Published Thursday, May 4, 2000, in the Miami Herald
Elian kin will appeal on custody
By Jay Weaver. jweaver@herald.com
Elian Gonzalez's Miami relatives have filed notice that they will appeal a family court decision saying the boy's great-uncle is too distant a relative to sue for custody in Florida.
The court's ruling supports arguments made in federal court by both Elian's father and the U.S. government that Lazaro Gonzalez has no standing to represent the boy in his suit seeking a political asylum claim.
The notice of appeal was filed Monday. But the actual papers aiming to overturn the family court decision will not be filed until after the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals hears oral arguments in the federal case next Thursday. That delay will allow the Miami relatives' attorneys to argue
that the state court ruling is not resolved.
``We're appealing all of the issues in the order,'' Laura Fabar, an attorney for the Gonzalez family in Miami, said Wednesday. She declined to elaborate on the grounds for appeal.
The custody claim brought by Elian's great-uncle alleges that Elian's father is abusive because he wants his 6-year-old son to return with him to communist Cuba. But last month, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jennifer Bailey said Lazaro Gonzalez had no right to seek custody in family court because he
is such a distant relative.
She also said the federal government's decision to reunite the child with his father superseded her authority to allow a hearing on his custody request.
Bailey lifted an emergency protective order, granted by a previous judge, that had required Elian to stay in Miami-Dade County with his relatives until the hearing on his temporary custody.
That setback and the government's seizure of the boy on April 22 have changed the dynamics of the custody dispute. Elian's Miami relatives no longer have access to the boy because he is staying with his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, at the private Wye Plantation in Maryland.
Both sides are awaiting critical appeals court arguments in Atlanta next Thursday on whether the child is entitled to a political asylum hearing.
The hostility between the sides increased Wednesday as the Miami relatives' legal team accused the Immigration and Naturalization Service in a letter of ``complicity,'' alleging the agency has allowed Cuban doctors to give the boy drugs as part of his deprogramming by President Fidel Castro's
government agents.
Agency spokeswoman Maria Cardona said the Gonzalez family's legal team was out of line. ``That's absolutely ludicrous,'' she said. ``There's nothing to indicate there's any truth to that.''
In Washington on Wednesday, a Spanish-speaking social worker, Susan M. Ley, was selected to help monitor Elian during the appeal.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Gore seems unhurt by Elian issue outside Florida
By Mark Silva. msilva@herald.com
The Clinton administration's handling of Elian Gonzalez could cost Vice President Al Gore Cuban-American votes he needs to claim Florida in November's presidential election, but may have little impact elsewhere -- even among voters upset with Gore over Elian.
In New York, a poll released Tuesday shows that likely voters disapprove of Gore's own handling of the Elian custody case by a margin of 2-1. Yet Gore's 52-36 percent advantage over Texas Gov. George W. Bush in that state is unshaken after the raid that removed Elian from his Miami relatives'
home, the poll shows.
Gore ``looked wimpy or wishy-washy to a lot of people,'' Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac College Polling Institute, which ran the survey, said this week. ``But New York is not Florida. This is a case where they don't approve of him [on the Elian issue], but it's not an
all-encompassing issue.''
Nationally, a new CNN/USA Today poll suggests the Elian saga has had no measurable impact on the election: Bush and Gore are in a virtual tie among likely voters nationwide. In the poll released Monday, Bush claimed 49 percent and Gore 44 percent, with a five-percentage-point margin of error.
However, some say, Gore's jockeying for a position on Elian apart from the administration's could prove harmful in ways more difficult to detect. The issue that could concern some voters, they say, is the appearance of Gore posturing for votes in Florida.
But in 187 days, when Americans choose a president, the five-month standoff over the 6-year-old Cuban boy rescued at sea by fishermen and removed from a Miami home by armed federal agents will be far from the minds of most voters -- except in Miami's Little Havana and other Cuban-American
strongholds where 40 years of exile weigh heavily on hearts.
``It will matter to very few people, except for Cuban Americans, who will remember it vividly, as if it were yesterday,'' said Al Cardenas, Havana-born chairman of the Republican Party of Florida. ``No one will vote based on Elian except for Cuban Americans.''
The Elian vote in Florida could be enough to decide the election in a state holding nearly one-tenth of the electoral votes needed to name a president.
The race between Gore and Bush in Florida is close, with Bush holding a lead of only four to five percentage points in polls. An estimated 400,000 Cuban Americans -- two-thirds of those registered -- will vote. That is nearly 8 percent of the 5.3 million Floridians who voted in the last
presidential election.
However, in the end, some observers say, none of this will matter. Bob Butterworth, attorney general and chairman of Gore's campaign in Florida, dismisses the impact of Elian even on Florida's vote: ``Both presidential candidates -- their positions have been the same on it.''
