Published Friday, May 26, 2000, in the Miami Herald
Elian's new neighbors worried about fallout
By Frances Robles. frobles@herald.com
WASHINGTON -- Elian Gonzalez and his dad settled Thursday into a Revolutionary War-era abode in a chic city neighborhood, their third home in the past month.
Some neighbors were aghast over the evening arrival, worried that a gaggle of press, protesters and kooks would transform their tranquil hamlet. Some started flocking to the 6 1/2-acre Rosedale estate owned by Youth For Understanding International Exchange, hoping to catch some action.
``It's very troublesome for us,'' said Louise Kenney, who lives across the street. ``I'm not sure how I feel about it.''
Cathy Naughton plans to take periodic strolls to peek. ``I love Elian,'' Naughton said. ``I fell in love with him watching him on cable. Bottom line is: I think it's going to be fun to have him around.''
Not everyone thought so. Greg Craig, attorney for Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, was forced to meet with the student exchange organization, U.S. marshals and neighbors to address pressing issues like whether people could still walk their dogs on the property's rolling green park. (They
can.) They also worried whether streets would be closed off. (They won't.)
``The only thing I'm concerned about is crazy people roaming around,'' said Alice Higgins, a banker who is excited about the family's visit. ``I wish we could sit down and welcome him to the neighborhood. I bet we can't. I'm sure he'd like to play with the neighborhood children. I bet he
can't.''
She mulled it over and said, ``I hope we don't get any protesters.''
Despite her wish, one sole picketer did show up with a sign urging Juan Miguel not to take Elian to Cuba.
For now, Juan Miguel Gonzalez is only taking Elian to Rosedale, a seven-bedroom home built by a one-legged war general, Uriah Forest, who was the first elected mayor of Georgetown. The general built the house for his wife, who wanted her peace and quiet, exactly what the Gonzalez clan is trying
to avoid.
The Gonzalezes and their dozen visitors felt trapped at the Wye Plantation, a bucolic estate on Maryland's Eastern Shore away from civilization, the press and the boy's Miami relatives. The spot was so far away that Cuban diplomats had to log every visit with the U.S. State Department because it
was farther than 25 miles from the city.
The Cuban envoys began arriving at the new compound before Elian and his father even got there. Once they drove up, Elian ran around the veranda. Fifty yards away, news photographers hung over a five-foot fence and took their shots -- much as they had every day outside the Miami relatives' home
in Little Havana.
With all the activity, Kenney hopes the house doesn't get trashed.
``I brought up, `What about the preservation?' '' she said, referring to the neighborhood's morning meeting with Craig. ``They all looked at me like they were shocked.''
Kenney was assured that Rosedale, a site on the National Register of Historic Places about which she penned a book, would go unscathed. She was told the Gonzalezes are aware of its historic significance.
``What, they told them, `You can come, but don't let your kids mess anything up'?'' she said. ``It irritates me that they're not thinking about the preservation. They don't turn the White House over to people's families.''
No signs of Elian being abused, Reno says
By Carol Rosenberg . crosenberg@herald.com
The South Florida native said she intends to return to her Kendall home when her term ends.
Attorney General Janet Reno on Thursday called Elian Gonzalez's pioneer scarf "dumb,'' but said absent signs of abuse -- and there are none -- the Justice Department would not intervene in the child's care.
``He is in the custody of his father,'' Juan Miguel Gonzalez, Reno said in an interview Thursday with The Herald. Immigration authorities ``can influence security issues'' and intervene if there are signs of criminal conduct, abuse or neglect of the child.
``We have seen none of that,'' she said, explaining that a psychiatrist and a social worker visit the child on alternate weeks. In between, U.S. marshals are on the scene and see Elian most days, Reno said.
Pressed on whether she was troubled by the pioneer scarf, a symbol of the Young Communist movement in Cuba that Elian, 6, was recently sporting on the Wye Plantation in suburban Washington, D.C., she replied: ``I just think it was a dumb thing.''
But Reno said she had great confidence in Juan Miguel's ability to raise the boy because he and the child's late mother, Elisabeth Brotons, had done such a fine job so far.
In Miami to address a posh gathering of the Florida Bar, the South Florida native also said she intends to return to her Kendall home when her term as the U.S. top law enforcer ends with Clinton's administration.
``You bet,'' said Reno, who turns 62 on July 21.
She said she expects to get her own groceries at a Publix, drive herself to the movies and be completely unrestricted in her South Florida as a former attorney general. Security advisors will have no influence on her activities: ``I'll be a private citizen,'' she said.
Told that even supporters wondered whether she could live here peacefully in the wake of strong emotions stirred by the April 22 federal law enforcement raid in Little Havana, she said: ``I have a great faith in the Cuban-American community. I know they're angry and feel betrayed, but they are
also some of the warmest, most loving people.''
