to reunite the boy and his father, visited Cárdenas a few days
later:
"He looked great. He seemed relaxed, like a normal child,'' said the
Rev. Bob Edgar, NCC general secretary.
In Miami, exiles and Elián's relatives are deeply skeptical. The
relatives, who declined requests by The Herald for an interview, said through a
spokesman that they have no contact with Elián or his family in Cuba
despite numerous efforts to communicate.
"It will be a very sad day, on Thanksgiving Day, remembering when he
came here, and that his mom lost her life for it,'' said Armando Gutiérrez,
the political operative who became an exile hero for his early championing of
Elián's remaining in the United States.
"It seems like this story never ends. Everywhere I go, all the time
people come up to me and want to know how he's doing. And we don't know.''
In a cathartic act, Cuban-American voters responded to calls to "punish''
the Democrats on Election Day by voting overwhelmingly for Republican George W.
Bush.
"If the boy Elián had not been sent back to Cuba, today Al Gore
would be president,'' said Ramón Saúl Sánchez, leader of
the Democracy Movement and prime organizer of exile demonstrations during the
Elián saga.
This week there will be acts of remembrance as well as revenge: a Mass today
in front of the Miami relatives' home, which they have vacated and is being
converted into a memorial to Elián; and on Saturday evening, a Mass at
the Ermita de la Caridad, with a boat-borne torchlight demonstration in the bay
behind the chapel.
But there will be no replay of the media circus that turned the boy's Miami
stay into a surreal exhibition.
Reporters from all over the globe set up camp with their gear and trained
their lenses around the clock on the now-famous house of Elián's
relatives in Little Havana. Day and night, crowds of demonstrators in the street
chanted his name.
Their cause -- to honor Elián's mother's wishes by allowing him to
remain in Miami -- rapidly took on political overtones.
Within days of Elián's arrival, the Cuban American National
Foundation had made the boy a symbol in the long struggle against Fidel Castro's
regime.
Questioning the sincerity of the wishes of Elián's father, the family
and supporters assembled a team of lawyers to contest custody in court.
On the other side of the Florida Straits, Castro turned Elián into a
revolutionary cause celebre, mobilizing hundreds of thousands of Cubans to
demonstrate for his return, and tarring Miami's exiles as fanatics willing to
exploit a small boy for political reasons.
He found an unexpected ally in the Clinton administration. U.S. Attorney
General Janet Reno of Miami and the Immigration and Naturalization Service ruled
that the father's parental rights were paramount under U.S. law.
While legal experts said U.S. law clearly favored the father, the González
family's attorneys stretched the legal fray out for months, all the way to the
Supreme Court's portal.
In Miami, the dispute exposed ethnic hostilities long buried under the
surface of daily discourse. Embattled exiles closed ranks and grew increasingly
bitter at what they regarded as non-Cubans' insensitivity to their cause.
In full view of the world Elián turned 6, met Mickey Mouse, played
with a new puppy and lost his front teeth.
In full view of the world Reno came down from Washington, D.C., to plead
with Lázaro González and his daughter Marisleysis to return Elián
to his father. In full view of the world, Lázaro promised not to let Elián
go to Cuba and told Reno to take him if she dared.
In full view of the world armed government commandos battered in the door of
the house one night just before the sun came up and carried off Elián in
an airplane to his father in Washington.
In a rage born of powerlessness, exile protesters set fires in the streets
and battled police. Scores were arrested.
There was still political fallout to come: the forced departures of the
city's non-Cuban manager and police chief, more ethnic recrimination, bananas
tossed at the City Hall.
"The exile community went through a time of great depression,'' said Sánchez,
the demonstration leader. "You could see it in people's eyes, especially
the old people, this deep sadness, to see not only that they took the boy away,
but how the community was vilified.''
Some have sought silver linings, speaking of a new unity among exiles and
commitment to the cause by young Cuban Americans previously uninterested in the
issue of Cuba.
"When all is said and done, Elián will have done more good than
bad for the community,'' said Carlos Saladrigas, a prominent Cuban-American
executive.
"A major lesson is that the leadership of the community cannot wait
until things get out of hand until we begin to act. We don't need to love each
other; we just need to learn to live together and to work together.''
In Little Havana, those who were closest to Elián nurse a faint hope.
"We still think,'' Gutiérrez said, "that someday he'll come
back.''
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