Another of my favorites was a homemade sign featuring the yacht Granma in the small village of Niquero in the southwest where Castro and his rebels had come ashore in 1956. But it was Guantanamo City, on the highland above the American military base in the southeast, that had the most impressive billboard. Entering the town, the road ran down to an intersection where three billboards joined together depicted the heroes and major events of the Cuban Revolution.
I suspected that Castro, in his campaign for Elián, enjoyed traveling around the island, his motorcade speeding down the almost deserted Carretera Central (Central Highway) and at every stop thousands of people waiting to hear him tell them about Elián, the embargo, the Cuban Adjustment Act, which in Castro’s mind depicted our unfair immigration policy, and our occupation of the naval base at Guantanamo. His rallies brought news and excitement, which enlivened the dullness of daily life. The head of each block committee—the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (or CDR)—ensured that everyone in her neighborhood showed up. Those who were good revolutionaries were rewarded by having their names placed on lists for jobs or for opportunities to buy scarce appliances like rice cookers or even refrigerators. Those who failed to show up, or engaged in other “unsocial” behavior, were warned and penalized. The CDR heads knew the secrets, desires, and misbehavior of every resident because neighbors and even family members informed on each other. I still believe that the pervasive snooping of the CDR is a major reason for the longevity of the revolution. It is impossible to plot even the small protest when your neighbor, friend, or child might report you.
The CDR leader was often a middle-aged, heavyset woman with short orange hair. Perhaps I exaggerate about the hair color. Even considering the scarcities in Cuba, the hair dye available to Cuban women seemed to be of a particularly poor quality. I met quite a few of these women in my travels, and I did not like them. One of the worst was the political boss at the regional hospital in Pinar del Rio who seized the opportunity to blame me—and the embargo—for deaths she said were caused because of lack of medicines and equipment. Although the hospital doctors, using Soviet-era equipment, provided unparalleled preventive health care, they meekly deferred to the orange-haired tyrant. They didn’t want to lose their jobs, homes, or the education received by their children. The revolution provides, and the CDR leader takes away.
Everything that happens in Cuba goes up or down the Carretera Central, whether a visit from Castro or the transport of huge Soviet missiles that rumbled throughout the night to deposit their cargo in specially built silos around the island. The missiles, discovered in 1962 by an American spy plane, were trundled back up the Carretera Central to vessels that took them back to the Soviet Union in accordance with the agreement reached between President John F. Kennedy and Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev.
Castro’s rallies also were staged up and down the Carretera Central, first demanding Elián’s release and then triumphantly celebrating his return. Yet, in the end, the Elián theatre created only a momentary commotion that quickly dissipated. The somnolent countryside soon returned to its isolation and poverty, remaining lost in time, rather like the country Gabriel García Márquez describes in The Autumn of the Patriarch, written with his friend Fidel in mind.
Despite turning the island into a vast theater, Castro seemed to be losing the battle. Three months had slipped away, but contrary to our promises the American courts had not sent Elián home. Each judicial decision gave the lawyers for Elián’s relatives another chance to present their case. Finally, President Clinton decided to intervene. He sent his personal lawyer, Greg Craig, to Havana. I had met Craig in the early 1990s, when I was in charge of Cuban affairs at the State Department. He told me then that he was fascinated by Cuba and would love to visit. But I didn’t imagine that ten years later we would be sitting in my Havana residence discussing an out-of-control child custody case, in which he had signed on to be Juan Míguel González’s lawyer.
Craig was either amazingly persuasive or Castro—like Clinton—had already concluded that the only way to break the impasse would be for Elián’s father to travel to the States to retrieve his son. On April 3, 2000, Castro read a letter from Juan Míguel in which he promised, “I am willing to leave tomorrow, absolutely alone, and transport myself to where the child is.” He added, however, that if he couldn’t immediately bring his son back to Cuba, he would come with his family and remain until Elián was turned over to him. On April 7, Juan Míguel, his family, and Elián’s classmates arrived at Andrews Air Force Base, outside Washington, DC. Now all that was left to do was to reunite Elián with his family.
