[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 46 (Wednesday, April 12, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2604-S2607]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             ELIAN GONZALEZ

  Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, I want to talk on a 
subject that has been in the news a lot. I will take a few minutes of 
the Senate's time. I have been involved in a lot of issues. I have 
debated just about everything known to mankind on the floor of the 
Senate, as have most of us. I am in my tenth year in the Senate, and I 
have never been involved in an issue that has gotten to my heart more 
than the Elian Gonzalez case--never. Last night, on the Geraldo Rivera 
show, a poll was shown saying 61 percent of the American people said 
Elian Gonzalez should go back to his father, and 28 percent of them 
said he should stay here in America.
  Here is this little boy who floated in the ocean on an innertube 
after his mother died trying to bring him to America. So we are now 
going to conduct policy about what to do about Elian by reading polls. 
Where is the leadership in this country when we need it? This is not 
about polls. I don't care what the polls are. I could care less what 
the polls are. If Lincoln had taken a poll on slavery, we would 
probably still have slavery because the majority of the people in 
America at that time supported slavery. But he didn't take a poll or 
put his finger to the wind. He did what was right.
  Again, I plead with my colleagues in the Senate to grant Elian 
Gonzalez and his family permanent residency status so this issue can be 
handled by a Florida custody court. This should not be an immigration 
matter. Elian Gonzalez did not get on a yacht and cruise into Miami 
Harbor. He and two other people almost drowned while everybody else on 
the boat--10 or 12 other people --lost their lives. And his mother's 
dying wish was to ``please get my son to American soil.''
  I have heard a lot about the father's rights. I have nothing against 
him. He could be the nicest guy in the world. I have met Elian. I 
didn't get a chance to meet Elian's mother because she didn't make it. 
If she had made it, we would not be here talking about this because, 
under the law, she and Elian would be allowed to stay here. So because 
she died, Elian has no rights.
  Those of you listening to me now who think this is a father-son 
issue, I want you to listen carefully to what I have to say because it 
is not a father-son issue. That is a totally bogus argument. There are 
reports in Miami that Elian is reluctant to travel to Washington to see 
his father. He is a frightened little boy. Wouldn't you be after you 
survived that? Has anybody listening to me now ever gone through an 
experience like that--floating on an innertube on the high seas for 3 
days, after you watched your mother die, and everybody else on the boat 
is gone except two others he didn't know were alive because they were 
drifting off somewhere else. And then to be sitting in a home in Miami, 
with people who love him, who have taken care of him, and to wonder if 
today, right now, tonight, tomorrow morning--he doesn't know when--
maybe noon tomorrow, in comes the large, sweeping hand of the Justice 
Department and Janet Reno, and they yank him from the arms of these 
people who love him and drag him back to Cuba. That is what he is 
sitting through now and worrying about now. He is a frightened little 
boy. When are we going to be concerned about this frightened little 
boy?
  I am tired of hearing about everyone else's rights in this debate. I 
am sick of it. I am sick of the fact that I can't get a vote on the 
floor of this Senate because the people do not have the guts to vote. 
They do not want to be recorded. I am sick of it because this little 
boy is going to be dragged back to Cuba, and he is going to be used as 
a pawn in Castro's--God knows what--forsaken land over there. And we 
have to live with it. We ought to be recorded, and we ought to be on 
record. We ought to stand up and be counted. I am sick of it. I have 
been quiet too long. I am not going to be quiet anymore.
  He is fearful of returning to that country. I talked to him. He said: 
Senator Smith, please help me. Don't send me back to Cuba. I said: 
Elian, do you love your father? Do you want to go back with your 
father? He says: Yes. I want to be with my father. I don't want to go 
back to Cuba.
  Mr. Gonzalez, if you are listening to me, why don't you defect? It is 
a heck of a lot better here.
  I am going to tell you that there is one shining example of why it is 
not about father and son. It is not about father and son. I am sick of 
it. Listen to me--one shining example of the human rights violation of 
Fidel Castro.
  Where are all the human rights people who care about this? Where is 
the Catholic Church that sheltered all of these Communists during the 
Nicaraguan and El Salvador issue? Where are they? Silent.
  Let me tell you about Fidel Castro and what little boys such as Elian 
look forward to, and what Elian will have to look forward to when he is 
dragged back to Cuba--for his father. Give me a break, Ms. Reno.
  On July 13, 1994, 72 Cuban men, women, and children boarded the 13 de 
Marzo, a tugboat, trying to sail for freedom to the United States, just 
like Elian did. Less than 3 hours later--3 hours later--32 of them 
would be forced to return to Cuba--they were the lucky ones--while the 
other 40, 23 children among them, were left by the Cuban authorities, 
their bodies scattered at sea.
  At 3 o'clock in the morning, 22 men and 30 women boarded a recently 
renovated World War II tugboat in the Bay of Havana. With them were 
over two dozen children, one an infant, and several others between 5 
and 10 years old.
  I am going to show you some pictures of the children who boarded that 
boat who never returned. I want to show you pictures of children who 
died such as these children right here:
  Caridad Leyva Tacoronte, dead, 4 years old;
  Angel Rene Abreu Ruiz, dead, 3 years old;
  Yousel Eugenio Perez Tacoronte, dead, 11 years old.
  Let me tell you how they died with this dictator who tells you that 
he wants to welcome this little boy back to Cuba so he can be with his 
father. If Castro had caught him, he would be dead. All of them would 
have been. He would have killed them. But he didn't catch them. They 
drowned.
  Now Elian has to be told that he has to go back. His father said the 
other day, ``Four months I have been waiting for my son.''
  Where have you been, Mr. Gonzalez? Nobody is stopping you from coming 
here, except Castro. We don't have any policy that says you can't come 
here.
  Let me tell you what happened to these kids. This little tugboat was 
detected, and it was approached by the Cuban coast guard. The 
government boat did not attempt to stop the 13 de Marzo, the boat. It 
didn't try to stop it. Instead, it stalked it for 45 minutes along the 
coast of Cuba, 7 miles out at sea--stalked it, intimidating it.
  The U.S. Coast Guard protects life. The Cuban coast guard 
exterminates life.
  It was then that the government vessel, beyond the sight of any 
witnesses on land, rammed this defenseless boat. This is 1994. This 
isn't 1959. This is 1994, 6 years ago. Defenseless people were in a 
little tugboat which was rammed by the Cuban coast guard.
  According to the testimony of several of the survivors, two Cuban 
government firefighting boats appeared and began to pummel the 
passengers with high pressure firehoses.
  You can imagine how horrible that was.
  Although the passengers repeatedly attempted to surrender to the 
government officials--even women holding their children up on deck, 
saying,

