By Amy Westfeldt
Associated Press Writer
Friday , April 14, 2000

UNION CITY, N.J. –– More than 1,200 miles north of Miami, the nation's second-largest Cuban community is backing protesters who plan to resist government efforts to take Elian Gonzalez from his Miami relatives.

"They want to take him, they'll take him by force," said Rafael Rodriguez, sipping espresso at a cafeteria Thursday while watching Spanish language television coverage of the saga. "All Cubans, we are together."

Cuban-Americans called Attorney General Janet Reno "a sick woman," President Clinton a traitor and compared the government's plan to take Elian from Miami to Anne Frank's capture by the Nazis.

"He would not be killed immediately, but he would be subjected to brainwashing" once he is returned to Cuba, said Sergio Alonzo.

Twelve-year-old Manny Hernandez said he thought Elian and his father should both stay in the United States, honoring the wishes of Elian's dead mother that the 6-year-old stay here.

If that can't happen, he said, "They should fight as long as possible to keep him."

Many said they doubted the sincerity of Elian's father, saying he is being controlled by the Cuban government.

"There is no father in Cuba. The only father is the government," Alonzo said. "Castro is his father."

An estimated 150,000 Cuban-Americans – less than one-third of Miami's Cuban population – live in Hudson County, especially in Union City, West New York and North Bergen, gritty, working-class cities lined up side by side across the Hudson River from New York City.

Manuel Rodriguez is credited with creating the community, arriving in the late 1940s from Fomento, Cuba. Cubans began to dominate towns that once provided blue-collar manufacturing jobs for Germans and Italians, he said, taking jobs in northern New Jersey's embroidery industry, opening restaurants and clothing stores.

Their numbers have diminished in the cities as many moved to the suburbs. Union City now has a 25 percent Cuban population, but Cuban political organizations are based here, many Cubans come here to shop and thousands crowd the streets each year for an annual parade.

The fate of the 6-year-old boy is evoking the same emotions and painful memories of immigration and abuses in Cuba. Leaders said Cuban exiles in New Jersey would have supported Elian as forcefully as protesters in Miami.

"The community here is as united and as militant," said Remberto Perez, regional director of the Cuban American National Foundation.

Abel Hernandez Jr., 35, wasn't so sure, saying the Cuban population in New Jersey is older, more spread out and has fewer stories of treacherous trips to America.

"We don't have that power, that feeling," said Hernandez. "There's some people (in Miami) who have gone on rafts and stuff like that."

                                    © 2000 The Associated Press