MIAMI BEACH, Jan. 27 — The host of the meeting
between Elian Gonzalez and his grandmothers
said Thursday that while she first believed the
boy should be returned to his father, she felt
after the reunion that the 6-year-old would live
in fear and without freedom if he were sent back
to Cuba. The grandmothers, for their part,
echoed Cuba’s claim that Sister Jeanne
O’Laughlin was not a neutral host, and said they
had found “a completely different boy” in Elian.
“We want to have the same boy we used to have,”
said maternal grandmother Raquel Rodriquez after a
meeting with members of Congress.
“Our grandson is a completely different boy,” echoed
Mariela Quintana. “He has changed completely. We have to
save this boy as soon as possible.”
“We told him we wanted to bring him back to Cuba.
He nodded his head yes,” she added.
HOST: ‘FEAR-FILLED’ MEETING
Back in Miami Beach, where the reunion was held on
Wednesday night, O’Laughlin told a local TV station,
WSVN, “I’m going to take the side of what I feel the child
right now needs, and that is freedom.”
“I do not think that that child will be able to live without
fear if he goes back,” she said.
O’Laughlin told MSNBC that she was disturbed by
how “fear-filled” the meeting was. Cuba accused her of
undermining the visit and suggested she allowed “spies” to
monitor it.
At times trembling and in tears, the Dominican nun said
she planned to go to Washington Friday to meet with
lawmakers and Attorney General Janet Reno to explain her
concerns.
At the same time, O’Laughlin said she was
hesitant because she didn’t “want to enter into a kind of
game” being played by the Cuban government and Cuban
Americans opposed to Fidel Castro.
“What I felt originally (was) that the law was clear and
that the child should go to the father, and that we were a
law abiding people. But the kind of fear I felt yesterday
makes me wonder if, in this case, man was not made for the
law, law was made for man, and perhaps we have to take
another look at that in this case.”
O’Laughlin, president of Barry University in Miami,
had been selected by Reno to host the reunion. Earlier, she
told NBC’s “Today” show that she felt the Cuban
government and and Cuban Americans opposed to Castro
were “instilling fear.”
O’Laughlin said the Cuban government, in particular,
was distorting what took place and suggested it was
pressuring the grandmothers. “There was not a freedom
(during the meeting),” she said. “I am a wiser woman today
and I understand how blessed we are to understand what it
is to be free and not full of fear.”
“I believe that there are people with political agendas
that take the child as a pawn, and perhaps the grandmothers
also,” she added. Asked to elaborate, she mentioned “the
Cuban government, who, I understand, has said we were
not nice to the grandmothers, that we had spies. This is just
not true.”
FORMAL CUBAN PROTEST
The reunion was the first time the grandmothers had
seen the 6-year-old boy since he fled Cuba in November
with his mother, who drowned along with 10 others after
their boat capsized.
Cuban officials told NBC News that they had
protested to the State Department that the grandmothers
were prevented from maintaining phone contact with Cuba.
O‘Laughlin acknowledged that a nun took a cell phone
from Quintana, the paternal grandmother, after it rang.
Quintana told reporters that “we were talking
with the father by phone and they came in and took
the phone.” A spokesman for the grandmothers said
nuns came into the room and told them that the cell
phone was not permitted under an arrangement made
for ground rules for the meeting.
Police officers then took the phone, the spokesman
said, adding that the grandmothers did not believe there was
a no-phone agreement.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service, which
ordered the meeting, had earlier insisted no third party
intervene during the visit.
Cuba’s Communist Party, in a statement, claimed the
grandmothers endured “deceits, lies, tricks, betrayals,
humiliations and an inhuman and despotic treatment” at the
meeting.
“The Dominican nun, in whose ‘neutral’ residence the
meeting took place,” the statement said, “and the person
there from the INS told lie after lie and could not give a
coherent and logical explanation of that uncivilized and cruel
action.”
O’Laughlin is a friend of Reno, a Florida native. But
Reno’s department has backed returning Elian to his father.
Cuba also complained of numerous interruptions during
the meeting by people bringing juices and snacks. And
O’Laughlin, the statement said, behaved in an overbearing
manner in her house, a “prison” for the grandmothers.
MIAMI RELATIVES REACT
Elian’s Miami relatives, for their part, tried to capitalize
on the meeting by having the boy talk to a radio station as
they drove him back to their home.
“Tomorrow they’re going to make me an American citizen,”
Elian told Spanish-language Radio Mambi. He was referring to
the fact that his Miami relatives went to Washington Thursday
to lobby for legislation that would make Elian a citizen. That
legislation is in the works, but no vote is expected before
next week.
And, when Elian returned to his Miami relatives’ home,
a crowd outside roared with approval. Elian’s great-uncle
Delfin Gonzalez faced the crowd while holding a crucifix
above his head.
JUSTICE DEPT. FILES PAPERS
Elian was rescued Thanksgiving Day after floating in the
ocean for two days and has been in the center of an
international custody battle ever since.
His Cuban relatives and father want him to return to
Cuba. Elian’s Florida relatives don’t want him returned to
communist Cuba and have filed suit in federal court
challenging the INS ruling that he should be reunited with his
father.
The Justice Department early Thursday filed papers in
the case, arguing the federal judge should dismiss the claims,
either on grounds the court lacks jurisdiction to review the
immigration decision or that Lazaro Gonzalez lacks standing
under federal law to speak for Elian.
It said a victory for the Miami relatives would “ignore
accepted international practice in cases involving a sole
surviving parent located in the United States, where we
would expect the foreign country to immediately return the
child to the surviving American parent.”
MISTRUST AT MEETING
The U.S. government ordered the Miami relatives to
bring Elian to the neutral meeting site after plans for a
reunion Monday foundered over where it should took
place.
The tension was still evident Wednesday: The reunion
did not go as long as originally expected and a plan to have
the Cuban and Florida families sit down to dinner was
abandoned.
The grandmothers and Elian spent part of the
100-minute meeting looking at a family photo album. The
two women, who helped raise Elian, broke down crying
after he walked out of the room, O’Laughlin said.
“It took him a little while to warm up, but after a little
bit he became very animated,” said Sister Peggy Albert,
who watched the reunion.
The grandmothers did not comment as they left the
house and were driven away to a helicopter. They later got
on a plane to Washington, where they have been lobbying
Congress not to make Elian a U.S. citizen. That would
make it harder for the father to claim custody.
O’Laughlin said both sides were so nervous and
mistrustful about the meeting that she had to show them
“that windows couldn’t be opened, that doors couldn’t be
opened, that there were no disappearing trap doors.”
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to
this report.