On April 12, Janet Reno again tried to broker a peaceful transfer of Elián. She met with the boy’s caretakers, Lázaro and Marisleysis González at the home of Sister Jeanne O’Laughlin, president of Barry University and Reno’s erstwhile friend, who had changed her mind and begun advocating for Elián to remain with his Miami relatives. The meeting was a disaster. Lázaro stormed out. Less than fifteen hours later, he failed to obey Reno’s order to turn the boy over to federal authorities. He was backed up by Ramon Saul Sanchez, a pugnacious, in-your-face exile who led crowds chanting “Reno, you coward! Miami is on fire!” Reno again postponed the deadline. Flags were raised and the crowds chanted, “Justice! Justice! Justice!”
Reno’s fathomless patience could not continue. US laws were being flaunted, making the government appear weak and ineffectual. And all because the judicial process, which Clinton had been so certain would back him up, refused to do so. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals criticized the government’s—and, by implication, Reno’s—handling of the case. The judges complained that the INS should have considered whether six-year-old Elián, himself, could request political asylum. It seemed far-fetched that a child could make this decision. But the emotional pitch in Miami and Washington, stoked by the diaspora, Castro, and the agonizing judicial process, had turned a custody case into a heated ideological battle. Newspapers and television kept viewers apprised of Juan Míguel’s every move in and around Washington, DC, even recording him giving the finger to someone who asked if he would defect.
It was becoming increasingly clear that a showdown was at hand. The US government had to enforce its writ or lose the respect of the American people. In Miami, crowds chanting, “War! War! War!” surrounded Lázaro’s home. They defiantly declared that they would fight any effort to take the child from the house. Reno warned that if the relatives would not give him up, he would have to be taken by force. Rumors began to spread that some individuals in the crowd were armed. The negotiations had again reached an impasse.
Me leaving the Cuban Foreign Ministry after discussing Elián’s fate.
(Photo credit: Reuters)
The stately mansion in which I lived—once the residence of our ambassadors.
(Courtesy of Alexandra Huddleston)
Fidel is everywhere!
(Courtesy of Alexandra Huddleston)
My birthday gives me a chance to make a point official.
(Photo courtesy of author)
The Million Man March protesting Cuba’s three big complaints: the embargo (or “bloqueo”), the Cuban Adjustment Act, and Guantanamo Naval Base.
(Courtesy of Alexandra Huddleston)
A huge march protesting the “kidnapping of Elián”—the Cuban boy miraculously found floating on an inner tube in the Florida Straits.
(Photo courtesy of author)
Fidel leading a protest past the Interests Section.
(Courtesy of Alexandra Huddleston)
Cuban national hero, José Martí, with small child pointing at the Interests Section. He is telling the child a Cuban joke: “That is where you get your visa.”
(courtesy of Alexandra Huddleston)
The amazing Peter Corsell, manager of the outreach program.
(courtesy of Alexandra Huddleston)
The prize-winning “Havana”—lovely like the city Havana, but young and well-cared-for.
&
nbsp; (Courtesy of Alexandra Huddleston)
Havana and her amazing trainer, Ana Maria González.
(Courtesy of Alexandra Huddleston)
Northeast Gate: the only land entrance to Guantanamo Naval Base.
(Photo courtesy of author)
During the previous months, Reno had eschewed using force, but now it was imperative. Compromise with members of the Cuban diaspora had proven impossible. Yet they were unwilling to comply with US law and continued to flout the demands from the INS to turn over the boy. The endless saga on both sides of the Straits was an embarrassment to the Clinton administration. On April 22, an immigration task force stormed into Lázaro’s house, seized Elián, wrapped him in a blanket, and took him to the airport. For Lázaro, Marisleysis, and the Cuban American community it was over. Only hours later two photographs summed up both the defeat and the victory: one shows an armed INS agent in full body-armor confronting a terrified Elián in the arms of Donato Dalrymple, one of the fishermen who found him at sea; the other shows a smiling child in the arms of his father.
