Dissidents fear harsh campaign to boost Cuba's communist zeal
BY JUAN O. TAMAYO
Ever the master tactician, President Fidel Castro of Cuba has
scored a powerful propaganda victory with
Elián González' return following a campaign that
he compared to the impact of U.S. public opinion on
the Vietnam War.
The long-term effect of the Elián saga is uncertain with
dissidents fearing that Castro may now launch
a harsh campaign to resuscitate Cuba's ideological spirits, flagging
since the collapse of communism in
Eastern Europe in 1989.
But in the short run, Castro has unquestionably managed to spin
the drownings of Elián's
mother and nine others in a desperate attempt to leave the island
into a case in which Cuba
became the victim and exiles became the victimizers.
``Even those of us who see him as one of the most bloody and repugnant
dictators that Latin America's authoritarian fauna has produced
must tip our hats,''
Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa wrote recently.
With ``chilling cynicism, he manipulated the Elián case
so that for . . . months no
one talked of the satrapy he created or the catastrophic economic
condition that
the Cuban people suffer, only of the boy martyr,'' he added.
Elián's saga eclipsed even the black eye that Castro suffered
in November when
five heads of state attending an Ibero-American Summit in November
met with
leading dissidents, giving Cuba's small opposition movement the
most
international recognition it had ever received.
Castro achieved victory with typical intensity and abandon, like
a general at war,
calling virtually every shot in the seven-month-long campaign
and committing
scarce resources to the battle.
He closed factories and schools so that millions of Cubans could
join
demonstrations demanding Elián's return and ordered all
television and radio
stations to devote at least four hours a day to the case.
Castro appeared on almost all of the nightly programs, sometimes
sitting quietly
in the audience, most often giving long explanations of everything
from the U.S.
legal system to the anti-depressant pills seized by U.S. Customs
from a Cuban
doctor who treated Elián in Washington.
He has acknowledged spending $2 million on T-shirts, posters and
in other ways
to aid the protest. He even built an amphitheater, known jokingly
as a
``protest-o-drome'' in front of the U.S. diplomatic mission in
Havana.
``We're always mismatched. Castro commits all his resources, and
we don't take
him seriously,'' said Richard Nuccio, a former Clinton administration
adviser on
Cuba who favored Elián's return to Cuba.
And when visiting U.S. journalists didn't publish Cuban officials'
tips of sexual
misconduct by two Elián relatives in Miami, he made the
allegations public
himself, in effect forcing the media to publish them.
Cuban exiles meanwhile appeared to play right into Castro's hands,
stubbornly
opposing the boy's return to his father, Juan Miguel González,
and to Cuba in the
face of personal entreaties from Attorney General Janet Reno.
Many Americans came to see exiles as radical right-wingers and
ungrateful
immigrants, willing to defy U.S. laws and then launch street
protests when federal
agents removed Elián from his Miami relatives' home in
April.
ANTI-EMBARGO MOOD
The anti-exile wave in turn boosted the anti-embargo lobby in
the United States,
which won a major victory Tuesday with a congressional agreement
to ease
restrictions on food and medical sales to Cuba.
``The more isolated Cuban exiles become, the easier it is for
the anti-embargo
lobby to operate in Washington,'' said Pamela Falk, a City University
of New York
law professor who is writing a book on Cuba.
The Elián case has been, Castro said last month, ``a lesson
for us [that] public
opinion in the United States deserves much more consideration.
. . . For me,
there have been two important moments in which public opinion
has played a key
role -- during the Vietnam war, and in the case of Elián.''
Beyond the propaganda
victory, Castro managed to mobilize many Cubans around a nationalist
cause at
a time when some analysts were saying that his decision to legalize
dollar
remittances from exiles had left the 73-year-old leader looking
increasingly
irrelevant to the island's daily life.
``Many Cubans now praise Castro for again proving that he can
protect the
country's children, and protect the nation itself,'' said Vivian
Mannerud, owner of
Airline Brokers Co., a Miami firm that charters flights to Cuba.
Some analysts also say that Castro's ability to keep his relations
with the Clinton
administration on an even keel throughout the seven-month battle
may have won
him some good will in Washington.
``There's been a maturing of bilateral relations,'' said John
Kavulich, head of the
U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, a New York group that monitors
business opportunities in Cuba.
What else Castro may have achieved with Elián's return is in question, however.
Castro can hardly be said to have won a victory over the Clinton
administration,
since Washington began backing Elián's return to Cuba
since shortly after his
rescue from an inner tube on Thanksgiving Day.
IMPROVED RELATIONS?
``This was a victory for Elián's father and the rule of
law, not for Fidel,'' said Robert
Pastor, a former Latin American adviser to President Jimmy Carter
and now at
Emory University in Atlanta.
State Department officials have been quick to reject speculation
on improved
relations following an Elián settlement, saying that Havana's
lack of democracy
remains at the root of the animosity between the two countries.
``They just built a permanent protest center in front of our mission
and we
slammed them in Geneva'' over a U.N. resolution condemning Cuba's
human
rights record, one department official said. ``Gee, I don't think
this signals major
changes.''
In Havana, meanwhile, Cubans have been awaiting Elián's
return with mixed
feelings.
``First there will be relief that the child is back and that .
. . the endless
propaganda on television will end,'' said one Cuban journalist
in Havana. ``We are
tired, very tired of all this.''
But the journalist and other Cubans interviewed by telephone cautioned
that the
initial relief could be followed by a tough campaign to pull
up Cuba's revolutionary
socks, drooping since communism's collapse in 1989.
``I now perceive an overgrown sense of triumphalism within government
circles,
said human rights activist Elizardo Sánchez. ``It looks
like Fidel is heading for a
tropical version of China's Cultural Revolution.''
Mao Zedong was in his early 70s, about the same age as Castro,
when he
launched his disastrous attempt to revive China's flagging revolutionary
zeal.
At a time when Cubans are growing increasingly frustrated with
the economic
crisis left by the end of Soviet subsidies in 1991, Sánchez
added, any new
tightening of government controls ``could strip the thread.''