Word: elian
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This is how Elian's fairy tale was supposed to go: the loving father, Juan Miguel, had never been able to signal his true hopes for his son because Fidel Castro had him in chains. But once he broke free and made it to America, once he stepped off the Learjet at Dulles at dawn with his new wife and baby at his side, he would fall to the ground, kiss the tarmac and ask for asylum. Or maybe it would happen Friday morning, safe in the halls of the Justice Department, when he would look Attorney General Janet Reno...
That way, the really cruel choice would fade as the credits rolled. The father would get his child back, as a majority of Americans have hoped. Elian would get to keep his new puppy, drink chocolate milk to his heart's content and never have to go back to Cuba. Castro would be denied his trophy, his revolutionary crowds would disperse, and attention would fall once more on the dissidents he keeps throwing in jail. Republicans would welcome two new voters, the Clinton Administration would celebrate the rule of law, and the Cuban expatriate community in Miami would...
...this story has offered a twist, and last week was no exception. For the past four months no one could know for certain whether Juan Miguel was reading from a script, speaking from the heart--or both. But anyone who heard his passionate demand to be reunited with Elian, and his denunciation of the Miami relatives who had paraded his son in the streets and fed him to Diane Sawyer, had to believe he might be entirely sincere in his desire simply to retrieve his child and go home to Cuba for good. As Democratic Congressman Jose Serrano quoted Juan...
When they met at last, face to face, Reno urged Juan Miguel to sit down with his Miami relatives and try to work things out. But it's too late for that, he said. There is too much anger and pain. He showed Reno his baby pictures of Elian and talked about their closeness. She told him, in Spanish, "It seems that Elian is a wonderful, bright and charming little boy. You and your wife did good work." Replied Juan Miguel: "All of the goodness you see is the goodness that comes from how we raised...
...time it was over, Reno had witnessed firsthand the devotion seen by INS officials in January, after they initially interviewed Juan Miguel at length and found that he was the kind of father who knows his child's shoe size and the names of his favorite teachers. He wanted Elian back, and he had no desire to live here. "Mr. Gonzalez and I do not share political beliefs," Reno said Friday afternoon. But "it is not our place to punish a father for his political beliefs or where he wants to raise his child." To do so, in fact, would...