[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 26 (Thursday, March 9, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E259-E261]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             ELIAN GONZALEZ

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 9, 2000

  Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I had the pleasure of reading these 
articles by James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal regarding the case 
of 6 year old Elian Gonzalez. I would highly recommend them to all who 
are interested in learning the truth about that sad case from someone 
who has thoroughly researched it with great insight and sensitivity and 
submit them for the Record.

             [From the Wall Street Journal, Jan. 31, 2000]

                           Havana's Hostages

                           (By James Taranto)

       Miami.--No aspect of the Elian Gonzalez debate is more 
     galling than the way Fidel Castro and his U.S. supporters 
     have posed as champions of family unity. Havana routinely 
     divides families by preventing children in Cuba from joining 
     their parents in America, with nary an objection from the 
     National Council of Churches and its allies in the fight for 
     Elian's deportation.
       There are no official statistics on the number of separated 
     families; Cuban-American leaders here offer estimates ranging 
     from hundreds to thousands. Many stateside family members 
     hesitate to go public for fear of retaliation against kin in 
     Cuba. But in three weeks, a new group called Mission Elian 
     has documented 32 such cases. In some, children in Cuba are 
     separated from both parents in America.
       Typical is the story of Jose Cohen, the 35-year-old owner 
     of a e-commerce company here. He had worked in Cuba's 
     foreign-investment office, entertaining guests from abroad. 
     Visitors told him about the outside world and whetted his 
     appetite for freedom. So in August 1994 he, his brother Isaac 
     and two other men crowded into a tiny two-seat motorized raft 
     for a three-day voyage to America. Mr. Cohen left behind his 
     wife, Lazara Brito Cohen, and his children, stepdaughter 
     Yanelis, now 15, daughter Yamila, 11, and son Isaac, eight.
       When Mr. Cohen became a U.S. resident in April 1996, he 
     applied for and was granted U.S. visas for his family. Mrs. 
     Cohen applied to the Cuban government for exit visas. Hearing 
     nothing for a year, she began sending letters to Cuban 
     officials, from Fidel Castro on down. Mr. Cohen produces a 
     sheaf of photocopied responses on Cuban government 
     letterhead, each informing his wife that her case is being 
     referred to another agency. Mr. Cohen says even the evasive 
     answers have stopped since Mr. Castro made Elian's case a 
     case celebre.
       Mrs. Cohen's experience can't be chalked up to mere 
     bureaucratic inefficiency. When she tried to enroll Yanelis 
     in high school in 1998, the school director told her that 
     teens with foreign immigration visas are not permitted to 
     study beyond junior high. Mrs. Cohen also has received 
     menacing unsigned notes slipped under her front door. 
     ``Forget about leaving Cuba. You will never leave Cuba,'' one 
     said. Declared another: ``Your husband has a wife in the 
     U.S.'' She once showed one of the notes to a bureaucrat at 
     the immigration office. He read it and smiled.
       Another time, a man with a government ID card appeared at 
     Mrs. Cohen's door. ``We want to help you,'' he said--and then 
     tried to seduce her. She rebuffed his advances and threw him 
     out.
       ``Every time we see the hope of living like every other 
     family, it's not in the near future,'' Mr. Cohen says. ``My 
     wife and three children are hostage of the regime.''

[[Page E260]]