Gore, like Bush, has said since early December that a court should decide Elian's fate. Bush was first to go further, backing U.S. citizenship for Elian. In late March, Gore spoke out for permanent residency for Elian, a dramatic break from Clinton.
Unflagging Passion.
By Fred Tasker. ftasker@herald.com
Not since the 1960s and '70s, perhaps, when the Vietnam war split the nation into equally passionate supporters and dissenters, has the flag taken on such disparate symbolism. In the dozen days since the removal of Elian Gonzalez from his Miami family, demonstrators on opposing sides of the
bitter custody case have brandished the flags of the United States and Cuba as signs of pride and protest, identity and shame.
The disagreement took many forms. In the hours after the 6-year-old was seized by federal agents, demonstrators who filled Little Havana's streets stirred controversy simply by carrying so many Cuban flags -- even though many carried American flags as well.
What did it all mean? Cuban Americans say waving the flag of their homeland is a means of expressing their unity on the issue. Hector Rodriguez of Miami, who was driving up Southwest Eighth Street Monday with three Cuban flags and one American flag fluttering from his car, puts it this way:
''It's the only symbol we have to show that we're united in supporting Elian. It's not a symbol of disrespect for America. Look at how many American flags we had out there too.''
HEATED EMOTIONS
But the actions of some have generated more heat, including:
Repeated instances of carrying the U.S. flag upside down, a traditional signal of distress, but now more often a sign of discontent.
One or two instances of burning the American flag.
At least one instance in which some protesters started to damage the Stars and Stripes, but were stopped by other protesters who wrestled the flag away to safety.
The incidents made many angry enough to respond with strong words and a counter-protest.
''I saw a man take the flag and he had it upside down,'' said Albert Tresvant, of Opa-locka. ''It bothered me. Those people came over here and we gave them food and subsidies, and they do this.
''When I was growing up in Liberty City, we had to raise the flag every day at school. My teacher would have given me the devil if I'd dropped the flag or even let it touch the ground.''
Many of the 2,500 or so at Saturday's counter-protest in South Miami-Dade, carrying hundreds of American flags and a scattering of Confederate flags, expressed similar emotions.
'SIGN' LANGUAGE
Their signs read:
''We don't burn your flag; don't burn ours.''
''Fly it with pride or don't fly it at all.''
''One country, one flag.''
The incidents provided political hay for Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who boasted at a Havana May Day rally: ''No American flag has been trampled or burned on the streets [in Cuba],'' according to Agence France-Presse.
The strong reactions raise questions about how the flags were treated -- and the very personal interpretations of those actions.
By flying the U.S. flag upside down, ''the Cubans wanted to send a message that they felt betrayed by the Clinton Administration,'' says Jaime Suchlicki, director of the University of Miami's Institute for Cuba and Cuban-American Studies. ''It's parallel in their minds with John Kennedy and the
Bay of Pigs. He let down the Cubans then. And it happened in a major way for a second time with what they did with Elian.''
He adds: ''I know it bothers people. But you have to put it in context. Cubans have acted fairly normally compared with other groups -- blacks in Los Angeles, Americans in Seattle. There have been a lot of very violent demonstrations in the past two or three decades.''
THE LAW
What does the law say? The U.S. Flag Code, a set of rules adopted by Congress in 1923 and modified as recently as 1976, says: ''[The flag] is to be flown upside down only as a distress signal.''
''But the Flag Code has no force of law; it's just a resolution of Congress,'' says Whitney Smith, flag historian, director of the Flag Research Center in Winchester, Mass., and author of the flag entry in the World Book Encyclopedia.
Historically, Smith said, instances of the flag being flown upside down to signal distress -- as it was in one Colorado ski camp hit by an avalanche -- are very rare. Doing it as a protest is much more prevalent. It happened dozens of times during Vietnam war protests, he said -- and later in
rallies opposing school integration.
Burning the flag clearly is a more offensive act. One that appears to have happened in recent demonstrations, but -- contrary to some rumors -- very rarely.
''We have no reports of burning,'' says Miami Police spokesman Bill Schwartz.
FLAG-BURNING
''One of my reporters did see an American flag burned,'' says Shannon High-Bassalik, news director of WFOR-CBS 4. The reporter, who asked that her name not be used, confirmed seeing a small group of men burn an American flag at an intersection near Elian's house on the night after he was seized.
''And there were people around them saying in Spanish, 'Please don't do that,' '' the reporter said.
Herald photographer Chuck Fadely snapped a dramatic picture on that fateful Saturday of several protesters wrestling with a U.S. flag, one side trying to shred it, the other protecting it.