On June 29, almost two months after Elián was snatched away from the Cuban American community, the US Supreme Court dismissed without a hearing an appeal from Lázaro’s lawyers to allow the child to remain with his Miami relatives. The same day, Elián and his family and friends landed at Havana’s José Martí airport. Granma headlines blared, “At Last in the Fatherland.” But much to my dismay and that of many worn-out Cubans, Castro announced that the battle for Elián was just the beginning; down came the Elián billboards and up went new ones condemning the Cuban Adjustment Act, the embargo, and the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay.
Castro paraded Elián in rallies throughout the countryside, and his American supporters joined in. Jerry Brown, who would later become governor of California, had an aide call to ask if he could meet me at my residence. I said I would be willing to meet, but he could under no circumstances bring along Philip Agee, a disgraced former CIA operative who had arranged Brown’s tour to Cuba through his Cuba Linda (Pretty Cuba) travel agency. Agee, who had fled to Cuba, was wanted in the United States for betraying his country; he had exposed CIA agents, at least one of whom was killed as a result of his disclosures. Brown didn’t visit my residence, but I would have liked to have met him to ensure that he was aware of Agee’s crimes.
Castro’s victory was complete. His enemies had lost everything: the child they desired and their hope that this conflict might destroy the hated revolution. Castro had his ersatz son back and was celebrating his victory. The American public, annoyed by the Cuban American community’s open disregard for the laws of their adopted country, supported the first weakening of the embargo since it was enacted in 1962. A Republican-controlled Congress passed—and President Clinton signed into law—regulations that permitted the sale of agricultural goods to Cuba. But the diaspora did manage to tack on a quid pro quo that banned American tourism to Cuba. Thus, unlike other embargo regulations that can be modified by the president through the secretary of the Treasury, tourism is illegal until this law is repealed or superseded.
Yet time would prove that Castro and his revolution had lost as well. The strenuous campaign marked the beginning of Castro’s health problems. Shortly before Elián’s return, he fainted in a poor Havana barrio on a hot and sunny June day in the middle of a speech demanding Elián’s return. As aides rushed to his rescue, Felipe Pérez Roque, the foreign minister, grabbed the microphone to call out, “Viva Fidel, viva Raúl, long live the revolution.” The statement had the ominous ring of, “The king is dead, long live the king.” But the king was still very much alive. It would be another four years until illness drove Fidel to hand over power to his brother Raúl.
Nor did Fidel Castro succeed in using his victory to end the embargo. The passage of the law permitting agricultural sales to Cuba must have convinced him that the US Congress would end the embargo, and he could in turn disregard the Clinton administration. His attitude also might have reflected the fact that he distrusted President Clinton who, upon seeking electoral victory in 1992, had said that the H.W. Bush administration had missed a big opportunity “to put the hammer down on Fidel Castro.” and then in 1996 had signed into law the draconian Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidary Act, after Cuba shot down two unarmed civilian aircraft. Dagoberto Rodríguez Barrera, my interlocutor at the Foreign Ministry, told me that his government was confident that Castro’s courting of congressional leaders and American VIPs would lead to the repeal of sanctions. I warned him that he was far too optimistic. But in his blaze of victory, Castro appeared to underestimate the power of his enemies in the diaspora who were intent on revenge.
Elián González would not have returned without the full force of the US government. Clinton had firmly backed Reno’s decision to take Elián by force, pointing out that “The law has been upheld. I think it was the right things to do.” But there was not a single thank you from Cuba, nor any effort to use the cooperation between our governments that had resulted in Elián’s return as a foundation for talks that might lead to improved relations. Clinton was uninterested in exploring this possibility because he realized that returning Elián to Fidel, his ersatz father, had already done serious damage to Al Gore’s chances of winning Florida. Politically, his best option was to close down any further possibility of better relations. He did so by declaring that there would be no further effort to improve relations “until there is a bipartisan majority that believes that there has been some effort on the part of the Cuban government to reach out to us as well.”
