Cuban Boy Ultimatum Stirs Outrage in Miami

MIAMI —  Amid massive prayer vigils, threats of human barricades and even vows of martyrdom, the Miami-Dade County mayor on Wednesday warned the Clinton administration that its latest ultimatum over Cuban castaway Elian Gonzalez has enraged the huge Cuban American community here beyond his control and that any blood shed in the streets will be on the government’s hands.

Mayor Alex Penelas, himself a Democrat and Cuban American, openly defied Washington as Miami’s residents braced for the worst in this week’s showdown between a Justice Department determined to return the 6-year-old to his father in Cuba and an equally stubborn Cuban American great-uncle committed to keeping him.

“If blood is shed on the streets of this community as a result of what the Justice Department does, yes, I will hold them responsible,” Penelas, flanked by 22 of the county’s 33 municipal mayors, declared. They stressed that none of their local police departments would assist federal agents in apprehending the boy or returning him to Cuba.

As a deportation deadline--later extended for 24 hours--loomed, President Clinton countered: “I like the mayor very much, but I still believe in the rule of law here. . . . Whatever the decision that is ultimately made, the rest of us ought to obey it.”

And in Havana, Cuban President Fidel Castro announced that Elian’s father is prepared to travel “immediately” to Miami--along with a contingent of Cuban relatives, Elian’s classmates, teacher and doctor, psychiatrists and others--to fetch the boy and take him home, provided the U.S. government guarantees it will do everything in its power to hand Elian over to his father.

Even Congress weighed in on the debate Wednesday. Evoking oxymoronic imagery of U.S. agents dragging a child off to communist Cuba, two conservative Republican senators--Connie Mack of Florida and Bob Smith of New Hampshire--introduced legislation to grant permanent resident status to Elian, his father and other relatives who remain on the island. Strategists said the measure lacks sufficient support for passage.

But by night’s end, the case that has so unnerved Miami appeared to remain at a gnawing legal impasse.

An embittered and defiant Lazaro Gonzalez--the auto mechanic who is the boy’s great-uncle and who has cared for him since Elian’s miracle Thanksgiving Day rescue from a shipwreck that left his mother dead--was still staring down the U.S. government’s latest ultimatum, vowing not to blink.

Joined by seven lawyers, he emerged at 9 p.m. Miami time from a marathon meeting with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, which granted him a 24-hour reprieve from a deportation deadline. The INS, which ruled three months ago that the boy must return to his father in Cuba, demanded last week that Gonzalez sign a statement promising to hand over Elian if he loses pending court appeals.

An INS spokesman said in a brief statement Wednesday night that the meeting will resume at 9:30 a.m. today at the U.S. attorney’s office here. The INS had said that if Gonzalez failed to sign the affidavit by 9 a.m. today, it would begin immediate deportation proceedings against the boy--a tactic Penelas called “arm-twisting” that is “tossing fuel to the fire” among Miami’s 800,000-strong Cuban American community.

Even before the meeting ended, an INS spokeswoman said Wednesday that the agency had no immediate plans to pick up the boy, despite its legal right to do so. Elian’s relatives have kept him out of school this week and at his great-uncle’s Little Havana home, where scores of supporters are camped outside.

Asked Wednesday whether federal agents would be permitted to forcibly remove the boy from the home, Clinton said: “Surely we’re some distance from that, because . . . if they do not prevail in court, they will clearly appeal.”

The Miami relatives have appealed a U.S. district court ruling last week that upheld the INS decision to send the boy back to his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, a cashier at a Cuban tourist park who was divorced from Elian’s mother but shared legal custody of the boy.

The appellate court in Atlanta has set May 8 for oral arguments in the case, and further appeals to the Supreme Court could drag the matter out even longer.

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, who has vowed to reunite Elian with his father in a “fair, prompt and orderly manner,” also said she will take no action that could further traumatize the boy.

But Cuban American activists and moderates alike say the government has not gone far enough to reassure community members. The government’s latest strategy, they added, has sparked fears among many Cuban Americans here of a scenario similar to the Justice Department’s bloody 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas. One Cuban American leader even announced this week that some are willing to die to prevent Elian’s deportation.

“Waco has become like a totem for the Janet Reno style,” said moderate Cuban American activist and attorney Pedro A. Freyre. “The Justice Department needs to come out and say clearly that there will be no harsh enforcement action.”

Without such guarantees, he and other community leaders here say, anything is possible in the days ahead.

“The community is steamed, and I abhor this because I’m a moderate by nature,” added Freyre, who heads the apolitical Facts About Cuban Exiles group. “I do not condone violence. But when people get very, very upset, they do foolish things.”

In an effort to vent some of that emotion, Cuban American religious leaders called on thousands of their faithful to gather peacefully Wednesday night. The protesters formed a massive human “Cross of Pain” in the streets of a Little Havana intersection punctuated by a sea of flashlights and candles.

The demonstration, which called on God for another miracle in the case, broke up peacefully after three hours.

Penelas and other local officials said their police forces will intervene if street demonstrations become violent. But, publicly siding with Elian’s Miami relatives, Miami Mayor Joe Carollo added: “The Miami-Dade Police Department will not be part of snatching Elian Gonzalez from his family to go back to Castro’s Cuba.”

As for Elian, the boy’s face and words saturated the airwaves Wednesday.

In the last of three interviews and play dates with the boy on ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America,” Diane Sawyer said Elian told her he did not want to go back to Cuba, which now venerates him as a symbol of Castro’s revolution.

Sawyer pledged on the air Tuesday that ABC would not show the boy stating his preference, partly to avoid fueling the controversy. But Wednesday’s show did air videotape of that conversation, with Sawyer translating the boy’s words: “I don’t want to go to Cuba.”

The show rekindled debate over the validity of a 6-year-old boy’s stated preferences and the morality of the adults who have adopted and, some say, co-opted him.

After four months that have torn Elian’s family here and in Cuba apart and transformed the boy into a singular symbol for those who hate Castro here and those who follow the Cuban leader, 73, another chat that Sawyer reported with the boy was perhaps more poignant.

Sawyer asked Elian what he liked about Cuba. “Nothing,” the boy said. She then asked him the same question about Miami.

“Nothing,” Elian replied.

Times staff writers James Gerstenzang, Art Pine and Nick Anderson in Washington contributed to this story.