-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 20, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------Let Elián go home
Cuban child is victim of U.S. blockade
By Leslie Feinberg
"A plane! A plane!" Elián González exclaimed on Jan. 11, pointing to the skies over Miami. "I want you to take me back to Cuba."
The six-year-old's emotional appeal to an airplane passing overhead was filmed by a crew from Miami television station WPLG. The report went out over the Associated Press wire service on Jan. 12.
Despite the child's stated wish, right-wing Cuban Americans continue to obstruct Elián's return to his only living parent, his four grandparents, his friends and his homeland. Instead, they argue that the child should be raised in Miami, housed with distant relatives who are strangers to Elián.
The demand to repatriate Elián is a rising tide in Cuba. Millions of Cubans of all ages have marched in anti-imperialist protests demanding the U.S. return Elián to his country.
A call for a gigantic march to the U.S. Interests Section in Havana on Jan. 14--the date the Immigration and Naturalization Service had set to send Elián home--is expected to escalate this "battle of the masses."
In the U.S., 11 activists in New York City were arrested Jan. 11 when they blocked the doors of the INS offices at Federal Plaza. Another 11 were arrested the following day in San Francisco.
These defiant actions ushered in a national civil disobedience campaign to demand the repatriation of Elián.
Similar civil disobedience is due to take place in Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, Detroit, Denver, Pittsburgh, Albuquerque, Kingston, N.Y. and northern New Jersey. A Washington, D.C., press conference is slated for Jan. 14.
This campaign is expected to grow and elevate the struggle in support of Elián's return to Cuba.
The burgeoning demand in Cuba, across the U.S. and around the world for the release of Elián is creating a diplomatic and political nightmare for the U.S. government.
On Jan. 12, Attorney General Janet Reno upheld an INS ruling that had recognized the custody rights of Elián's father. Reno said the matter could only be decided in federal court, not in a Florida state court.
Trampling on due process
The INS ruling to return Elián home by Jan. 14 was made public on Jan. 6. In response, right-wing Cubans angrily marched through downtown Miami. Dozens were arrested.
A distant relative of the boy, Lazaro González, turned to the Florida state courts. On Jan. 10, Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge Rosa Rodriguez granted great-uncle González temporary custody of Elián.
Rodriguez issued a temporary order blocking Elián's return home to Cuba. The order was designed to buy time by keeping the child in the U.S. at least until a hearing set for March 6.
Rodriguez said in court that she believed Elián's relatives when they claimed that if the child were returned to Cuba he would face "imminent and irreparable harm, including loss of due-process rights and harm to his physical and emotional well-being."
Unlike the U.S., Cuba provides health care to every citizen at no expense. His emotional wellbeing is being jeopardized here in this country.
This child, who was shipwrecked and watched his mother drown, is being forcibly separated from his father, stepmother, infant brother, grandparents and friends in Cuba. It is these loved ones he has grown up with who can help him deal with his trauma.
Instead, he is being manipulated as a pawn of anti-communist Cuban Americans. The child has been paraded around dressed in T-shirts bearing the emblems of right-wing Cuban American organizations.
Media accounts of the court decision cynically featured Elián holding up his hands in a "V for victory" sign, as though the six-year-old were excited about Rodri guez's court decision.
Reporters later pressed Elián's great-uncle Delfin González to admit that he had coached and urged the child to make the hand gestures in front of the media outside the courthouse.
And due process? Even the rules of patriarchal-capitalist law are being trampled. The basic tenet of custody cases mandates that parents must be notified in advance of a hearing so they can be present and represented.
Family law experts explain that Rodriguez--a state judge--had no jurisdiction to intervene in a legal battle involving federal immigration law.
"She is, in my view, facilitating a de facto kidnapping of this child," said Prof. David Abraham from the University of Miami.
Best judge money can buy
The day after Rodriguez's ruling, the wire services were abuzz with the news that the judge is beholden to Armando Gutierrez, spokesperson for Elián's Miami relatives.
Gutierrez helped get Rodriguez elected to the bench just 16 months ago.
Gutierrez--a "political strategist" for the family--has pulled together the legal team in this case.
And he has personally orchestrated the media campaign to keep Elián in the U.S. This has included "All-American" photos of Elián touring Disneyland, being cheered in a parade, swinging a baseball bat and romping with a new puppy.
