Yahoo! Monday, May 01, 2000
Tens of Thousands Rally in Miami Elian Protests
By Lisa Baertlein
MIAMI, 29 (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Cuban Americans rallied in Little Havana on Saturday to protest last week's armed federal raid where agents snatched Cuban shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez from his Miami relatives.
The highly politicized battle between the 6-year-old boy's Cuban father and his U.S. relatives has exacerbated Miami's sometimes uneasy racial and ethnic coexistence and spurred political upheavals that have left two top city of Miami officials without jobs.
Dueling airplanes buzzed over the city, dragging banners that read ``America, love it or leave it -- comprende?'' and ''Don't fight your battles here, go home and fight your war'' versus ``By dawn's early light U.S. violated Elian's human rights'' and ``Save Elian.''
Further south, a much smaller group of counter demonstrators waved U.S. flags in support of the raid that led to Elian's reunion with his father after a five-month standoff. There, a couple of young men lashed out with handwritten signs that read: ``No Cubans, no problems'' and ``Honk for no
Cubans.''
Organizers from greater Miami's Cuban American community had promised the biggest demonstrations yet and Saturday's event was a sharp contrast to the violent protests that erupted in the hours after the government's predawn raid one week ago.
Protesters set out from Little Havana's Bay of Pigs monument where Spanish-language radio host Armando Perez-Roura compared the Elian episode to the Bay of Pigs, saying that in both cases the exile cause was betrayed by U.S. presidents.
He denounced President Clinton, for backing the decision to return Elian to his father, and John F. Kennedy, for failing to send air support to the unsuccessful CIA-backed invasion of Cuba in 1961.
Young women twirling batons and Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas marched among the flow of bodies that stretched 18 blocks along Little Havana's Eighth Street, known locally as Calle Ocho.
Protesters carried a hanged doll resembling Clinton and a sign depicting a crying Statue of Liberty.
Maria Gondra, a psychotherapist who as a child came to Miami without her parents as part of the Cold War's Catholic Church-backed Pedro Pan operation, joined hundreds of others who wore mournful black to the afternoon rally.
``I think it's a lost cause, but we have to show the rest of the world that we're a united community, a peaceful community,'' she said.
Numerous others carried the now-famous photograph of a federal agent pointing a gun in the direction of Elian. They waved Cuban flags, chanted ``Elian, friend, Miami is with you'' and gathered for speeches from civic leaders.
``I'm neutral,'' said Cuban-born Juan Wang, 30. ``I just don't like the way they took that kid by force.''
Saturday's demonstrations capped a chaotic week marked by a noisy shakeout at the city of Miami in the wake of the shifting tide in the passionate war over Elian, who was rescued from the ocean on Nov. 25 after surviving a doomed smuggling mission that drowned his mother and 10 others.
On Friday, Miami Police Chief William O'Brien announced that he would resign as soon as his replacement is found. He said his decision came just hours after Miami Mayor Joe Carollo fired City Manager Donald Warshaw, who supported O'Brien over Carollo's objections.
Carollo on Sunday called for O'Brien's dismissal because a city policeman took part in the raid and did not alert him in advance. Carollo later cited different reasons for removing Warshaw, who has sole authority to fire the chief.
Miami police, still under O'Brien's command, kept a low-profile watch, positioning themselves somewhat apart from protesters. The department is weathering complaints that it was too heavy-handed last week when officers used tear gas to contain a crowd that, angry over the raid, was throwing
rocks and setting fire to tires.
Cuban-born Carollo stridently opposes Cuban President Fidel Castro and is a staunch supporter of efforts to prevent Elian's return to the island.
As protesters vented their emotions, activists in Miami's Coconut Grove neighborhood were collecting signatures on a petition demanding Carollo's ouster and Warshaw's reinstatement.
Meanwhile, another airplane dragged a banner that read: ''Castro for mayor -- at least we would be rid of the bad Cuban.
Cuba Calls Out Millions for May Day
By Anita Snow, Associated Press Writer.
HAVANA, 1 (AP)- A sea of people stretching as far as the eye could see converged on Havana's sprawling Plaza of the Revolution for a May Day celebration today meant to be a crescendo in Cuba's campaign to return 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez to his homeland.
``Everyone to the Plaza!'' the nation's newspapers have exhorted in recent days, calling Cubans to crowd the various plazas built for mass gatherings around the nation.
