Elian: tossed about

The ElianGonzalez case has been in the public eye for a while now. GEETA RAMASESHAN reviews the case and says that a battle of egos between the families fighting for Elian has begun and also got entwined with powerful interest groups of Cuban Americans.

"ELIAN should not be sent to Cuba. Did you know that children in Cuba cannot get a glass of milk to drink?" informed Avantika, a six-year-old living in California, daughter of first generation Indian immigrants. When I pointed out to her that many children in her grandparents' country also did not get a glass of milk to drink everyday, she was nonplussed, but bounced back with the irrepressible logic that only a six-year-old can have. "But in Cuba, children of Elian's age are sent to camps. That does not happen in India," she said looking at me as if I was ignorant of such basic facts. When I asked her from where she had picked up this bit of information, she informed me that it was in school. "But did you not see this on TV?" she asked. Avantika is not alone. Last week when the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Atlanta heard the case, two judges expressed serious concern about the conditions in Cuba under which children grew up.

It all began in November when Elian's mother, his stepfather and 13 others fled from Cuba in a 16 foot motor boat and dreaming of reaching the shores of Florida as countless other refugees had done before them. Unfortunately the boat overturned and they did not survive the choppy waters of the Atlantic. Elian and two others were rescued. Meanwhile in Cuba, when Elian's father fond out that his ex-wife had fled to the U.S. with his son, he informed his father who then immediately contacted his sister and brothers in Miami and asked them to search for Elian and his mother. Elian's grand-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez, traced the child and took custody of him from the hospital where he was being kept. Juan Miguel Gonzalez then asked his uncle to return his son. And it was then that the drama began. The Miami family, as the media calls them, refused to hand over the child to the Cuban family. Juan's aunt and the other relatives who had fled to the U.S. years ago, reportedly informed her brother, Elian's grandfather, that her dream was to see the entire family come over to the U.S. and not send anyone over to Cuba. As the battle hotted up between them, Lazaro applied for asylum for Elian. The INS refused his claim. Lazaro then filed for temporary custody in the State Court and also filed a Federal lawsuit challenging the INS ruling.

The Attorney General in the meantime upheld the father's right to have the child. Both sets of grandparents arrived from Cuba and met their relatives in Miami but the latter simply refused to hand over the child. In March, the Court dismissed Lazaro's case for custody and an appeal was filed that is still pending at the time of writing. Elian's father arrived in the U.S. in April but both sides of the family did not meet each other. The Attorney General personally met the relatives and persuaded them to hand over the child but it was of no avail. It was this persistent refusal by the Miami relatives to obey the orders and treat the whole issue as a civil disobedience that led to the unfortunate event of the Federal authorities seizing the child with the use of force. Elian was handed over to his father but the matter is far from over and is pending before the courts.

In the process, a battle of egos between the two families has also got entwined with powerful interest groups of Cuban Americans who saw in Elian's case a good strategy to attack Castro. In Miami's Little Havana where the child stayed, marches, demonstrations and vigils were staged projecting the child as a symbol against Castro's oppression. Such meets as organised by the Miami Mafia and on the May Day rally at Cuba, constantly highlighted the battle over Elian.

Elian's case has become a real cause celebre. Not a day passed without the media discussing and analysing it. Everybody who was somebody, and these included the fisherman who rescued Elian (it turned out later that he was not a fisherman) and the psychiatrist who observed Elian got their 15 minutes of fame. Questions bordering on the ridiculous were also asked. A sample. "If Juan Miguel Gonzalez really did love his son," asked a newscaster, "why does he want him to grow up in Communist Cuba?" The answer given by a member of a group that supported fathers' custody rights spoke of different cultures but did not convince the interviewer. Another constant refrain was if Juan Miguel really loved his son he would not have delayed coming to the U.S. (the delay was about five months) thereby implying that he should have taken the first boat on sea. The Miami relatives orchestered an extremely well chalked out media campaign. Elian's second cousin, Marisleysis called herself the mother of Elian and would tearfully inform the camera about her great affection for the child and about him being very attached to her. She even went to the extent of claiming that the photographs released after the child was reunited with his father showing a beaming Elian playing with him and his stepbrother were old. The family had their own physicians who told the media that every moment spent by Elian away from his adoptive family in Miami represented further emotional abuse. They however went a little overboard by releasing a video recording of Elian telling his father that he did not want to go to Cuba and could stay in the U.S. with him. The video, played on all television channels, looked suspiciously tutored and became a subject matter of great criticism.

Juan Miguel Gonzalez has described his uncle Lazaro as an "intruder and uninvited meddler in Elian's life." Most polls and programmers however indicated that the American public felt that the boy should remain with the father. There was however strong disapproval about the kind of force used to take the child and a senate hearing has been announced to probe into the matter. But the raid though hard to watch in the pictures taken by an intrepid photographer, who was let into the house by the Miami family before the pre dawn swoop began, was inevitable. The ball is now in the Atlanta Court. The case may take many months and Elian and his father will have to stay in the U.S. till then. If the father wins, it will be the assertion of parental rights. But if the Miami relatives succeed then the laws of Asylum need to be rewritten. Whatever be the outcome the impact of it is bound to haunt the cherubic little Elian for a long time to come.

Postscript - As a fallout of the Elian case, a two-year-old child that was facing immediate deportation to Thailand was granted a reprieve after child activists accused the INS of double standards.

The child was found in Los Angeles airport where it was alleged that it was brought by gang members of a prostitution ring as a human prop to avoid suspicion.

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