On July 11, leaks to the media revealed that Judge Rodriguez had paid a total of $63,446.22 to Gutierrez and to his wife Maritza's business, Creative Ideas Inc., to run public relations and advertising campaigns for her election for the bench seat.
Prof. Anthony Alfieri, director of the Center for Ethics and Public Service at the University of Miami Law School, said the judge violated the Florida Code of Judicial Conduct by failing to disclose this relationship.
Robert Jarvis, an ethics professor at Nova Southeastern School of Law, observed, "You have to ask yourself today--was the fix in?"
In addition, the Jan. 12 Miami Herald reported that "Rodriguez's short stint on the bench has been marked by controversy." State prosecutors began investigating her for campaign finance violations soon after her election on Sept. 1, 1998.
"There is still an ongoing investigation," Miami-Dade chief corruption prosecutor Joe Centorino told the newspaper on Jan. 11.
But the Florida state court decision is not the only stall tactic being used to bar Elián's return to Cuba.
The child's Miami relatives have vowed to take their challenge to federal court.
Reno, in her Jan. 12 statement, said the INS deadline to return the boy to Cuba would be extended to allow legal challenges. She didn't set a new date.
House Rep. Dan Burton (R.-Ind.) has tried to obstruct the departure date set for Elián's return home by serving the six-year-old with a subpoena that would require the child to testify before a House committee on Feb. 10.
Republican lawmakers are also reportedly working to draft legislation granting Elián permanent U.S. citizenship as soon as Congress reconvenes later in January.
'No more orphans to the embargo!'
U.S. and international statutes are clear in this case: The laws mandate that this child must be allowed to return to his homeland.
Bernard Perlmutter, director of the University of Miami's Children and Youth Law Clinic, said Florida law is equally clear: Child custody rests with the natural parent, unless there is clear proof that the parent is unfit.
All the facts point to the conclusion that Juan Miguel González is a loving parent. The tourism worker, who lives in the seaside town of Cardenás, enjoyed joint custody of Elián with his former wife.
Miguel González had to endure the arrogant and humiliating questions of INS agents. They grilled him in the Havana home of a diplomat. Did he know the size of his son's sneakers? Could he name his child's teachers? Miguel passed their tests.
Daily News journalist Jim Dwyer wrote on Jan. 11, "The nongovernment Americans who visited him have no doubt that an authentic and loving bond exists between father and son."
And so the right wing is relying on the argument that Miguel refuses to come to the U.S. because he is under pressure by the Cuban government.
But Miguel has expressed his fear that if he came to the U.S. he, too--like his son--might not be allowed to leave. González told reporters that the INS could not assure him that he could just pick up his son and go home.
Juan Miguel González, his wife and new baby have reportedly been driven into hiding in Cuba to evade an army of reporters that has made their life a nightmare since their son's abduction.
Many people in the U.S. have heard another argument--widely repeated in the media--about why this child should not be allowed to return home to Cuba: Elián would have a higher standard of living in this country.
What a disingenuous line of reasoning. Most people in this country don't realize that the Cuban standard of living has been battered by a criminal economic blockade engineered and enforced by the United States.
And Dan Burton is one of the architects of this plan to economically strangulate Cuba in an effort to bring about a counter-revolution on the island.
In a Jan. 11 press statement following the New York City civil disobedience, the International Peace for Cuba Appeal denounced this illegal form of economic warfare.
"It is the U.S. government that has created untold hardship for the Cuban people. The truth is that it is the decades-long U.S.-imposed blockade of Cuba that should be put on trial," the statement stressed.
Speaking at an on-the-spot press conference before the civil disobedience in New York City on Jan. 11, former Attorney General Ramsey Clark hit the U.S.-government-imposed embargo. He said the blockade against Cuba was the reason Elián's mother fled the country and was ultimately the reason she died.
"Once again we see there is no limit to the lawlessness, the hypocrisy, and the cruelty of those who have so long opposed the Cuban people and the government of Cuba. Now they stoop to kidnapping small children.
"No more orphans to the embargo," Clark concluded.
Other speakers demanding Elián's return included Rev. Lucius Walker, IFCO/Pastors for Peace; Teresa Gutierrez, Committee to Demand the Return of Elián to His Father in Cuba; Jerry Dominguez, Local 169 UNITE and the Association of Mexican American Workers; Richard Becker, Peace for Cuba Appeal; Alvin Bailey, Pastors for Peace; and Minnie Bruce Pratt, lesbian author and anti-racist activist.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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