Word: elian
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...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...