       Bettina Rodriguez-Aguilera, a 42-year-old motivational 
     speaker who heads Mission Elian, grew up in a family divided 
     by Fidel Castro. She was a baby when her parents moved to the 
     U.S. in 1959, taking her and her teen brother with them. Her 
     father later returned to Cuba, where he wrote to her brother, 
     who had stayed behind in America, asking him to apply for a 
     visa waiver to speed his return to the U.S.
       He mentioned in the letter that he didn't intend to join 
     the local Communist Party cell, known as a block party. For 
     this he was charged with ``counterrevolutionary activities'' 
     and imprisoned for 14 years. Ms. Rodriguez-Aguilera didn't 
     see him until he came back to the U.S. when she was 17. His 
     many years as a political prisoner had broken his spirit. 
     ``Even though he was out of prison, his mind was still in 
     prison,'' she says. He died in 1988.
       Sometimes the Castro government boasts to families that 
     they are being held hostage. In 1991 Maj. Orestes Lorenzo, a 
     fighter pilot in the Cuban air force, flew his MiG-27 to the 
     Boca Chica Naval Air Station in the Florida Keys, where he 
     defected. He left behind his wife and two young sons. They 
     were summoned to the office of Gen. Raul Castro, the 
     dictator's brother, and told they would never be allowed to 
     leave Cuba. ``He has to return,'' Gen.
       Havana's practice of taking families hostage shouldn't 
     surprise us. It is part and parcel of a totalitarian ideology 
     enshrined in laws giving the state limitless power over the 
     most intimate aspects of the lives of Cubans--including 
     children. Article 5 of Cuba's Code of the Child, enacted in 
     1978, stipulates that anyone who comes in contact with a 
     child must contribute to ``the development of his communist 
     personality.'' Article 8 calls for ``efficient protection of 
     youth against all influences contrary to their communist 
     formation.'' Many Cubans here tell stories similar to that of 
     Miami architect Ricardo Fernandez. His cousin in Cuba was 
     summoned to meet her daughter's teacher, who demanded to know 
     why she was sending the girl to church.
       To develop the ``communist personality,'' Havana harnesses 
     that most potent influence: peer pressure. Mr. Cohen says 
     Yamila, his 11-year-old daughter, was hustled with her 
     classmates onto a bus earlier this month for an impromptu 
     field trip. Destination: the U.S. diplomatic mission in 
     Havana, where the children were told to join a rally 
     demanding Elian's return. On the phone later, Mr. Cohen asked 
     Yamila why she had gone along with the order. ``I was very 
     nervous about what the rest of the children would say,'' she 
     told him.
       This is the society to which the Clinton administration is 
     trying to repatriate Elian--a society in which the government 
     demands ideological purity even from six-year-olds. How can 
     this be in any child's best interest?
       Havana's efforts at thought control work. The image of a 
     mental prison recurs often in conversations with Cuban 
     immigrants here. They talk about wearing la mascara--the 
     mask--to hide their true feelings. They describe a process of 
     self-censorship in which they don't allow themselves even to 
     think certain things, lest a counterrevolutionary sentiment 
     slip out in an unguarded moment. Since the government 
     controls the economy, unemployment is among the risks for 
     those who deviate. Mr. Cohen says his brother David, once a 
     physician at a Havana clinic, was fired for wearing a Star of 
     David necklace. The Cuban government has also blocked David 
     Cohen's effort to emigrate to the Dominican Republic.
       It is in this context that we must evaluate Elian's 
     father's refusal to come to the U.S. for a reunion with his 
     son. He may well be a hostage, wearing la mascara and reading 
     a government script. Sister Jeanne O'Laughlin, the nun who 
     oversaw last week's reunion between Elian and his 
     grandmothers, has said she sensed at the meeting that the 
     women were being manipulated by the Cuban government. On 
     Thursday Sister O'Laughlin issued a statement saying the 
     meeting had changed her mind: She now believes Elian should 
     stay.
       Gen. Rafael del Pino, who was the No. 2 man in the Cuban 
     Defense Ministry when he defected to the U.S. in 1987, knows 
     what it's like to have a custody dispute with the Cuban 
     government. He escaped on a small plane and brought his wife, 
     their two children and a teenage son by his previous 
     marriage. His former wife later appeared on Cuban television 
     and before the National Assembly, Cuba's one-party 
     legislature, accusing her ex-husband of kidnapping and 
     demanding her son's return.
       But in 1995 she herself escaped on a raft. Mr. del Pino 
     says she told him her complaints had been coerced by Havana. 
     Reached by phone at her home in North Carolina, she refuses 
     to say, pointing out that her mother and daughter remain in 
     Cuba.
       This story leads Mr. Lorenzo, who made his own freedom 
     flight four years after the general's to speculate: What if, 
     like Mr. del Pino's ex-wife, Elian's father eventually 
     decides to escape? ``I wonder if we'll find that the father 
     left the island with Elian, and they all died at sea,'' Mr. 
     Lorenzo says. ``Who are we going to blame for that?''

