Mary Lou Pickel - Staff. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Monday, May 22, 2000
George Garcia feels frustration and anger well up inside when people who speak about Elian Gonzalez believe Fidel Castro cares about family reunification.
The last time Garcia saw his father was in a Havana airport 27 years ago when Communist soldiers pointed guns at the man and blocked him from flying to the United States with his wife and seven children.
"If they leave, you'll never see them again," the soldiers told Garcia's father. And they were right. "I have never seen him to this day," Garcia said.
Garcia was one of about 100 people who gathered Sunday afternoon at a hotel in Buckhead to talk about the Elian Gonzalez case.
"Fidel Castro does not care one bit about parental rights or parents and children being together," Garcia of Acworth said after the meeting. "He cares about destroying people who don't agree with Communism."
The forum, organized by Concerned Americans of Cuban Heritage, was billed as a chance for the Cuban community of Atlanta to hold an open dialogue and explain why many feel so strongly that 6-year-old Elian should remain in the United States with his Miami relatives instead of returning to Cuba
with his father.
The panelists --- Jose Fernandez, Frank Fernandez and Rafael Andino --- are Cuban-Americans who attended Georgia Tech and have careers in business. They likened the fervor of Cuban-Americans over the Elian case to African-Americans' outrage over the Confederate flag or Jewish zeal over the
Holocaust.
They also said they wanted to debunk stereotypes that portray the Cuban-American community as intolerant of opposing political views.
Organizers got their chance on the first question they fielded, from Baba Tunde Abdullah, 54. The southwest Atlanta resident was indignant that the group compared the life Elian would face in Cuba with life under slavery.
"I am a descendent of a slave," Abdullah said. "It really tees me off when you're trying to compare the way those people live in Cuba with slavery." Abdullah noted that most of the exiles in the room were white, while many people living in Cuba are black.
"They live in a system where the Cuban people decided these were the laws," he said. "Who gives you the right to play God over this man's child?" he asked as everyone shouted "No!"
But organizers calmed the crowd and encouraged those with opposing views to express them.
"It's not a racial issue," said Jose Fernandez. "Hundreds of people have risked life and limb to cross the Florida Straits," he said. "It is a slavery issue. If that boy had escaped on the Underground Railroad, it would have been immoral for anyone to send him back, even
though his father asked for him."
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