In Havana alone, hundreds of thousands of people, many with pictures of Elian pinned to their shirts, gathered for the first speech by President Fidel Castro at a May Day celebration in many years.
Even streets leading to the plaza were jammed with people.
Newspapers urged Cubans to turn out in tennis shoes for a 2 mile march to the U.S. Interests Section after Castro speaks. And the Cuban leader himself wore tennis shoes with his traditional olive-green uniform.
During May 1 gatherings in recent decades, Castro has presided over massive marches of workers but has left the podium to labor leaders and other top officials.
The gathering this year is also unusual in that it is being described as an ``open tribune'' - the government term used to describe the mass concentrations regularly held to press for Elian's return to Cuba.
Elian has riveted the attention of Cubans for five months, ever since the boy was found floating on an inner tube off the Florida coast following a boating accident that killed his mother and 10 others.
The tiny castaway quickly found himself at the center of an international custody battle. His anti-communist Miami relatives are fighting to keep him in the United States and his communist father is demanding to take the child back to Cuba.
Elian was reunited with his father in Washington last week after a dramatic raid of the Miami relatives' home. Armed agents whisked the boy away and flew him to his dad.
The raid has been bitterly criticized by the Miami relatives and a large group of their supporters in South Florida's large Cuban-American community, as well as among conservative members of Congress.
Father and son must stay in the United States pending a May 11 appeals court hearing on a request by the Miami relatives for a political asylum hearing for the child.
Cuba Keeps Up Fight for Elian Return
HAVANA, 29 (AP) - Pressing a national campaign to return Elian Gonzalez to his communist homeland, thousands of government supporters rallied Saturday in central Cuba to protest the boy's continued stay in the United States.
Gen. Raul Castro, the chief of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces who is also President Fidel Castro's brother, stood in the front row of protesters at a gathering in Ciego de Avila, about 250 miles east of Havana.
The rally came as tens of thousands of Cuban-Americans were winding up a very different kind of march in Miami - one protesting the U.S. government raid a week before that seized Elian from his Miami relatives and reunited him with his father in Washington.
Shown live on state television, the rally in Cuba was the latest of scores - perhaps hundreds - of large gatherings held since early December, when President Castro called for mass demonstrations to be held until Elian returns to Cuba.
The rallies have been effective in involving Cuban children and young adults in national politics. They also have been used to attack a variety of U.S. policies toward the island, including a nearly four-decade trade embargo aimed at punishing the communist government.
Originally, the large rallies were held in Havana, but now they are held each weekend in a different province of the island.
In Havana, a live ``informative roundtable'' is now held almost every weeknight and broadcast live on national television to update Cubans on developments in the Elian case.
Saturday's rally was more festive and less strident than others in recent weeks, evidently reflecting the more relaxed attitude most Cubans have toward the case since Elian was reunited with his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, on April 22.
Especially large gatherings are planned across the island for Monday's May Day celebrations, which will be dedicated this year to the fight to return Elian to Cuba.
The father and son are to stay in the United States pending a May 11 hearing by a federal appeals court in Atlanta on the Miami relatives' request for a hearing on whether to grant political asylum to the child.
CIA Said To Know of Bay of Pigs Leak
WASHINGTON, 29 (AP) - The CIA was aware that the Soviet Union found out the date of the failed U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba more than a week before it took place on April 17, 1961, but went ahead with the operation anyway, newly declassified intelligence documents show.
Previously released Soviet documents indicated that Moscow had learned some details of the operation ahead of time, but the report from the Taylor Commission shows for the first time that the CIA knew about the leak and proceeded with the invasion, said Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst with the
nonprofit National Security Archive.
Portions of the Taylor Commission report had been released in 1977 and 1986. The latest release, which shows newly declassified information, was supposed to be made public in 1996, but was only released recently following a bureaucratic mix-up.
``There was some indication that the Soviets somewhere around the 9th (of April) had gotten the date of the 17th,'' Jacob Esterline, the CIA operations official who headed the task force responsible for coordinating the invasion, testified at a May 1961 commission meeting.
``But there was no indication at any time that they had any idea where the operation was going to take place,'' Esterline added.
It is unknown exactly how the Soviets found out, but Esterline said it was not from the Cuban exiles since the exiles were not briefed on when the invasion would take place until April 12.
Kornbluh said there also was no indication that the CIA informed President Kennedy of the leak before the invasion took place.