                                  ____
                                  

             [From the Wall Street Journal, Jan. 24, 2000]

                            Elian's Journey

                           (By James Taranto)

       Miami.--It's hard for people who have never lived under 
     communism to comprehend the passions the Elian Gonzalez case 
     has ignited in the Cuban-American community. Just as white 
     people can't completely understand what it's like to feel the 
     sting of racial prejudice, those of us lucky enough to have 
     grown up in a free land can't fully fathom the meaning of 
     totalitarianism. But the lawmakers, judges and bureaucrats 
     who control Elian's fate have an obligation to try. By 
     contemplating the lengths to which people will go to escape, 
     they can at least glimpse a shadow of the horror.
       Elian and his mother were traveling with 12 other people, 
     two of whom survived. Nivaldo Fernandez, a chef in a five-
     star tourist restaurant who was separated from his wife, and 
     Arianne Horta, a single full-time mom, had been dating for 
     less than a year when they decided to leave Cuba together. 
     They have kept a low profile until now because Mrs. Horta 
     fears for her five-year-old daughter, Estefani Erera, whom 
     she left behind in Cuba. On Friday Ms. Horta went public with 
     her plight at a press conference here organized by Rep. 
     Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R., Fla.).
       A few days earlier, I sat down with Mr. Fernandez and Ms. 
     Horta to hear an account of their harrowing voyage. This is 
     their story, as translated by Carlos Corredoira, Mr. 
     Fernandez's best friend.
       Fifteen Cubans from the coastal city of Cardenas boarded a 
     17-foot boat bound for America before dawn on Nov. 21. Along 
     with three survivors and Elian's mother and stepfather, the 
     group included Ms. Horta's young daughter and two families, 
     the Muneros and the Rodriguezes. A Rodriguez family friend 
     was also aboard. Aside from the two children, the youngest 
     member of the group was 17.
       The trip was troubled from the start. Their outboard motor 
     failed almost immediately, and they spent the day on a small 
     island just off the coast trying to repair it. As Elian and 
     Estefani played together on the island, Elian was exuberant; 
     he kept shouting ``Me voy para la Yuma!'': ``I'm going to the 
     United States!'' (La Yuma is a Cuban colloquialism for the 
     U.S.) But Estefani was scared and cried much of the time.
       In the evening they returned and got the motor fixed. Ms. 
     Horta decided Estefani was not up to the trip. She faced an 
     agonizing choice: her daughter or her freedom. She decided to 
     leave Estefani behind with her grandmother and send for her 
     after she settled in the U.S. She had no idea the trip would 
     turn into an international incident.
       Just before dawn the next morning, they set off again. Two 
     hours later, Elian saved their lives. Two Cuban patrol boats 
     pulled up, one on each side. They tried unsuccessfully to 
     capsize the little boat by moving from side to side, making 
     waves. Then a sailor on the large vessel threatened to sink 
     the boat with a water cannon.
       ``We have kids in here!'' Mr. Fernandez shouted. ``We have 
     five or six kids!'' He backed up his bluff by hoisting Elian. 
     The sailor backed down. The patrol boats continued to follow 
     for an hour, turning back when they reached international 
     waters.
       Things got much worse that night. The motor died. High 
     waves tossed the boat about. Water splashed over the sides of 
     the craft, threatening to sink it. A fuel tank tipped over. 
     The gasoline burned a hole in one of the three large inner 
     tubes the group had taken along in case of emergency. Seconds 
     later, the boat capsizes.
       The 14 Cubans spent the night clinging to the hull. Several 
     cruise ships passed by, but no one heard their cries for 
     help. At dawn they tried to turn their boat over. Instead it 
     sank. Their food was gone. They grabbed the inner tubes and 
     held on for their lives.
       As the boat sank, Ms. Horta snatched a jug of water. She 
     told Elian's mother, Elizabeth Broton: ``Only give this water 
     to Elian.'' That selfless act may well have saved Elian's 
     life.
       By evening, the Cubans were dehydrated, and
       Suddenly all was quiet. In the space of seconds, three men 
     had died, and two women had become widows. Elian's 
     stepfather's parents had also seen two sons perish. Mr. 
     Fernandez struggled to keep their spirits up. ``Lets pray 
     together,'' he told them.
       Hunger and hallucination killed more that night. The 
     Rodriguezes' friend, a 25-year-old woman named Lirka, was 
     starving. She swam away, shouting, ``I want black beans and 
     rice!'' Mr. Fernandez tried to save her. She drowned just as 
     he reached her. When he returned to the inner tube, it was 
     empty. Elian's stepfather's parents had drowned, too. Later 
     the widow Rodriguez started swimming and shouting. ``There's 
     light over there!'' Her brother-in-law tried to save her. 
     Both drowned quickly.
       The group had dwindled to six: Mr. Fernandez, Ms. Horta, 
     Elian, his mother, and the parents of the two dead Rodriguez 
     men. Mr. Fernandez and Ms. Horta, exhausted, fell asleep 
     clinging to their inner tube. They awoke to find that the 
     elder Rodriguezes had drowned overnight.
       All the struggle and death had worn Elian's mother down. 
     ``I want to die,'' she said. ``All I want is for my son to 
     live. If there's one here who has to die, it's me, not

