LA Times
December 7, 1999
 
 
Amid U.S.-Cuba Storm, Boy Gets a Party

                                            By MIKE CLARY, Times Staff Writer
 

                                                 MIAMI--On his 6th birthday Monday, Elian Gonzalez ate cake,
                                            tried on new clothes and sifted through a mountain of
                                            toys--unaware he was at the center of what Fidel Castro has called
                                            a "battle for world opinion" to have the child returned to Cuba.
                                                 "It's hard to contain our nation's anger," the Cuban president
                                            said, over what he called the kidnapping of the boy who was found
                                            drifting Thanksgiving morning in an inner tube about 20 miles north
                                            of Miami.
                                                 "I can't remember a single instance of aggression in recent years
                                            that seemed so disgusting, cruel, absurd and criminal as this,"
                                            Castro said in Havana last weekend. He vowed "to move heaven
                                            and earth" to return the boy to Cuba and to his father, Juan Miguel
                                            Gonzales, in Cardenas.
                                                 It was from Cardenas, on Cuba's north coast, that Elian and his
                                            mother--along with her boyfriend and 10 others--departed Nov.
                                            21 in a 17-foot boat. When the boat was swamped and sank in the
                                            Gulf Stream, Elian, his mother and five others hung onto two inner
                                            tubes.
                                                 Two days later, only Elian and two others were found alive.
                                                 U.S. immigration officials placed Elian in the custody of relatives
                                            who live in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood. Since then, he has
                                            been lavished with gifts and attention--and transformed into an icon
                                            by the fervent anti-Castro exile community here.
                                                 In remarks broadcast by Cuban radio and television early
                                            Sunday, an angry Castro issued a 72-hour deadline for Elian's
                                            return and threatened to boycott upcoming U.S.-Cuba migration
                                            talks.
                                                 "There will be millions of people in the streets demanding the
                                            boy's freedom," Castro said.
                                                 Demonstrations already have begun in Havana. As dozens of
                                            Cuban guards were added to the security detail around the U.S.
                                            Interests Section, several hundred people gathered Sunday, waving
                                            flags and chanting for the boy to be returned.
                                                 A stage was being erected Monday outside the U.S. Interests
                                            Section in preparation for a second night of protest. In Cardenas,
                                            mothers and grandmothers rallied in the town square to call for the
                                            child's return, while schoolchildren held a birthday party in absentia
                                            for their missing classmate. Dressed in his customary olive fatigues,
                                            Castro attended, again lashing out at the United States for its
                                            "monstrous crime."
                                                 "This is a good issue for Castro to rally international opinion,"
                                            said professor Jaime Suchlicki of the University of Miami's Institute
                                            for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies. Suchlicki said Castro was
                                            not likely to unleash another refugee crisis by opening the doors to
                                            mass migration. But he could close the U.S. Interests Section, or
                                            scuttle migration talks--scheduled to begin next week--as a way of
                                            derailing the trend toward normalized relations.
                                                 In Washington, the State Department on Monday rejected
                                            Castro's demand for the boy's return, saying the fate of the child
                                            should be based on humanitarian concerns. Spokesman James
                                            Foley also called on Cuba to assure the safety of U.S. citizens in
                                            Havana.
                                                 Under the terms of the Cuban Adjustment Act, almost all
                                            Cubans who enter the United States illegally are paroled into the
                                            community and, after one year, are eligible to apply for the status of
                                            permanent residents. According to a 1995 agreement with Cuba,
                                            only those migrants apprehended at sea can be repatriated.
                                                 In Miami, the child has become a cause celebre, a symbol to
                                            many exiles of conditions on the island so economically and
                                            politically oppressive that a mother would risk the life of her child to
                                            leave. On Sunday, hundreds of gift-bearing Cuban Americans
                                            turned out at a park, where Elian rode on a horse, shared the candy
                                            from a pinata and blew out the candles on a huge birthday cake.
                                                 And on Monday, Cuban-born U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
                                            (R-Fla.) dropped by to present the boy with a large American flag.
                                                 Spencer Eig, an attorney representing Elian's Miami relatives, on
                                            Monday reiterated an invitation to the child's father to come to
                                            Miami and settle the custody dispute in state court--a court that
                                            Castro has labeled corrupt. "I feel for Elian's father," Eig said. "It's a
                                            tragic situation, and there is no way to make it come out perfectly.
                                            But the boy wants to stay here."
                                                                    * * *
                                                 Times staff writer Esther Schrader in Washington and
                                            researcher Anna M. Virtue in Miami contributed to this story.