The documents show that CIA director Allen W. Dulles, three weeks after the failed operation, questioned the agency's role in future paramilitary operations.
``I'm the first to recognize that I don't think that the CIA should run paramilitary operations of the type in Cuba,'' Dulles told the commission. He added that ``the Cuban operation has had a very serious effect on all our work'' and ``I think we should limit ourselves more to secret
intelligence collection and operations of the nonmilitary category.''
According to Kornbluh, the report also shows that CIA official Frank Egan, who was in charge of the training camps in Guatemala, told the commission Cuban leader Fidel Castro had infiltrated four double agents into the camp.
Although CIA officials limited mail going into and out of the camp in the weeks leading up the official, Egan said the double agents apparently got information out to Castro.
The Taylor Commission report is the second government report made public on the Bay of Pigs. Kornbluh said he filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the third document, by a CIA historian, but it has yet to be released.
Cuban-Americans March in Miami
By Alex Veiga, Associated Press Writer.
MIAMI, 29 (AP) - Tens of thousands of angry Cuban-Americans marched peacefully through Miami's Little Havana on Saturday, protesting the raid in which armed federal agents yanked 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez from the home of relatives.
Police stayed visibly distant from the chanting demonstrators, many of whom carried signs denouncing President Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno for taking Elian from his Miami relatives and sending him to his Cuban father.
No arrests were made during the demonstration.
``It was peaceful and everything went very smoothly,'' said Lt. Bill Schwartz, Miami police spokesman.
At a separate gathering in Pembroke Pines, about 15 miles north of Miami, federal agents had a picnic to celebrate the success of the operation that reunited Elian with his father.
``We have a reason to celebrate, we did something that everyone said could not be done,'' INS district director Bob Wallis told Miami television station WFOR. Wallis held a T-shirt emblazoned with ``Operation Reunion,'' showing Elian and his father smiling.
Organizers of the Little Havana march, the exile community's biggest protest yet, hoped it would to send a strong but peaceful message to the federal government.
Police blocked off 23 blocks of the main route along Calle Ocho, or Eighth Street, and crowds of people, many dressed in black and waving Cuban and American flags, marched in parade formation.
``We're trying to fight against communism, that's the bottom line,'' said Little Havana resident Arnold Villar, 35.
The procession included Cuban-American veterans groups and marching bands, including one from Lincoln-Marti School, which Elian attended while living here with his great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez.
About 50 of Elian's former teachers, classmates and parents also marched, some holding up a 6-foot banner of Elian in his school uniform.
Mothers Against Repression joined the march with a contingent of about 40 women, all dressed in black, marching with about 300 supporters, men and women.
Ricardo Ferrieya, a Cuban-born accountant, distributed copies of a letter urging demonstrators to write politicians in Washington and demand an investigation into the raid.
All week and into Saturday morning, Cuban exile leaders speaking on Spanish radio stations had urged people to join the rally.
``This is a moment where the three generations of Cubans that are here are coming together in favor of supporting the child Elian and denouncing the aggressive way that they entered his home,'' said Andres Nazario Sargen, of Alpha 66, an anti-Castro group.
Thousands of Cuban-Americans protesters also took to the streets hours after the boy was taken from Miami, setting more than 200 trash and tire fires and shouting in angry protests that lasted into the next day. Police clad in riot gear arrested more than 300 people and cleared thousands of
demonstrators from Little Havana.
But Saturday, protesters heeded the call for calm.
``Hopefully, we will project a better image than what the Cubans have been getting lately,'' said Ed Blanco, a 49-year-old Vietnam veteran watching the procession.
Fallout from the raid and the way police handled the protesters sank the city government into chaos. By Friday, the mayor had fired the city manager and the police chief had resigned.
At the rally Saturday, Mayor Joe Carollo said he was pleased with the community's peaceful and unified expression.
``For the first time this exile community is together as one voice,'' he said during an interview on Spanish television.
He also commented on the shake-up at City Hall.
``I need to finish what I have started, because here they have lied to this community a lot ... and they have abused our community a lot and they both have to go,'' Carollo said of the city manager and police chief.
Police Chief William O'Brien has called Carollo ``divisive and destructive.''
Lazaro Gonzalez, Elian's great-uncle, made a plea Friday for the community to remain calm.
``Elian is gone for now and my heart is broken,'' he said in a statement read by a family spokesman. ``But South Florida must stay united.''