[[Page E261]]

     him.'' Elian was begging for milk; his mother had given him 
     her sweater to protect him from the chilly waters.
       Mr. Fernandez and Ms. Horta dozed off again. Hours later 
     they were awakened by sharks nipping at their legs. (Both 
     showed me their scars: Mr. Fernandez has several dozen small 
     tooth marks on his ankles; Ms. Horta has three larger wounds 
     on her thighs.)
       They were alone. The rope that held the inner tubes 
     together had come loose as they slept. Mr. Fernandez, who had 
     tried to lift the others' spirits, found himself losing hope. 
     ``I'm tired,'' he told Ms. Horta. ``I can't make it. I want 
     to die.''
       As night fell, the couple saw lights in the distance. They 
     tried swimming toward shore, but the current was against 
     them. Again they slept.
       They awoke at dawn on Thanksgiving Day. Closer to shore, 
     they began swimming toward land. They arrived in Key 
     Biscayne, Fla., yacht harbor. They had made it.
       Exhausted and dehydrated, they collapsed. Later Mr. 
     Fernandez, lying in bed in a Miami hospital, told police 
     there might be other survivors. A cop showed him a photo: 
     ``Did this little kid come with you?''
       ``Yes, Is he alive?'' Elian had made it too.
       After leaving the hospital, Mr. Fernandez and Ms. Horta 
     went straight to the immigration office and began the process 
     of becoming Americans. Their new lives are a classic 
     immigrant struggle. Ms. Horta is going to school to learn 
     English. Mr. Fernandez, the erstwhile five-star chef, is 
     looking for work; last week he had an interview for a job 
     washing cars at an auto dealership.
       Nivado Fernandez is full of faith in his new country. ``I 
     was born on July 3, 1967,'' he says, ``I was born again on 
     Nov. 25, 1999, because that's when I came to the land of 
     liberty.'' Would he do it again if he knew how harrowing the 
     journey would be? ``Yes. Even if I died in the middle of the 
     sea, I would have died with dignity, trying to come to this 
     country.''
       Arianne Horta longs to be reunited with Estefani, her five-
     year-old daughter. The Immigration and Naturalization 
     Service, the selfsame agency that is demanding Elian's 
     immediate deportation in the name of family reunification, 
     tells Horta it can't do anything about her little girl until 
     Ms. Horta attains residency status, which won't happen until 
     next year. In contrast to Elian's father, last seen ranting 
     on ABC's ``Nightline'' about his desire to assassinate U.S. 
     politicians, Ms. Horta maintains a quiet dignity. ``I cry a 
     lot,'' she says.
       This week Congress will take up legislation to declare 
     Elian Gonzalez a U.S. citizen. It should extend the same 
     privilege to Estefani Erera. There's no guarantee that Fidel 
     Castro would allow her to emigrate, but such an action would 
     remove the obstacle on this side of the Florida Straits. 
     Making Estefani an American would be a fitting tribute to her 
     mother's heroism--and to the memories of the 11 who didn't 
     make it.

     

                          ____________________