The defeated Cuban Americans were not appeased. They wanted revenge, and they got it in less time than it took to return Elián to Cuba. In November—a little over four months after the boy went home—diaspora Cubans who were infuriated by their egregious loss voted massively against Al Gore. While Clinton had received about one-third of the Cuban American vote, Gore got slightly less than one-fifth. All that Gore would have needed to win Florida’s electoral votes and the presidency was another five hundred votes. Instead, large numbers of Cuban Americans—in what they called el voto castigo (the punishment vote)—joined other conservatives in voting for George W. Bush and in protesting the vote recount. The US Supreme Court ultimately stepped in to quell the tension over who won Florida, deciding the presidency on a vote of 5 to 4. Had Elián remained in Miami, grateful Cuban American would have easily provided the votes needed to elect Gore, thereby avoiding the recount and the partisan decision by the Supreme Court. It is not a stretch to claim that Elián González, a Cuban child found floating in the Florida Straits, lost Al Gore the presidency.
In the summer of 2000, with Elián at his side, Castro basked in the admiration of his compatriots and the world. He had triumphed in what would be his last battle with the Cuban diaspora, winning a decisive victory and reinvigorating his revolution. It seemed to me that Fidel might rule for another decade or two. My staff and I had a bird’s-eye view from the fifth-floor balcony of the US Interests Section. Seated below, in the front row of the Tribuna Abierta, were Juan Míguel with his family and beloved son, Elián, and surrounding them were Fidel, his seldom seen wife Dalia, and most of the Cuban hierarchy. No one looked up or acknowledged our presence. Yet I could have thrown a stone and hit Fidel. More realistically, I might have broadcast loud music to drown out the festivities below. Instead, we watched quietly, wondering whether and for how long the ripples from the battle for Elián would continue to rake the shores of both Havana and Miami. Below Cuba’s leaders sat without ever imagining that we—such a close and trusted enemy—might pose a danger.
In truth, despite the harm we do each other, the United States and Cuba are no longer real enemies. The United States has not been engaged in a hot or even a cold war with Cuba for many years. Nevertheless, American presidents, for domestic political gain, have allowed themselves to become entangled in a family feud, in which Fidel Castro’s in-laws the Díaz-Balarts and other conservative Cuban diaspora families struggle endlessly t
o defeat the Castro brothers and the revolution that forced them to flee the country they loved. Yet over the ensuing half century Cuba has changed beyond their recognition; it will never return to what it once was. Even if Cuba suddenly became a democracy, it would not magically become the country they left in the 1960s and 1970s. Cuba’s values and vision of itself have irreparably changed, and it is today a different country from the one it might have been.
PART III
2001–2002: US INTERESTS SECTION;
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
CHAPTER 8
REGIME CHANGE: OURS
EIGHTY PERCENT OF CUBAN AMERICANS VOTED FOR GEORGE W. Bush in the 2000 presidential elections, though it would be more accurate to say that they voted against Al Gore in revenge for the loss of Elián González. In return, they expected President Bush to punish Castro by ending the Clinton-era measures that permitted people-to-people travel to Cuba for humanitarian, cultural, and religious reasons. The first wave of Cuban migrants, many of whom translated successful lives in Cuba into prosperous and happy lives in the States, wanted to strictly isolate Cuba, ending all travel to the island. They had cut their ties to Cuba and, having become American citizens, made their desires known through active lobbying, voting, and financially supporting mostly Republican candidates who agreed with and cultivated their anger toward Castro and Cuba. Those Cubans who came to the United States after the mid-1980s were generally different from their predecessors in that they wished to retain the right to visit their families and friends in Cuba. Still, when Bush took office in 2001 most people in both groups agreed that travel to the island by non-Cubans should end.
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