By Adam Pertman, Globe Staff. Boston Globe, 3/31/2000
MIAMI - The picture on their signs is of a little boy, but the image seared on their souls is that of someone much older, a man whose graying beard and military fatigues might as well be a pair of horns and a tail.
To most of the men, women, and children in the Cuban-American community in South Florida, Fidel Castro is nothing less than the devil. And there's no way to fully understand the extraordinary events that have been unfolding here for more than four months without grasping this fact.
First and foremost, it helps explain why members of the Cuban exile community insist - contrary to many psychological studies, common practice in other custody cases, and most other people's instincts - that it serves a 6-year-old boy's ''best interests'' to remain severed from a father who, by
all accounts, was loving and devoted.
The problem isn't with how Juan Miguel Gonzalez may treat his son, but where he continues to live.
''It doesn't matter what the judges say, what the government says, what anyone says. If we send Elian back to his father, we will be sending an innocent child to a place ruled by the worst of the worst there can be,'' explained Jose Barja, a 50-year-old retailer who left Cuba in 1980 the same
way Elian did, on a raft. ''We will be sending him to hell.''
It's hard to overstate the extent to which that belief shapes the thinking and behavior of Barja and the other Cuban exiles who stand vigil every day outside the simple, one-story stucco house in which Elian has lived with his great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, and other relatives since fishermen
found the boy off the Florida coast last November.
There certainly are many Cuban-Americans who have either put their pasts behind them or don't hold such hard-line opinions of their homeland and its communist ruler. But many, if not most, of the exiles endured genuine hardships when they lived in Cuba, despise the totalitarianism of the Castro
regime, and sometimes risked their lives to escape it and create new lives in this country.
A new life is what they want for Elian.
To them, whatever psychic or developmental problems the boy may sustain from the international tug of war over his fate pale compared with the benefits he would derive from an upbringing in the United States. These exiles' view of Castro is so viscerally, intensely negative that many fear for
the boy's safety if he returns home.
''They will hurt him, kill him, something like that,'' said Doris Gonzalez, a cosmetologist who is not related to Elian. All around the woman, who was interviewed outside Lazaro Gonzalez's home, other Cuban-Americans of all ages shook their heads and cheered in agreement. ''Sending anyone on
purpose to the devil is evil, and we are not evil,'' a teenage boy shouted.
It is in this context that the boy's personal well-being has been subsumed. In between their obviously heartfelt expressions of care for Elian, the Cuban-Americans here frequently reveal their broader agenda.
Many do that by hesitating, or even refusing to answer, when asked how they would feel if they still lived in Cuba and couldn't retain custody of their own children. And their political leaders have often been explicit about their resolve to achieve a victory, this time, over their most reviled
enemy.
''This boy cannot become a trophy for Fidel,'' Jorge Mas Santos, who heads the Cuban American National Foundation, said when he first learned that the US government intended to return Elian to his father. But in their zeal to deprive Castro of his prize - and the Cuban leader has clearly
indicated that he views Elian as one - the exile community in Florida appears to risk turning the boy into a prize for them.
Moreover, and probably more significant in the long term, the intensity about Castro that has colored almost every aspect of the Elian drama has also revealed a chasm between the section of South Florida where Cuban-Americans, their families, and their supporters dominate the culture and the
politics, and the rest of the United States.
Polls everywhere else show a lopsided majority of Americans believe that Cuba is an awful place to live, but that Elian Gonzalez's father should get his son back. And politicians around the nation strongly disagree with President Clinton on a host of issues, but don't question his authority to
carry out the duties of his office.
So it was stunning that the mayors of two dozen municipalities in and around Miami this week not only declared that they will refuse to send in their police forces if federal authorities request help to gain custody of Elian, but essentially warned that the administration would be responsible
for inciting violence if it tried to do so.
''I don't know how it's playing in Peoria ... but I would suspect Miami doesn't look like it belongs to the legal system and the cultural system of the rest of the country throughout this whole saga,'' said Bernard Perlmutter, director of the Children and Youth Law Clinic at the University of
Miami.
''I'm not casting aspersions on any immigrants,'' he added, ''but the way it's played out makes it seem like we're an island cut off from the rest of the United States and its deeply ingrained legal traditions, simply because of how passionately a group of people here feel about Fidel Castro.''
This story ran on page A26 of the Boston Globe on 3/31/2000.
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