She reiterated her oft-repeated comment that she hoped to start "a conversation'' with Cuban Americans in South Florida about "working together.''
'A MEAN, EVIL MAN'
Asked whether Fidel Castro's praise of the raid helped or hurt her locally, she replied: ``I don't care what Fidel Castro says. I think he's a mean, evil man who's done great damage to his country and to people that I care about.''
Reno added that Juan Miguel Gonzalez should not be held responsible for Castro's legacy of killings and other violence, even though ``I disagree with [the father's] political persuasion.''
She declined to discuss why Juan Miguel Gonzalez had not chosen to defect, and stay in the United States with his wife and two children. ``I think he understands . . . I think he has the freedom'' to choose whether to live here or return to Cuba.
Told that many people -- even those without a political sense of Cuba -- were baffled by the father's unwillingness to defect, she replied: ``He'd have to answer that.''
The attorney general also said she favored a meeting between Elian's Miami relatives and mental health care workers to discuss how best to set up a reconciliation meeting with Juan Miguel Gonzalez -- before they might see the boy.
``The first step is to get the adults reconciled with each other,'' so that Elian would not be troubled by family tensions in an eventual meeting.
But she said she wouldn't offer to host the Gonzalez family reunion. ``I don't think that would be the best way to go,'' she said.
SHOWING UP ALONE
Reno had said earlier that she considered showing up alone, and unarmed, at the Little Havana home of Lazaro Gonzalez to retrieve the boy during the crisis. Thursday, she said she abandoned that idea after Lazaro Gonzalez told reporters at an impromptu news conference that ``we would have to
take him by force.''
``After he made that statement,'' she said, she had no choice but to accept ``the law enforcement advice that the safest way you can do it is to show the force, then you don't have to use it.''
Asked whether she regretted not attempting a solo mission, Reno replied: ``No. I think it worked out.''
The former Dade prosecutor never flinched during a wide-ranging interview on the Elian Gonzalez case and her future in South Florida, reeling off her responses easily.
She did hesitate, briefly, when asked if she was troubled that the 6-year-old would return to a country with restrictions on the press and freedom of speech.
After a pause, Reno reeled off a lengthy soliloquy about several troubling conditions that children around the world face today: poverty, gun violence, bad education -- as well as living in a country where freedoms are limited.
Questions linger in Elian rescue
Accounts differ on whether couple floated to Biscayne Bay
By Alfonso Chardy. achardy@herald.com
Marine experts said Thursday it's highly unlikely that the two adult survivors of the Elian Gonzalez shipwreck tragedy could have drifted into a marina facing Biscayne Bay as they claim.
Instead, the experts said, survivors Arianne Horta and boyfriend Nivaldo Fernandez would more likely have floated in ocean waters east of Key Biscayne. A fisherman now admits that this is where he found them, although his account is contradicted by another eyewitness.
``It's highly unlikely, in my experience, that someone would have drifted from the oceanside to the bayside,'' said Stephen Baig, an oceanographer at the National Hurricane Center. He said currents in the bay are self-contained and ``only slightly influenced by the ocean currents.''
John Wang, professor of applied marine physics at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science near Crandon Park Marina, where Horta and Fernandez turned up, said winds could have pushed the couple into the bay -- but only if the winds were stronger than five miles per hour. Coast
Guard records show wind speed at about four miles per hour on the morning of arrival Nov. 25.
Pinpointing how Horta, 22, and Fernandez, 33, came ashore is key to resolving a major mystery of the Elian saga which began to unfold last Thanksgiving Day when two men on a fishing trip rescued the boy two miles off Commercial Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale.
While attention has been focused on Elian, little has been said about how Horta and Fernandez arrived. And now that newly released U.S. Coast Guard telephone and radio logs and other documents point to inconsistencies in their story, it's more relevant than ever to establish precisely what
happened.
Horta and Fernandez are the only sources of information about the voyage that brought Elian to U.S. shores on the same day the couple turned up at Crandon Park Marina on the west side of the Rickenbacker Causeway near Key Biscayne.
In interviews this week, Horta insisted that she and Fernandez swam to the marina when they spotted the lights of Key Biscayne.
But a fisherman listed as a witness in a Miami-Dade Police report told The Herald he rescued them at a spot in the Atlantic Ocean perhaps as much as seven miles east of Key Biscayne.
Reniel Carmenate, an air conditioning equipment installer, disclosed this piece of information only after being told that Horta insisted that she and Fernandez swam to shore. Initially, Carmenate said he had found Horta and Fernandez floating in the water near Crandon Park Marina.
Carmenate did not explain why he did not come forward before with the account about the offshore rescue.