[[Page S2605]]

please, my children; it is my child; don't kill my child. They were 
begging for their lives, but they were relentless, this wonderful 
Castro who is so concerned about getting this little boy back to his 
father in Cuba.
  The force from the firehoses you can imagine. One survivor, Mayda 
Tacoronte Vega, told her sister that she witnessed children sprayed 
from the arms of their mothers into the ocean waters. Other children 
were swept over the deck by the firehoses into the sea and drowned. 
Desperate to protect their own children, the women carried the 
remaining children down into the boat's hold.
  Gerado Perez Vasconcelos, whose ex-wife and son perished that day, 
told of how the firehoses were filling the hold with water. The boat 
sank, and she didn't see anybody coming out of the hold.

  With most of its weaker passengers already drowned inside the hold, 
or in the sea, the tugboat filled with water, cracked in two, and was 
rammed again just to be sure, and it sank.
  Over the course of a few minutes that day, Maria Victoria Garcia lost 
her husband, her 10-year-old boy, her brother, three uncles, and two 
cousins. For what? For trying to get out of Cuba, this place that we 
are going to send Elian back to, maybe tomorrow.
  Her poignant testimony revealed what happened to her and her son once 
they were in the water. ``We struggled to stay above water by clinging 
to a floating body.''
  I wonder what Fidel would have done if Fidel had found Elian floating 
in the tube rather than these two fishermen.
  ``We struggled to stay above the water by clinging to a floating 
body,'' this woman said. ``I held onto this body because I just didn't 
have the strength to go on. But people fell on me, and my son slipped 
from my grasp,'' just as Elian's mother slipped from his grasp.
  The young boy could fight the huge waves created by the Government 
vessels, and his mother was forced to watch helplessly as her baby 
drowned only 5 feet away.
  Angel Ruiz, 3 years old, Fidel Castro, that wonderful, little child-
loving dictator over there, took care of her.
  There is Yousel, he is 11.
  Nineteen-year-old Janette Hernandez Gutierrez also courageously 
attempted to save the life of a child just before the boat was fully 
submerged. ``We went to look for the other child. Just as I was about 
to get off the boat, I felt the child * * * had caught my foot. And 
when I was about to grab him, my shoe slipped off and down he went. I 
couldn't reach him. That was horrible * * *.''
  Hernandez went on to describe the scene of the massacre: ``There was 
a child who was inflated like a toad, inflated with so much water.''
  The merciless attack left 23 children and 17 adults dead in the 
Florida Straits.
  You say: Oh, well. That was just a bunch of Castro's goons who got a 
little excited; no big deal. This is not about that. Elian's father 
loves him. He should go back.
  Here is what Castro says about Elian, in case you want to know:
  ``The team is ready,'' Castro said, referring to when Elian comes 
back, ``to proceed without losing 1 minute with the rehabilitation and 
readaptation of Elian to his family.''
  Yes. Absolutely. You talk about psychological trauma. You don't know 
what psychological trauma is until you deal with what this little boy 
has to deal. Not one person in the Justice Department has asked Elian 
one question about what he wants.
  I have been there. I have talked to him.
  The 32 survivors--maybe they were lucky. Maybe they weren't. They 
were taken to a prison where they have to endure life separated from 
their surviving relatives.

