Word: castros
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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...
...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...
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...
Juan Miguel Gonzalez arrived in Washington at dawn on Thursday, and with him, the moment of truth in the tortured saga of his son. Unless Gonzalez surprises everybody by simply walking away from his Cuban minders and into the arms of his anti-Castro uncles down in Miami, his presence forces the U.S. government to resolve the standoff. The INS had announced on Monday that it would begin the process of transferring custody of Elian upon his father's arrival, and Gonzalez is unlikely to have traveled without the assurance of custody he - and Castro - demanded as a precondition...