By Gilberto Firmat
ATLANTA — More than one month after the Clinton administration announced that it would send Elian Gonzalez back to his father in Cuba, it has not lifted one finger to put this into practice.
The six-year-old boy found adrift on November 25 remains with the family of his great uncle in Miami. His mother — pressured by an abusive boyfriend — abducted the boy to bring him on a dangerous crossing to the United States. The small boat, overloaded with paying passengers, capsized in the Florida Straits. Both Elian's mother and her boyfriend, who organised the smuggling trip, drowned. Elian survived strapped to an inner tube.
From the day he was found, near Fort Lauderdale, right-wing Cuban emigres turned Elian into a poster boy for anti-communist propaganda. And they have adamantly refused to return him to Cuba.
At first, the Cuban government tried quiet diplomacy to resolve the matter, ignoring the noisy, provocative displays from across the Florida Straits. When diplomacy failed to elicit even a reply, Cuba launched a campaign of mass protests and mobilisations to pressure the Clinton administration to send back the boy.
Public opinion
Cuba has sought to unite all those who support Elian's repatriation, independently of their views on other subjects, in a single movement to demand the boy's return. This campaign has been a tremendous success, even though it has yet to achieve its ultimate objective.
US public opinion has shifted decisively. At the beginning of December, only 40% of those responding to a Gallup poll said it was in Elian's "best interest" to return to his father in Cuba, today 60% support that position. Even more, 67%, support the Immigration and Naturalization Service's (INS) decision that the boy should be returned to his father.
The shift in sentiment in favour of Cuba's position has meant that efforts in Congress to remove Elian from INS jurisdiction by granting him citizenship or permanent residency have floundered. Originally, many commentators expected such legislation to sail through as a "motherhood and apple pie" bill that would be rubber-stamped without discussion. The bills now appear to be headed to committees, from which they will never come to the floor.
The grandmothers
Elian's two grandmothers, who visited the US at the end of January, played a decisive role in defeating the legislation in Congress. Their straightforwardness torpedoed the right wing's main argument for refusing to return Elian to his father, that the family in Cuba was being pressured by the Cuban government and secretly wanted him to stay in the US.
The tremendous impact of the grandmothers on the US public prompted the right-wing Cuban emigre groups to launch what is possibly their most scurrilous attack to date: the accusation that these two courageous women sexually molested the boy during a brief visit they were allowed at a "neutral" site, the luxurious Miami home of Sister Jeanne O'Laughlin, a nun who is president of the Catholic Barry University.
During the visit, the grandmothers were constantly interrupted by O'Laughlin, who also confiscated the cellular phones they had brought to enable Juan Miguel Gonzalez to talk to his son for the first time in 10 weeks without interference from the Miami relatives.
No sooner had the visit ended than O'Laughlin called a media conference to announce she had decided that Elian had "bonded" with his 20-year-old second cousin Marisleysis Gonzalez, and that he should remain with her.
O'Laughlin then travelled to Washington to try to counteract the impact of the grandmother's visit. But, instead of discrediting the grandmothers, she only discredited herself.
In desperation, the right-wing Cuban emigre groups launched the smear that the grandmothers sexually abused Elian. It began with a highly publicised visit by child welfare authorities to Elian at his great uncle's house in Miami. This was followed by a formal complaint to the Miami Beach authorities sworn out by Lazaro Gonzalez against his sister-in-law.
Despite US laws requiring that all such matters be handled strictly in private, the Miami media has been full of leaks and rumours. "Grandmother's case to be handled confidentially", blared one headline in Miami's major newspaper.
The charge is based on gross distortions of a couple of incidents the grandmothers themselves related on Cuban television. In one, they asked the boy, who was being very withdrawn, whether mice had eaten his tongue. When he shook his head no, they asked, well, stick it out. The boy did and one of the grandmothers then playfully pretended to bite it.
In the other, one of his grandmothers pulled forward the waistband of his shorts saying she wanted to see if he had grown down there.
Even by the hypocritical standards of the US's puritanical mores, the incidents are hardly a scandal. By the much more relaxed standards of Cuban society, where physical touching and horseplay with no sexual connotation is very common, it didn't cross anyone's mind to even comment on this aspect of the Grandmother's account.
Who decides
A lawsuit by Elian's great uncle seeking to reverse the INS decision is now pending in the Federal Court. The Miami lawyers are asking that the judge order the INS to have a hearing on whether Elian should receive political asylum.
On the face of it, the request is absurd. Cubans never have political asylum hearings. By law, they are automatically entitled to the parolee status that would result from a successful asylum petition.
Elian's "right" to remain in the US has never been questioned; what's been at issue is who decides on Elian's behalf whether he will stay. The lawsuit is just one more attempt to strip Juan Miguel Gonzalez of his rights as they boy's father.
On February 22, the judge handling the case will hold a hearing on a government motion to dismiss the action. But even a favourable ruling will not settle matters. The right-wing emigre groups would appeal any adverse ruling.
For its part, the Clinton administration has already shown that it is susceptible to pressure on this issue. But even more protests will be needed to force the US government to do what even it admits is right, and return Elian to his father in Cuba.