April 22, 2000
UPDATE 1-Cubans jubilant over Elian move, want him home
By Pascal Fletcher
HAVANA (Reuters) - With cries of ``At last!'' and ``about time!'' Cubans rejoiced Saturday at the U.S. government's move to reunite Elian Gonzalez with his father.
But they also called for the six-year-old Cuban castaway to be quickly returned to his communist-ruled homeland from the United States.
From early Saturday, state broadcast media on the Caribbean island interrupted normal programming to triumphantly announce that U.S. authorities had snatched Elian from his Miami relatives and were taking him to his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who is in the United States.
``Great! It's what they should have done some time ago. It's wonderful news,'' said Pedro Aran Sayas, an early riser in Havana, who heard the news on state radio.
His delighted reaction reflected the strong feelings with which ordinary Cubans have followed the five-month saga of little Elian. The boy has been in the United States since his rescue off Florida last November after a shipwreck that killed his mother and 10 other Cuban migrants.
President Fidel Castro's government, which supported from the start a custody claim by Elian's father in Cuba, has converted the boy into a patriotic icon of the Cuban Revolution.
As the news spread in the Cuban capital, Cubans switched on their radios and TV sets to hear about the dramatic raid before dawn by U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agents on the house of the Miami relatives.
``Our people have been waiting for this news,'' Otto Rivero, head of Cuba's Communist Youth Union (UJC), told Radio Rebelde in the first reaction from a Cuban official.
Ordinary people were jubilant. ``It was about time!'' said Zuzel Remedios, a shopkeeper in Havana.
``At last, damn it! They (the U.S. authorities) waited too long. They could have done this months ago and without this operation,'' said Antonio Portuondo, a tailor.
``Elian belongs to Cuba and I hope he comes back quickly,'' Portuondo added vehemently.
In a statement read on national radio, Cuban authorities appealed for calm, telling the Cuban people that they should not indulge in spontaneous public demonstrations.
``Our attitude should be one of calm, discretion and dignity,'' the radio said, saying any public disturbances could have a negative impact on Elian's situation in the United States.
Probably the first to hear of Elian's removal from the house of his Miami relatives were his family at his hometown of Cardenas, who were alerted by a phone call from the boy's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, from the United States.
They were overjoyed and the family home in Cardenas, a port town on the north coast east of Havana, soon filled with neighbors and well-wishers.
Elian's paternal grandfather, Juan Gonzalez Hernandez, said he felt ``very happy.'' ``We're feeling a lot of emotion here,'' he told Radio Rebelde.
A government-organized rally was due to be held in Matanzas province later Saturday to reiterate Cuba's demand for Elian to be promptly returned to the island.
State radio commentator Orlando Contreras hailed the U.S. government move as a ``defeat'' for the right-wing Cuban exiles in the United States who have fought to keep the boy in Miami with his relatives there.
``This battle is not over yet,'' Contreras said, referring to a decision this week by an appeals court in Atlanta that Elian would have to stay in the United States pending the outcome of an appeal filed by the Miami relatives.
U.S. authorities had spent weeks trying to arrange a peaceful transfer of Elian from the Miami relatives to his father, who traveled to the United States more than two weeks ago, but they were thwarted at every turn.
Cuba had been impatiently urging the U.S. government to act to enforce a January INS ruling that Elian belonged with his father.
10:42 04-22-00
Copyright 2000 Reuters Limited.
Cuban Americans Protest In Streets
By Terry Spencer. .c The Associated Press
MIAMI (AP) - Some threw rocks and shouted in anger. Others waved signs and flags - Cuban and upside-down American ones. One man stalked through the crowd with a baby doll pinned to a cross, fake blood streaming from its hands.
Across Elian Gonzalez's Little Havana neighborhood Saturday, hundreds of Cuban-Americans poured into the streets, denouncing the government for snatching the 6-year-old from his great-uncle's house on the day before Easter.
``This is like crucifying the Messiah all over again. This is a slap in the face to the Cuban-American community and the Christian community,'' said Ralph Anrrich, a social worker helping the family at the house, where more than 500 people had massed by midmorning.
Five blocks away, more than 100 people protested on a street corner as police in riot gear kept them on sidewalks.
One demonstrator, Duvyl Celebron, held up an Associated Press photograph showing a helmeted federal agent armed with an automatic rifle confronting a man holding Elian in Lazaro Gonzalez's bedroom.
``Look at this photograph! Look at it well!'' demonstrator Ofelia Munoz yelled at police.
``You don't have to be doing that to anybody. He is a 6-year-old,'' hollered Carmen Cantu, a 12-year-old demonstrator
On one street, a debris fire burned. Some protesters marched onto Route 836, a main highway, slowing traffic. Others threw rocks, one smashing the rear window of a police car. Still others stood around in small groups and talked quietly.
Within hours of the pre-dawn raid, police in riot gear faced off with the crowd. They blocked off 35 square blocks of the neighborhood around the house, even barring residents from their homes.
``They broke through my window and put a gun to Elian's head. This is not freedom, putting a gun to a 6-year-old's head,'' Marisleysis Gonzalez, Elian's cousin, screamed to the crowd outside her home.