The community's split was evident when the crowd booed planes flying over demonstrators with banners that read: ``Don't fight your battles here, go home and fight your war,'' ``America loves Janet Reno,'' and ``America - love it or leave it, comprende?''
A counter rally in Cutler Ridge, in south Miami-Dade County, attracted about 1,500 protesters who supported the government's actions and criticized the city government shake-up. They lined the streets and waved American flags as passing cars honked their horns. Police said two people were
arrested.
``Americans feel disenfranchised, we don't feel like we have representation anymore in Miami,'' said Kevin Devine, 42, a social worker who lives in the area.
The 6-year-old was found adrift on an inner tube Thanksgiving Day after his mother and 10 other Cubans drowned in an attempt to reach the United States.
The boy is now living with his father, stepmother and half brother at the rural Wye River retreat in Maryland. He must remain in the United States until a federal appeals court rules on the Miami relatives' bid for him to have an asylum hearing.
Fernando Remirez, Cuba's diplomatic representative in Washington, went to the State Department Friday afternoon to ask for a continuing Cuban diplomatic presence at the Maryland retreat, according a department official who asked not to be identified.
The official said the request was under discussion, but added that the department did not believe there was a compelling reason to grant it.
Stop 'Pontificating' on Human Rights, Cuba Tells EU
By Andrew Cawthorne
HAVANA, 28 (Reuters) - Communist-run Cuba's fast- deteriorating relations with Europe will not improve until the former Western colonial powers stop hypocritically ``pontificating'' about human rights, Havana warned Friday.
``We do not accept that the Western, developed societies are superior to others. That's an old colonialist approach,'' senior Cuban official Ricardo Alarcon told Reuters in an interview.
Cuba was angered by Western European nations' backing for a U.N. censure of President Fidel Castro's government's human rights record this month.
In response, Havana canceled a high-level European Union (EU) visit, and withdrew Cuba's candidacy for a multilateral trade and aid pact with the EU.
``They should put an end to that and abandon the hypocrisy and the attitude of pontificating and preaching to others on areas on which we do not accept their superiority,'' said Alarcon, who is president of the National Assembly legislature.
``I think that it is high time for the European nations to forget about their colonial dreams and begin realizing that at least with the government of Cuba, they will have to learn to deal with us as we are, an independent nation,'' he said.
Cuba had applied last month to join a new trade and aid agreement between the EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of 71 developing nations.
Membership would have given credit-starved Cuba access to preferential EU trade and aid packages, but might also have given Europe more leverage to pressure Havana for changes to its controversial, one-party political system, analysts said.
Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told reporters on Friday that the EU was ``dragged into'' voting against Cuba at the U.N. Commission for Human Rights by Washington.
``The EU has to fix its priorities with Cuba, if it is going to opt for an independent line ... and behave like the giant it is, or continue submitting to U.S. pressures,'' Perez added.
EU members Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal and Spain all voted with the United States in favor of the U.N. forum's resolution that condemned Cuba for repressing political dissent and religious groups.
European diplomats said the EU would, anyway, have likely ruled out Cuba's inclusion in the new trade pact due to reports of increased harassment of dissidents on the island. The pact provides for 13.5 billion euros ($12.28 billion) in EU aid to the ACP countries over the next five years.
Havana frequently detains anti-Castro dissidents, saying they are not a genuine political opposition but are U.S.-backed ''counter-revolutionary'' mercenaries and traitors.
The cancellation of the Portuguese-led EU ``troika'' visit to Cuba, scheduled for this week, prevented the reestablishment of a high-level political dialogue cut off in 1996 due to differences over human rights and other issues.
Both officials argued that Cuba's precarious economic situation was not jeopardized by its absence from the new EU-ACP pact which will replace the current Lome Convention.
``We haven't died. ... Cuba will continue to be on this planet,'' Alarcon commented dryly, noting Cuba's economic survival despite the U.S. embargo and the Soviet collapse and despite exclusion from Lome or international financial bodies like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Roque said European investment would continue expanding on the Caribbean island, particularly in the booming tourism sector, despite the low point in political relations.
``The businessmen cannot understand why their governments, instead of encouraging their interests in Cuba, succumb to the pressures of the imperial power blockading our country, the United States,'' he said.
Since Cuba opened up to foreign businesses about a decade ago, Europe and Canada have led the way in investing here in partnership with state companies.
