Caught in a Trap?

By Tim Padgett/Miami

Biographer Tad Szulc calls Cuban President Fidel Castro a "master at the game of letting his enemies trap themselves." And the aging dictator believes he has his archenemies, Miami's Cuban exiles, right where he wants them in the custody battle over six-year-old Elian Gonzalez. Ever since Elian was rescued from the Atlantic last Thanksgiving and handed to relatives in Miami--who refuse to send him back to his father in communist Cuba--the exiles have dared Castro to let the dad, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, come to Miami to get the boy himself. Their bet was that Castro wouldn't risk the the dad's defection. But last week, as Castro watched the exiles scramble to keep the Clinton Administration from repatriating Elian, he announced in Havana that Juan Miguel would soon be headed to the U.S. for his son. "The airplane," said Castro, "is ready."

It did not take off last week, however, and the fate of Elian, the lad whose mother Elisabeth drowned while escaping Cuba, leaving him to float on an inner tube for two days, seemed further than ever from being resolved. In fact, Castro's turnabout panicked Miami like an air-raid siren, raising cold war tensions most Americans put behind them a decade ago. As a showdown loomed between the U.S. government and the politically potent and volatile exiles, Elian's welfare once again seemed the last thing on the minds of the Cuban leader and other political opportunists.

First, Castro placed so many conditions on the U.S. visit of Elian's father that he appeared to be trying to keep a juicy propaganda battle raging. Then the mayor of Miami-Dade County declared that his police won't help enforce the law if the time comes to deliver Elian to his dad. Miami-Dade, which is 40% Cuban, suddenly looked like a rogue republic in the Everglades. And Al Gore--plainly campaigning for Cuban-American votes--broke with Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno by siding with the exiles who want to keep Elian in the U.S. Says University of Miami sociologist Max Castro: "Try as it may, the U.S. can't escape the jihad of Cuban politics."

For their part, the Miami relatives with whom Elian is staying, desperate to win over the national sentiment that has been against them since this drama began, let ABC's Diane Sawyer interview the boy. At one point, the cameras captured him shyly wondering whether his mother was still alive and had forgotten about him. That, says a child psychiatrist who had been approached earlier by the Miami relatives to evaluate Elian, indicated that the boy "has not...started the grieving process."

ABC at first avoided showing the six-year-old saying he didn't want to go back to his father in Cuba--a statement that could have been coached. But Armando Gutierrez, the family spokesman and a veteran political operator with a heavy touch of Joe McCarthy in him, angrily accused ABC of reneging on a promise to broadcast that very statement. The next morning, the network aired it. And by week's end another family spokesman said Elian "expresses fear about being with his father. He's afraid he will be punished." Now, who could have put that idea in his head?

Cuban sources say these statements wounded the father so badly that Castro, under increasing criticism for keeping Juan Miguel at home, had little choice but to arrange for his trip to the U.S. A Castro friend says letting the father travel "was a cartridge that Fidel had to wait until this moment to spend."

But Castro--who wildly warned Cubans last week that the exiles might even try to kill Elian rather than let him go--has still not pulled the trigger. A major sticking point last week was his insistence that Juan Miguel be accompanied by an entourage of some 30 relatives, officials and friends--including a dozen of Elian's first-grade classmates. And U.S. officials wondered privately whether Castro was serious about following through with his new proposal. Although Juan Miguel's U.S. attorney, Gregory Craig, presented a letter to the State Department in Washington, no one made a formal application for visas at the American interest section in Havana, where visas are processed.

More important, Castro noted that for Juan Miguel to go to the U.S., he still needs an assurance that his uncle Lazaro Gonzalez, who has custody of Elian in Miami, will hand the boy over during a "transition period" in Washington. Then, should Miami lawyers lose their last-ditch bid in federal appeals courts next month to keep Elian in the U.S., Juan Miguel could fly back to Cuba with him.

U.S. Justice Department officials want Lazaro to agree to that demand. But he said, "I won't cooperate." Neither will his media-savvy daughter Marisleysis, 21, who tearily portrays herself as Elian's new mom. And no one at Justice seems to have a clue about how to break a "human chain" of thousands of angry exiles--who practiced the resistance tactic last week--and pluck Elian from Lazaro's home without setting Miami ablaze in violent protests.

That task looked doubly difficult after Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas, a Cuban American, made his vow not to help federal officials enforce any order to return Elian. Penelas then all but tossed a match into the city's powder keg by declaring he would hold Clinton and Reno "responsible for anything that may occur." But Penelas--a Democrat who dreams of a Cabinet post if Gore wins next fall--felt affirmed a day later when Gore backed congressional bills to give Elian, his father and other Cuban family members instant U.S. residency, and argued for moving the case into state family court in Miami. Echoing George W. Bush, who also insists Elian should stay, Gore said, "The real fault in this case lies with the oppressive regime of Fidel Castro."

That posture may appeal to hard-line Cuban-American voters, but according to polls, it risks alienating the majority of Americans, who believe the boy should be with his father. And it flies in the face of international laws that protect the more than 1,500 U.S. children kidnapped each year--usually by relatives--and held abroad.

That has been Reno's line since she ruled three months ago that only Elian's father could legally speak for a child so young. (Juan Miguel, a Communist Party member and tourism employee, was divorced from Elisabeth but was granted joint custody of Elian and has been closely involved in his upbringing.) After a federal judge backed her two weeks ago, Reno started talking tough to the exiles, hoping to stop their bid to return to state family court--where elected judges have shown in this case that they can be manipulated by Miami's political leadership. Reno demanded that Lazaro agree to speeded-up federal court appeals--and sign a pledge to hand over the boy should he lose them--or risk having the Justice Department immediately revoke his temporary custody of Elian.

But even as Reno held that sanction over Lazaro, the exiles held one over her: the threat of ugly unrest, which Reno, who was once the top state prosecutor in Miami, wants to avoid at all costs. "She doesn't want to end her career with another Waco," says a Justice official. Responding to Mayor Penelas' pandering, Reno shot back that "the people I know in the Cuban community believe in the rule of law." But late last week she yet again extended the deadline for Lazaro to sign a deal, and negotiations were set to resume this week.

It isn't hard to understand the visceral emotions Elian stirs up among many Cuban exiles, especially those who were imprisoned by Castro or had a close relative who, like Elisabeth, drowned in the Florida Straits while rafting toward freedom. "We're Elian's true peers," says militant exile leader Jose Basulto. "We want to save him from the life we had to live in Cuba."

But the hard-line Cuban-American leadership also wants to preserve the political clout it enjoyed during the cold war. And it is increasingly isolated, even within Florida. In a poll cited by the St. Petersburg Times last week, 83% of Florida's Hispanics opposed sending Elian back to his father in Cuba, while 81% of its blacks and 65% of its non-Latino whites favored it. Regardless of who "wins" the battle over Elian, sociologist Max Castro laments, the exiles are "damaging their cause in most Americans' eyes." In short, Castro's archfoes may have trapped themselves in more ways than one.

--With reporting by Dolly Mascarenas/Havana

With reporting by Dolly Mascarenas/Havana