The government appeared to catch the family completely off guard. Vans screeched to a halt outside the modest stucco house just after 5 a.m., and agents battered down the door and poured inside.
The boy cowered in a bedroom closet as the armed federal agent confronted Elian and Donato Dalrymple, the fisherman who rescued the boy on Thanksgiving Day. The AP photographs of the confrontation did not show that the rifle was pointed at Elian.
A crowd of supporters waited outside, anxious to find out what was happening.
``They took this kid like a hostage in the nighttime,'' Dalrymple said.
Within minutes, Elian, wearing a white T-shirt and shorts, was carried outside in a white blanket by a female agent, lifted gently into a van and driven away by a man in a mask. He seemed bewildered.
``All of a sudden I heard people yelling that the police are here,'' said Anrrich. ``Before you knew it, they were here with guns. They came through the back, the side and the front. This was the last thing that was expected.''
As the reality of Elian's removal began to set in, the restless crowd milled about. While some wept, others screamed. One man flailed his arms and ranted.
``No liberty, no justice for all,'' one sign said. In another, Fidel Castro holds two dalmatians by the collar; their faces are those of President Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno.
Joel Beltran said he was standing next to the front door of the house when four agents grabbed him, threw him to the ground and told him to get away or ``we will shoot.''
Ramon Saul Sanchez, a leader of the Miami exile community, said a federal agent hit him in the side of the head with a gun when Sanchez and other protesters demonstrators attempted to form a human chain in front of the house.
Beatriz Hernandez, 55, said agents pointed a gun at the head of one of the women in the group Mothers Against Repression and told her not to move.
``I feel like I'm back in Cuba in 1960. That's the way I feel right now,'' Hernandez said. ``I've been here 40 years. I never, never thought anything like this would happen.''
AP-NY-04-22-00 1039EDT
Copyright 2000 The Associated Press.
U.S. agents came in "like soldiers'' for Elian
By Jim Loney
MIAMI, April 22 (Reuters) - Heavily armed U.S. agents burst into the Miami home of Cuban shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez on Saturday ``like soldiers'' and physically snatched the boy from the arms of the fisherman who rescued him five months ago, the child's relatives and friends inside the
house said.
``They said 'give me the boy or I'm going to shoot. I'm going to shoot. Give me the boy. Give me the boy.' I said please, don't let the boy see this,'' a weeping Marisleysis Gonzalez, the 21-year-old cousin who has been described as a playing a mother role to Elian, told reporters.
She and others who witnessed the stunning predawn raid aimed at ending a bitter standoff between warring relatives and reuniting the 6-year-old Elian with his father said the federal agents pointed guns at relatives and friends when they stormed in, breaking doors and shouting.
U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno commended the Immigration and Naturalisation Service and Border Patrol agents who carried out the lightning raid, which was done without warning and without bloodshed.
Marisleysis Gonzalez and Donato Dalrymple, one of the two fishermen who rescued Elian from the Atlantic Ocean five months ago, described a chaotic scene inside the modest Little Havana home where Elian has been living as a team of heavily armed and helmeted agents burst in to find the boy.
Hours after the child was taken, the two conducted tours of the house throughout the morning, walking reporters with television cameras through the scenario.
``It sounded like soldiers coming into the house,'' a highly emotional Dalrymple said. ``I said 'Oh my God.' I jumped up and I heard little Elian screaming from the couch and I grabbed the little boy and I ran into the (bed)room and I closed the door behind us.''
``Elian was screaming 'Que pasa? Que pasa? (What's happening?' And he was screaming 'Help me. Help me. What's going on?' And I held his head next to my shoulder to try and protect him and they busted the door down and they came in with assault weapons.''
In perhaps the most dramatic moment of the raid, which took only three or four minutes, an agent wearing a helmet and goggles and holding an automatic weapon opened a closet door to find Dalrymple and Elian huddled inside.
``It's as if they were taking a terrorist, a hostage. And they grabbed the boy and I said 'Please, don't hurt the child, don't hurt the child.'
``They grabbed this boy physically. They hurt him physically and emotionally. They ripped him from my arms,'' Dalrymple said.
The agents were there to take Elian from the Miami relatives who have been caring for him since he arrived in the United States in November, one of three survivors of the capsizing of a migrant smuggling boat in which his mother and 10 others drowned.
The small boy has been the subject of a fierce custody fight between his father, who wants to take him back to communist Cuba, and the relatives who say he would have a better future in the United States.
Marisleysis Gonzalez said she pleaded with the agents: ``Please, we'll give you the boy, don't let him see this. He's seen enough, seeing his mother's death. We don't want this. We're not going to do anything. We're not armed.''
``They ran in my room, they broke the closet door. They broke Elian's bed. They went in my mom's room. they broke the door down.''
``Janet Reno and everybody else, don't say you came here with no violence and that this boy's okay. How can this boy be okay when he had a gun to his head?
``I thought this was a country of freedom and a country that seeks for the benefit of a child, that wouldn't psychologically traumatize a child,'' she said.
``Now they've really done the harm. They have already psychologically traumatized Elian when they put that gun (near him) and when he saw what was going (on) in this house.''
10:38 04-22-00
Copyright 2000 Reuters Limited. |