Word: cuba
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...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...
...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 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...
...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...
...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...