Alarcon said the April 18 U.N. vote against Cuba was particularly resented here because it represented an ``offering on a silver plate'' to those trying to justify not sending 6- year-old shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez back to the island.
``That vote in Geneva was really a very severe blow to our people in their struggle to recover Elian. ... Those who voted for that resolution simply ... played into the hands of the kidnappers of a 6-year-old boy. We are not going to forgive that. we are not going to ignore that.''
Cuba Tobacco Region Has Big Harvest
HAVANA, 28 (AP) - Cuba's western tobacco-growing region is celebrating the biggest harvest since the collapse of the Soviet Union set off a severe economic crisis, government media reported Friday.
The Communist Party daily Granma said that the tobacco harvest still under way in the western province of Pinar del Rio is expected to yield about 53.2 million pounds of tobacco.
The crop remains one of communist Cuba's primary sources of badly needed hard currency, after tourism and sugar.
Cuba exported 148 million cigars last year, of which 128 million were hand-rolled. Western Europe is the largest market for Cuban cigars - accounting for 90 million cigars, or 65.5 percent of the total.
Elian's Life Is Changed Forever
By Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON, 29 (AP) - Too young to understand, but too old to forget, Elian Gonzalez is a little boy whose life is forever changed.
``The question is whether it will sink him or not,'' said Alan Levy, professor of social work at Loyola University Chicago.
America or Cuba? Stay or go? Happy ending or sad? As the world awaits the next chapter in the castaway saga turned international political custody battle, no one, of course, can predict Elian's future.
Few even know exactly the details of his past - what he's seen, how much he's been hurt.
Elian lost his mother at sea, then was delivered into the hands of never-before-seen relatives who refused to relinquish him. After he came to love them too, he was snatched away at gunpoint, returned to his father, then moved into seclusion.
``We don't know all the circumstances,'' said David Elkind, professor of child development at Tufts University.
Did he see his mother drown? What did she say to him? Did his great uncle and cousin, Lazaro and Marisleysis Gonzalez, help him deal with his mother's death while he was in their Miami home? What did he make of Miami protesters who idolized him and watched his every move? What did the Miami
relatives tell him about his father? His communist fatherland?
Now that Elian has been reunited with father Juan Miguel, stepmother Nersy and baby half brother Hianny, several psychiatrists said, he should be helped to work through his grief in peace.
His father has agreed to keep him in the United States while the asylum case brought by the American relatives plays out. So his Cuban family has set up house at an idyllic estate on Maryland's Eastern Shore to wait.
The next court hearing is scheduled May 11, but lawyers say the case could go on for months if the Miami relatives appeal.
Still, a reunion with them may also be somewhere in Elian's future.
Many child advocates believe a bond was formed between Elian and the Miami relatives. But a psychiatrist for the U.S. government this week advised against a visit by his Miami kin ``in their current angry state'' and said letters, photos and recorded messages would have to do for now.
And is it unthinkable - or could a court eventually rule that Juan Miguel can not take his son back to Cuba?
The Immigration and Naturalization Service has argued that Elian is too young to speak for himself and that only his father could request asylum.
``The idea that a 6-year-old is going to be seeking asylum is absolutely crazy,'' said Elkind.
``A child ... might want to go away from his family - may want to run away from home, down the block,'' he said. ``He doesn't have a sense of seeking asylum in another country.''
But the Atlanta federal appeals court has criticized the INS for not interviewing Elian ``about his wishes ... particularly the child's separate and independent interests in seeking asylum.''
If and when Elian returns to Cuba, President Fidel Castro has said there'll be no big street celebrations, no parades.
Instead, Elian will be sheltered from the media and Cubans in general and live for three months with his former first-grade classmates from the town of Cardenas in a specially prepared boarding school in the capital of Havana.
Whatever the future holds for Elian, he now romps in lush Maryland farm country with playmates sent from Cuba this week to make life more normal while he bides his time in America.
And though he's too young to understand either the death of his mother - he's said he thinks she's only lost - or the politics dividing his family and keeping him in America, analysts say there will be plenty of time for that in years to come.
``He's understanding things through a 6-year-old's eye,'' said Levy.
In adolescence, he'll understand them differently, and in adulthood differently again. ``But he'll be pondering this for the rest of his life.''
On the Net:
American Academy of Pediatrics site: http://www.aap.org.advocacy/releases/aprelian.htm
Cuban American National Foundation: http://www.canfnet.org
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Copyright © 2000 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. |