By Frances Kerry
MIAMI, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Raising contrary voices in the heart of the Cuban community in America, a small crowd demonstrated in Miami on Saturday for Cuban shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez to be returned to his father in Cuba.
``The issue is not Cuba; it's not (Cuban President) Fidel Castro; it's not the government of the United States; it's a simple issue of a father and a son,'' one organiser, Rev. Lucius Walker, told about 200 people, including some of Cuban origin, outside a U.S. Immigration and Naturalisation
Service (INS) building.
``The child abuse must end. Elian must return home,'' said Walker, who runs Pastors for Peace, a group that opposes the 38-year-old U.S. embargo against communist-run Cuba.
Six-year-old Elian has been at the centre of a bitter, highly politicized custody battle since he was picked up at sea in November after a disastrous voyage from Cuba to Florida in which his mother and 10 other people drowned.
His father and grandparents, backed by Castro, want the child returned to them. Relatives in Miami, supported by many in the Cuban community, want to keep Elian in the United States, where they say he would have a better life.
AWAY FROM LITTLE HAVANA
Saturday's demonstration was in a poor district of northeast Miami several miles (kms) from Little Havana and other areas where most Miami Cubans live. Police kept a watch but the rally was peaceful.
Jose Reyes Caballeros, a retired teacher and minister who was born in Cuba but has been in the United States 38 years, said he attended because ``the most sacred of human rights is the right of parents to bring up their children.''
``It pains me a lot that politicians ... are using the case for personal gain,'' he said, referring to local exile leaders who have jumped to support the cause of Elian staying here.
Reyes, who belongs to Pastors for Peace, said he thought many Cubans in Miami supported the cause of sending Elian back to Cuba but were afraid to say so for fear of angering vocal hardline exiles.
``They are afraid because there is intolerance here ... a prehistoric attitude,'' he said.
The INS ruled earlier this month that the child should return to Cuba, but the boy's Miami relatives filed a lawsuit in federal court for Elian to be granted an asylum hearing. A hearing on the suit was set for Feb. 22.
The crowd protesting on Saturday included members of groups from around the United States who oppose the U.S. embargo on Cuba. Also present were members of the Antonio Maceo brigade, a group of Cubans in America who are against the trade ban.
The rally was denounced by one hardline anti-Castro group in the city, the Democracy Movement, led by Ramon Saul Sanchez.
ELIAN'S MOTHER HONOURED
He said the group flew a light plane near the demonstration to drop rose petals on it -- but noted that they may not have landed near the INS building since the plane could not fly low enough to target the area precisely. He said the flower drop was to protest what he called attempts by
protesters to ``incite violence.''
Sanchez headed a ceremony on Saturday afternoon in honour of Elian's mother, Elisabeth Brotons. It took place off a pier on Miami's Biscayne Bay.
More than 50 supporters of the Democracy Movement gathered on the pier and arrived in boats bearing flowers. They played the Cuban and American national anthems and waved Cuban and American flags.
Sanchez and other community leaders urged the crowd to remember Brotons in their prayers, as well as those who had lost their lives at sea and those who continued to risk their lives to come to the United States. The ceremony concluded with the crowd tossing flowers into the ocean, followed
shortly by the playing of the American and Cuban national anthems.
In Cuba, Castro said on Friday that his country could keep up its two-month campaign of mass public demonstrations for Elian's return for years to come if necessary. ``In the United States, they think we will get tired, but we have reserves for at least 10 years,'' Castro said.
The boy's grandmothers have been in the United States for the past week lobbying to get Elian back and pressing Congress to reject moves to make him a U.S. citizen.
They met Elian at the home of a Miami nun on Wednesday, the boy's first contact with his Cuban family since his November arrival.
20:07 01-29-00
Copyright 2000 Reuters Limited. |