Many Latinos Resent Exiles’ Clout, Favor Elian’s Return

In South Florida, belief in the cause of a 6-year-old boy is an article of faith in the Spanish-language media, the chief source of news for the city’s melange of Latin American expatriates, immigrants and exiles.

Radio stations like the 50,000-watt Radio Mambi dedicate daylong coverage, with hardly a dissenting voice speaking out against keeping Elian Gonzalez in this country. Among the protesters gathered near the boy’s Miami home, there are a handful of blue-and-white Honduran and Nicaraguan flags scattered about in a red , white and blue sea of Cuban and American flags.

But in diverse and multinational Latino communities from New York to Los Angeles, support for the do-or-die position of the Cuban exile community is not as strong. Indeed, among many there is resentment against the perceived power of the Cuban American lobby, an unstoppable force that can seemingly move mountains in Washington, while other groups remain needy outsiders.

“People who are every day struggling to get their residency feel that their cases are invisible and meaningless next to all the attention this kid is getting,” said Leda Ramos of the Central American Resource Center in Los Angeles, where thousands of Salvadorans, Guatemalans and others seek help on immigration matters.

Latino Groups Officially Neutral

Most of the country’s largest Latino organizations have remained officially neutral on the custody issue.

Supporting the position of Elian’s fervently anti-Communist Miami relatives “would probably be contrary to the opinion of most other Latinos on this issue,” said Lisa Navarrete, spokeswoman for the National Council of La Raza, a predominantly Mexican American organization based in Washington.

“Most other Latinos feel on this issue like other Americans on this issue,” Navarrete said. “They think he should be reunited with his father.”

National polls have shown a large majority of Americans feel Elian should be reunited with his father. Those polls are mirrored in Miami’s non-Latino communities--92% of blacks and 76% of white non-Hispanics believe that Elian should be returned to his father, according to the Miami Herald.

One prominent congressman of Puerto Rican descent, Jose E. Serrano (D-N.Y.), has publicly stated that Elian should be returned to his father.

Serrano was especially angered by Vice President Al Gore’s support for a congressional initiative that would grant permanent residency to Elian’s Cuban father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. The congressman’s Bronx constituency is home to a large Dominican community where such favors on behalf of relatives abroad are not often granted.

“It’s an insult to the rest of the law-abiding, decent people who have sought citizenship and have been largely ignored,” Serrano said. “For the first time Gore advocates giving residency to someone who has not asked for it and whose only living parent has rejected it, just to get votes and money from Miami.”

Indeed, while Gore’s position was widely seen as influenced by his desire to poll well this fall in Florida, it could well work against him with Latinos elsewhere.

Despite their political views, many non-Cuban Latinos empathize deeply with Elian and his story, even if they don’t agree with the politics of Miami’s exile community. Like him, they have often undergone dangerous and dramatic journeys to get to the United States.

“They overlook the inequities” of the case, said Ramos of the Central American Resource Center. “They say, ‘His dream is my dream too.’ ”

U.S. policy toward Cuba has long been a source of contention among Latino members of Congress.

In 1997, the only two Cuban American members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus were incensed when two Mexican American congressmen from Southern California--Xavier Becerra and Esteban Torres--traveled to Cuba and met with Fidel Castro.

When Becerra was elected chair of the caucus not long after returning from the trip, the Cuban American lawmakers, Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, resigned from the caucus in protest.

“Castro is the Hitler of the Western Hemisphere,” Diaz-Balart said at the time. “I do not believe Jewish members would belong to an organization whose chairman visited Hitler. . . .”

Dissenting Caller Ridiculed by Host

Polls in the Herald have shown that more than 80% of the Cuban community here is in favor of Elian staying with his Miami relatives. But support from other Latino groups here is not quite so strong. Non-Cuban Latinos favored Elian’s stay in Miami by a margin of 55% to 38% in the most recent Herald poll.

There are few dissenting voices heard in the Spanish-language media here. A female caller to Spanish AM talk radio who said this week she thought Elian should be sent back to Cuba was ridiculed by the host and by subsequent callers as “a witch.”

The divisions in Miami often follow the old allegiances of the Cold War: Cubans and Nicaraguans, many of whom were exiled by leftist regimes, tend to be the most conservative. Mexicans and Central Americans, having traditionally fled poverty and right-wing repression, are more liberal.

In Sweetwater, a small city west of Miami with a large Nicaraguan population, Yadira Contreras said that almost everyone who comes into her cafeteria, La Fritanga Nicarote, seems to back the Miami family’s struggle to hold on to Elian.

“There is some cynicism about the motives of those involved,” she said, “but then Cubans have always been very supportive of us.

“And they are so organized,” she added. “When the Cubans call for a demonstration, people come out.”

Maynor Marin, 30, who works in the kitchen preparing empanadas and croquetas for the busy lunchtime trade, sounded more like a native of Havana than of Managua. “What does it mean when the lawyer for President Clinton is representing the father?” he asked. “And who is paying him? The father is not free to speak.”

Down the street at the Latin Cafeteria, the staff is a mix of nationalities. Behind the counter Nicaragua-born Luz Marina Manzanares said that the Gonzalez case had been the topic du jour for weeks.

“Castro is a genius, but an evil genius,” declared Zoila Ruiz-Sierra, 63, a robust, stentorian speaker who came here from Cuba in 1966 and joined Manzanares on the serving staff 10 years ago. “He wants this boy as a prize. He will have no rights over there, but be only the object of Castro’s cruelty, his perfidy. And I think the world sees this now.”

Do you agree? Manzanares was asked.

“Claro,” the Nicaraguan woman said, as if there could be any other answer. Of course.

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ELIAN STRUGGLE: Federal attorneys ask appeals court to order reunion between boy, his father. A17