In an interview, Carmenate said he took Horta and Fernandez to Crandon Park Marina before notifying authorities because he wanted to prevent the couple from being returned to Cuba. Under U.S. law, Cuban immigrants intercepted at sea are generally repatriated, while those who reach shore usually
get to stay.
The unusual circumstances of how Horta and Fernandez came to be at Crandon Park Marina initially raised the suspicions of the U.S. Border Patrol that the Elian voyage was a smuggling operation, according to the newly-released Coast Guard records.
Those suspicions were reinforced by a Miami-Dade Police report prepared by Officers Frank Rodriguez and Osvaldo Castillo who interviewed Horta and Fernandez at Crandon Park Marina Nov. 25.
The report said Horta and Fernandez paid $2,000 to board the homemade boat that ostensibly capsized late Monday, Nov. 22, throwing all 14 people aboard into the water leaving only Horta, Fernandez and Elian as survivors.
Horta denied this week that she or Fernandez paid any money for the trip.
Juan Ruiz, a window installer and another witness listed in the Miami-Dade Police report, said he was contacted by the Border Patrol. Wednesday, Ruiz said he told the Border Patrol what he saw: a delirious and blistered Horta and Fernandez lying nearly unconscious in the water tied to an inner
tube floating at Crandon Park Marina .
Ruiz's story raises even more questions. Ruiz said he saw Horta and Fernandez in the water shortly after he and a friend docked their boat following a night of fishing.
Ruiz said he jumped into the water and brought Horta to a boat ramp, then jumped back in and fished out Fernandez.
A relaxed Marisleysis moving on
After raid, cousin `holding up well'
By Meg Laughlin. mlaughlin@herald.com
Marisleysis Gonzalez's hair is heavily blond-streaked. She is tan, slimmer than ever. She has a full set of braces on her teeth, rather than the retainer she wore for many public appearances.
And despite what she wants, she realizes she has no control over what happens to Elian, her friends say.
``She has developed a healthier attitude,'' says Roxana Revello, her former cosmetology teacher from Miami High School, who has remained close to the young woman. ``Before, she thought she had to keep him here. Now, she says that whatever happens is up to God and is for the best.''
About a month ago, Gonzalez quit her job as an assistant loan processor at Ocean Bank on Le Jeune Road to rest before pursuing a career as a hair stylist. In January, she passed two of the three state tests required to do this. In a few months, according to Revello, she should be hard at it.
The 21-year-old Gonzalez has moved from the much-publicized family home in Little Havana (where Elian was forcibly removed by federal agents April 22) to a pink deco home in Silver Bluff, between Coral Way and Southwest 12th Avenue.
``Just relaxing here with friends,'' she said outside the home on Thursday. ``I am holding up well.''
``This stress-free time has helped her,'' says her friend, Yassiel Veciana.
But as recently as two weeks ago, she was still turning up in 911 emergency medical calls.
Records of the calls show that Gonzalez continues to be afflicted by anxiety attacks and illness -- the latest incident just two weeks ago.
On May 4, Gonzalez fainted in a LeJeune Road movie lobby, and a bystander called 911.
``It is Marisleysis,'' said the anonymous caller on the 911 tape. ``She was nervous. Someone made a bad impression on her. She passed out.''
Veciana was with her for one of three emergency runs to a hospital in April. At the time, Gonzalez, ill with problems related to the colitis she has had for several years, spent four days in Mercy Hospital. (Colitis, lesions in the colon, is believed to be stress-related.)
``Marisleysis is such a sensitive person. She has always worn her heart on her sleeve,'' Revello said. ``Those of us who know her worry about her because we know how fragile she is -- how susceptible to sudden heartache.''
The medical emergency two weeks ago was her ninth since Elian's arrival last November.
Fire-rescue billing records over several years show that Gonzalez suffers from ``acute emotional anxiety'' and ``panic attacks.'' In the 12 times she has been treated by fire rescue since 1996, she has exhibited a variety of stress-related symptoms: severe intestinal pain, repeated vomiting,
fainting, semi-consciousness and shallow breathing.
Before Gonzalez graduated from Miami High in 1997, she repeatedly applied to be a teacher's aide in a Miami elementary school when she graduated. But despite glowing recommendations from several teachers, she was not hired by the public school system because her grades were below average and she
had been forced out of the local community college for repeatedly dropping classes.
``Academics are not her thing, but she is wonderful with small children,'' says a former teacher who asked not to be named.
After high school, Gonzalez left a part-time job as a receptionist at Pep Boys in Little Havana and became a shampoo girl at a Coral Way hair salon. Then in 1999, she joined Ocean Bank, and now plans to begin a new career.
``You have to wish her success,'' Revello said. ``Whether you agree with what she wants for Elian or not, you should know that she always has good intentions.''
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