HAVANA, Jan. 21 — Elian Gonzalez’s grandmothers
flew with a U.S. church delegation to New York
City on Friday to press their effort to bring him
home to Cuba.
The women, Mariela Quintana and Raquel
Rodriguez, kissed and embraced Elian’s father, Juan Miguel
Gonzalez, before boarding the plane. Elian’s father
remained in Cuba.
“For the past 24 hours we have been in delicate and
emotional conversations with Elian Gonzalez’s family, a
loving family,” Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National
Council of Churches, said before the plane took off. “We
are very pleased that Elian’s grandmothers have agreed to
accompany us to New York City to have an opportunity to
speak to the American public, particularly to ask that Elian
Gonzalez come home.”
Juan Miguel Gonzalez has said he does not want to
have to visit the United States to pick up his son. Cuban
officials say they fear enemies of Cuba’s communist
government will hinder his return to Cuba with a subpoena
to appear before Congress.
The women were due to arrive at John F. Kennedy
International Airport at midafternoon aboard a Lear jet
owned by the church council, said spokesman Roy Lloyd.
Leaders of the council, the largest organization of Protestant
churches in the United States, have strongly advocated the
return of Elian to Cuba.
PRESS CONFERENCE PLANNED
The women hope to use the visit to demonstrate they
are not being pressured by the Cuban government to seek
the boy’s return. They were planning to speak about their
efforts to get Elian back to Cuba at a press conference after
their arrival, Lloyd said.
They also were expected to meet with Democratic
Rep. Charles Rangel of New York.
Supporters of the boy’s family in Cuba hope the visit
by the women might help convince U.S. skeptics that the
family really did want the six-year-old boy to return. Some
anti-Castro activists claim the family’s appeal for the boy’s
return is made under government pressure.
Congressional sources said New York was chosen to
avoid Miami, where Elian has been living with his father’s
uncle for almost two months and where there were
disturbances over earlier proposals to send him home.
Elian’s relatives in Miami, who have taken legal action
to keep him in the United States, said they would welcome
a visit by the grandmothers, but had no plans to take him to
New York City to see them and will not allow them to take
the boy back to Cuba before the federal court rules in the
case.
“That has to go to court so that justice and the law of
this country can resolve this problem,” Elian’s great-uncle
Delfin Gonzalez said Friday. “The boy is going to be raised
here with a healthy and clean mind.”
CUBAN-AMERICAN PARENTS SPEAK OUT
Meanwhile, in a new maneuver in the family dispute
that has grown into an international tug-of-war, U.S.
lawmakers held a news conference in Miami to highlight a
number of cases where they charged that parents who fled
Cuba have been denied custody of their children by Fidel
Castro’s communist government.
Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Diaz-Balart, both
Republicans, were joined at a press conference by several
parents who said that Cuban officials have denied requests that
they be reunited with children who remain in Cuba.
The U.S. diplomatic mission in Cuba issued visas to the
two grandmothers Thursday, but the trip appeared doubtful
after a meeting Thursday night between the relatives and
officials from the church council.
As she left, Quintana, Elian’s paternal grandmother,
waved her finger and said “no, no, no” when journalists
asked if she was going to New York.
Quintana said before the meeting she would only go to
the United States if she could return with Elian, who was
found floating at sea in late November after the boat on
which he was heading for south Florida capsized, killing his
mother and 10 other would-be refugees.
The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service has
ordered Elian returned to his father in Cuba. Elian’s Miami
relatives and Cuban-American activists argue he would
have a better life in the United States.
Attorneys for Lazaro Gonzalez, the boy’s great-uncle
filed a lawsuit accusing the INS of violating Elian’s
due-process rights and asked a judge to prevent Elian’s
return before he has an asylum hearing.
Elian’s cousin, Marisleysis Gonzalez, told local
television in Miami that the boy does not want to return with
his grandmothers to Cuba.
“He asked me ‘Are they coming to pick me up?’ And I
said, ‘Well, they are here to see you, do you want to leave
with them?’ and he said ‘No, I want to tell them that I don’t
want to go back over there.”’
On Thursday, the federal judge in the case asked
lawyers if they preferred he step aside because of his ties to
both sides. U.S. District Court Judge James Lawrence King
has a son with political ties to Elian’s Miami relatives and a
daughter who works for the U.S. government.
King said his son hired Armando Gutierrez, now
working as spokesman for those relatives, to help in his
re-election bid. King’s daughter is an assistant U.S. attorney
in Miami.
Lawyers for Lazaro Gonzalez said they saw no reason
for King to recuse himself. U.S. Attorney Tom Scott asked
for a day to respond.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.