Cuban-American rightist groups and a number of politicians are waging a noisy campaign to keep the boy here, while his father in Cuba wants him to be returned. The Cuban-American community here is split, including relatives of the child who live here.

Elián was rescued November 25 off the coast of Broward County after he had been clinging to an inner tube for more than 24 hours. Eleven of the 14 people on the boat with him drowned, including his mother.

The INS released him to some of his relatives in Miami but he is still under the legal custody of the INS. The U.S. government delay in making a decision puts wind in the sails of opponents of the Cuban revolution, including the Miami Cuban right-wing organizations, which have made a political issue of the child's custody. This is part of the continued campaign by the U.S. government against the Cuban revolution.

Political consultant Armando Gutiérrez, who is the Miami relatives' spokesperson, recruited five lawyers including Spencer Eig, a former INS attorney, to campaign against the boy's return to Cuba. The lawyers have requested political asylum for the six-year-old, stating that he fears prosecution if he returns to Cuba.

Five members of the U.S. Senate, headed by Majority Leader Trent Lott, have asked the Congress to grant Elián citizenship. They requested U.S. president William Clinton further delay the decision on the boy's case.

Elián has been a subject of the news here for the last four weeks, with the media accompanying him wherever he goes.

In Cuba, mobilizations of up to 2.2 million people took place daily around the island, protesting the provocation. The protests halted during immigration talks between U.S. and Cuban officials in Havana and resumed December 20.

Picket lines and press conferences have been held in a number of U.S. cities, from New York to Houston, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Washington, and Tampa, Florida. In addition to calling for the child's return, some protesters also carried signs calling for "U.S. hands off Cuba." The American Indian Movement (AIM) in New Mexico held a rally demanding the repatriation of the Cuban child as well as the release of jailed AIM leader Leonard Peltier.

A picket line held here in Miami December 14 was covered by all the local TV channels. The next day discussions were polarized in the factories where some of the participants work, with some loudly expressing their disagreement with the picket line. Others were friendly.

At an jet engine repair station the December 14 Wall Street Journal was circulated, which contained two columns urging Washington to not send him back.

The majority of those who think he should stay here said that he would have a better life in this country, where there are more opportunities. If he goes back to Cuba, "he would be hungry and miserable" said a garment worker in Opa Locka who is originally from Cuba.

"He should return with his father" said a 31-year-old Cuban who came here five years ago. "The kid would be better there anyway."

Rachele Fruit, who works in the plant and was the Socialist Workers candidate for Mayor of Miami Dade County in 1996 took part in these discussions. Washington's refusal to carry out its elementary responsibility to return the child must be placed in the context of 40 years of hostility toward the Cuban revolution.

This is the latest of numerous provocations carried out because the billionaires who rule the United States cannot reconcile themselves to workers and farmers holding power in Cuba. "We should demand that the U.S. economic embargo be lifted and the aggression against the sovereignty of Cuba ceased," she said.

Meanwhile on December 20, six of seven Cubans who held hostages in a Louisiana jailhouse uprising were repatriated to Cuba. The six prisoners had served all of their jail time for crimes they were convicted of in the United States.

They were kept in prison because the INS now regularly deports immigrants who have criminal records, regardless of their immigration status, but there is no repatriation treaty between the U.S. government and Cuba. The detainees preferred going back to Cuba to staying in U.S. jail indefinitely, and were granted visas by Havana.

In another development, on December 8 a jury in the U.S. federal court in San Juan, Puerto Rico, acquitted five Cuban-American rightists of conspiring to assassinate Cuban president Fidel Castro when he visited the Venezuelan island of Margarita in 1997. Charges against two other defendants have been dropped.

Despite overwhelming evidence of many similar provocations, this was only first time the U.S. government decided to enforce its own laws and prosecute a plot to assassinate the president of Cuba.

A statement by the Cuban government on December 9 declared that Washington assumes the responsibility for "allowing those terrorist groups in Miami, tolerated by the authorities and with the complicity of that country's legal system, to freely plot and execute their plans to murder a foreign head of State."

Rollande Girard is a member of the International Association of Machinists.  
 
 
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