Again, what is the law?
''The Supreme Court has made it absolutely clear that burning the flag is protected by the Constitution,'' says Smith, the flag historian.
But he added: ''It doesn't mean people accept it. In America, the flag is like a religion . . . It's what binds us all together, gives us a concrete focus.''
It's why the U.S. Marine Corps Memorial in Washington, depicting the raising of the flag over Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi, is so important, he said; why our national anthem is The Star Spangled Banner.
Flags can be very sensitive subjects, says Terry James Prewitt, a University of West Florida anthropology professor and expert in semiotics, the study of the meanings of symbols.
PUSHING THE BUTTON
''Flags can take on whatever meaning we want to give them. A lot of people believe the flag should be treated with the greatest respect. If it isn't, there's a feeling of a loss of control. Persons using the flag in that way must be aware that they are pushing that button.''
Nobody understands that better than Jose Basulto, head of Brothers to the Rescue and an active protester in the Elian case.
''That [the burning] was regrettable. It's very disrespectful and demeaning to the flag,'' he said.
Some of the South Dade counter-protesters questioned how South Florida Cubans can identify with the same flag that flies over communist Cuba.
''This is the historical Cuban flag,'' Suchlicki explained.
Many Americans are upset that the Supreme Court has ruled that burning the flag is constitutionally protected free speech. In March, the U.S. Senate fell a few votes short, for the fourth time in 11 years, of approving a constitutional amendment to give Congress the power to ban the desecration
of the American flag.
At the South Dade counter-rally, the scattering of Confederate flags was controversial, too.
''I saw that flag, with a big, fat guy in a car,'' says Chris Fulmer, a demonstrator there. ''I went over and asked him to put it back in the car. He asked why. I said because that's the picture that will get in the paper. He just laughed at me. Sure enough, it was in the paper.''
The counter-demonstrators were doing something else that would have been just as controversial 25 years ago. Several were wearing U.S.-flag-pattern clothing: boxer shorts, handkerchiefs on heads, even a bikini-top-and-shorts combination.
Says the Flag Code: ''The flag should not be used as part of a costume . . . ''
''It shows how meanings can change,'' says Prewitt, the semiotics expert. ''In the Vietnam era, using the flag as the basis of clothing was considered highly improper. Now you can go to any big department store and buy it in swim trunks.''
Herald researcher Gay Nemeti contributed to this report.
Discord detouring Cuban musicians
By Jordan Levin. jlevin@herald.com
The Cuban government is strongly urging the island's musicians to steer clear of Miami because of local tension over Elian Gonzalez.
Paulito y Su Elite, a dance band scheduled to play at the club Starfish in Miami Beach, and cabaret artist Juana Bacallao and dance band Pachito Alonso y Su Kini-Kini, who were supposed to play together at the Rumba Room in downtown Miami, both decided not to keep their dates last weekend. Cuban
cultural officials told them they could further inflame a city already heated over the Elian Gonzalez saga.
There may not be any other shows soon. Bacallao and Alonso were supposed to arrive in Miami today en route to shows in Austin and New York City, said Hamlet Casals, who still hoped Wednesday night to persuade the band to play in Miami tonight and Friday. Casals' company, Bright Moon
Entertainment, is trying to bring the musicians here despite the Cuban government's advice.
Casals had sold about 300 tickets for the Rumba Room performances and had bought advertising touting the show.
Last Saturday's massive protest in Little Havana was a particular concern to the Cuban government.
``Cuban cultural authorities advised the artists that Miami was going through a very sensitive situation right now and that it was not the proper time to do Cuban events,'' said Hugo Cancio, who runs the Rumba Room and has presented a number of Cuban artists in the past.
Cancio said he has postponed several Cuban concerts in recent months because of the Elian situation.
``Even under normal circumstances, these events create discontent for some sectors of the Cuban [exile] community,'' he said. ``Now [Cuban officials] felt like it would create a huge controversy and it was not in everyone's best interests. I think the decision was made not only because of
security concerns, but out of concern for a huge controversy or maybe even an act of violence.''
Cuban officials apparently feel so strongly about this that they forbade the band Bamboleo, which starts a U.S. tour June 1, from even changing planes in Miami, according to Jimmy Maslom, head of California-based Ahinama Records, which is booking the Bamboleo tour.
Paulito's band had received visas to come to the United States but decided against appearing here after being told by Cuban cultural officials that it would be unsafe, said Debbie Ohanian, owner of Starfish.
``They were advised not to come to Miami, especially last weekend because of the march,'' Ohanian said. ``They want to come here and play, but they want to keep everybody happy. And if that means not coming to Miami, that's what they'll do.''
Copyright 2000 Miami Herald |