Castro's New Recruit?
By Karen DeYoung. Washington Post Staff Writer. Friday, May 19, 2000; Page C01
Elian Gonzalez is largely out of sight these days, sequestered in a gilded guest house on the Eastern Shore. But he certainly is not out of mind--at least for those on the front lines of the simmering, low-intensity conflict over his fate.
The latest skirmish began Tuesday when Granma, Cuba's Communist Party newspaper, published four photographs of Elian "at the little school organized at Wye Plantation, Maryland." Elian banging two sticks together. Elian joking around with the four first-grade schoolmates sent from
Havana to keep him company. Elian sitting on a chair while mothers of the schoolmates shake maracas to entertain them. Elian sitting at a table doing schoolwork. Nothing controversial there.
Except that in each picture, Elian is wearing red shorts, a white T-shirt and a blue kerchief tied around his neck. The kerchief that every Cuban schoolchild wears to class every day, denoting membership in the Pioneers, the party youth organization. The kerchief they wear when singing the Cuban
national anthem, saluting the Cuban flag and pledging each morning to "be like Che."
Elian's Miami relatives were outraged at the photos, one of which was reprinted across nearly half the front page of El Nuevo Herald, the Miami Herald's Spanish-language sister paper, with the headline "The Pioneer Elian in Washington."
"We're very troubled," Kendall Coffey, the relatives' attorney, told the Herald on Tuesday. "He's being paraded as a trophy in the garb of the Communist Party. It's happening even more rapidly than our worst expectations."
The relatives have repeatedly complained that Elian would be "brainwashed" by his father--the same charge that Cuba made against the relatives during the boy's five-month stay in Miami, when he was paraded before anti-Castro demonstrators and videotaped pointing his finger and telling
his father he didn't want to go back to Cuba.
Coffey said the relatives would protest the Pioneer garb to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
The INS, however, seemed unperturbed. "It's not INS's business what Elian wears on a daily basis," said spokeswoman Maria Cardona. "Those issues are up to his father."
"I don't see what the problem is," Luis Fernandez, spokesman for the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, told the Herald. "It's normal. Children go to school in a uniform--just the way they do at private schools in the United States."
But the photos were the last straw for Rep. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), already troubled by the U.S. government issuing visas to Elian's classmates and teacher, and allowing them to set up a first-grade classroom "where we permit indoctrination to take place." Where is the justice in
allowing Elian's young mind to be influenced by communist education, Menendez asked, at the very time a U.S. court is considering whether he can apply for political asylum here?
"The thrust of my concern," Menendez said yesterday, "is that here we have in . . . the official newspaper, the school set up at the Wye Plantation. There's Elian in a Pioneer suit . . . and what I assume is being taught . . . is [what is] taught in Cuba--indoctrination into
Marxist-Leninist ideology."
Menendez said he was writing to the State Department, the INS and President Clinton, and circulating a "Dear Colleague" letter on Capitol Hill to see if others "support the view that we gave visas to individuals to conduct classes in indoctrination."
Yesterday, Cuba struck back, mixing animal metaphors to ridicule the relatives as a "pack of hounds" in the "Miami chicken coop." Elian and his classmates would far rather be in their own Cuban classroom, said Granma, but were forced to study in their makeshift school to keep
them "not only from the claws of imperialism and the Miami mafia, but also from the claws of ignorance, egotism and lack of culture."
As if that were not insult enough, Havana also this week proudly showed off what it said were copies of Mother's Day postcards sent by Elian to his grandmothers and great-grandmother, each with a childishly drawn red flower and each signed "Your grandson, Elian" . . . neatly written in
cursive!!! One of the issues before the appeals court is whether a block-letter, all capitals "ELIAN" at the bottom of a political asylum application, submitted on his behalf by his Miami great-uncle, constitutes the 6-year-old's witting signature.
"Anyone," Granma noted loftily, "can compare the signature of our boy . . . with that 'scratch' submitted as his 'free signature' on the English-language asylum application before the 'illustrious' American court."
As all sides nervously await the court's ruling, similar skirmishes are breaking out all over. In response to a Justice Department offer to set up a meeting between the Miami relatives and a government-hired psychiatrist seeing Elian, attorneys for the relatives sent a series of demands for
telephone contact with Elian, and for agreement that he would be seen not only with them, their lawyers and physicians, but also with a Miami Catholic priest they identified as the boy's "spiritual adviser." Questioning the purpose of a meeting with the psychiatrist, they asked the
government to confirm that it was to "sensitize" them as to the best way to approach Elian during their "reintroduction."
In its own letter Tuesday, Justice countered that the only purpose in seeing the psychiatrist was to help facilitate a meeting between the relatives and Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who would then decide whether they could meet with Elian.
Letters, photographs and audio and video tapes to Elian were welcome, Justice said. "We invite you to send such items to Elian in care of his father, Mr. Juan Miguel Gonzalez, at 154 Carmichael Farm Road, Queenstown, Maryland 21658. . . . The determination about what materials will be shown
to Elian will be made by his father."
Visits by others to Elian? "Such persons can convey their written requests to Mr. Gonzalez at the above address or to his lawyer. . . . Mr. Gonzalez will determine who should and who should not visit his son." Telephone calls? "Telephone access to Elian should be determined by Mr.
Gonzalez."
Angelos: Orioles Would Sign Cuban Defectors for Team
By George Solomon. Washington Post Staff Writer. Friday, May 19, 2000; Page D06
Peter Angelos, the majority owner of the Baltimore Orioles, said yesterday that despite reports to the contrary, the team would be interested in scouting and signing Cuban defectors. "But we would not solicit or encourage anyone to defect--rather we would discourage that," Angelos said
yesterday.
The Washington Times reported Wednesday that the Orioles were not interested in signing Cuban defectors.
But Angelos, whose team played a home-and-home series against a Cuban all-star team last year, said the Orioles eagerly scouted pitcher Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez before he signed with the New York Yankees several years ago.
"I was advised not to sign him," Angelos said. "Obviously, that was a mistake."
Angelos said that if a Cuban player were to defect and was a prospect, "He would be judged on his own merit, without political implications."
© 2000 The Washington Post Company |