  Not only did the agents refuse to search for the dead, they mocked 
the survivors and the relatives of the deceased and laughed at those 
who asked the state security to reclaim the bodies, said Geraldo Perez 
in a tearful press conference.
  The officials said the drowned were nothing other than 
counterrevolutionary dogs. Will we send this ``counterrevolutionary 
dog'' back to Castro? Is Elian a counterrevolutionary dog? Elian had a 
taste of freedom. What if he resists the lack of human rights in Cuba? 
Will we hear about it? I don't think so. We will not hear about it, but 
Elian will hear about it. What do you think his father will be able to 
do about it?
  I ask some of my critics on the 61 percent, pick up a book about 
Fidel Castro's Cuba and look up the word ``pioneers.'' Let me tell you 
about the Pioneers. Elian was a Pioneer before he escaped. What do 
Pioneers do? They have a little indoctrination school. Here is one of 
the little drills they do for the children at the age of 3: Hold your 
hands out--put on a blindfold. Hold your hands out, ask God for some 
candy, and wait. No candy comes. Close your hands, put them down. Put 
your hands back up again, ask Fidel Castro for some candy, and watch it 
pour into your hands.
  That is what Elian has to look forward to. It is called 
brainwashing--nothing complicated about it.
  The Union of Communist Pioneers is a compulsory political 
organization for children and adolescents created by the government for 
youngsters in kindergarten to 12th grade. It functions as the first 
step toward joining the Union of Communist Youth. Approximately 98 
percent of the children in elementary school are enrolled. It is not 
presided over by a child or adolescent, as one would expect, but by a 
high-ranking adult member of the Union of Communist Youth.
  Don't give me this stuff about him going back to his father. He is 
not going back to his father.
  What about his mother? Why does she not have rights, too? She had 
custody. She was taking care of him. The dirty little secret which Mr. 
Gonzalez will not talk about, because he can't, because of the long arm 
of Castro--where is he? He is in Bethesda, in a Cuban diplomat's house. 
He has a lot of free time to talk there. He can speak freely there, 
can't he? Reno has the nerve to say: We talked out there, we talked 
alone, and he didn't say anything about defecting.
  Come on, give me a break. Attorney General Reno, you could have 
stopped it 4 months ago, and you can still stop it today. Let it go to 
a custody court. Get out of it. It is not an immigration matter. He 
didn't immigrate here in the way we define immigration. Let it go to 
the custody court in Florida, and let them decide, if they need to. Let 
the family sit down alone without Fidel Castro, without any government 
officials, and let them talk about it. If they can't work it as a 
husband and wife can't work out custody of their children, go to court, 
and let the court make the determination based on all of the facts.
  There is a dirty little secret about Mr. Gonzalez. Yes, there is. Did 
he know Elian was coming? Sure, he knew. He knew they were leaving. He 
was called when the child was picked up and went to the hospital. The 
doctors wanted to know whether he had medical problems or history they 
needed to know about, so they called him in Cuba while the family was 
there. He said: Take care of my son; I will be there soon.

  We are not hearing about that, are we? We will not hear about that 
because we don't want to do anything to make Fidel Castro angry at the 
United States. After all, Bill Clinton wants a legacy of breaking down 
the barriers between Cuba and the United States. That is what this is 
about. Let's get real. God knows, he needs something to save his 
legacy, so we will take it out on Elian Gonzalez. After all, he is an 
expendable little kid. We don't care about him. That is just one kid. 
Let him go back to his father.
  If your son was lost at sea for 3 days and everybody on the boat 
drowned and somebody found him, I don't care who it was--it could be a 
convicted murderer who found him, who cares--if he found him and 
brought him home, wouldn't you ``thank him?'' Wouldn't you say ``thank 
you''? Wouldn't you thank those who took care of him, if you loved your 
son?
  Let me state what happened. There was no thank you. When he got off 
the plane, he said: They were a bunch of kidnappers. I want my kid 
back. They kidnapped my kid.
  Kidnapped my kid? I am not passing judgment on this guy. He could be 
the greatest father in the world for all I know, but he will not get a 
chance to be a father because the Cubans have already said this boy is 
the property of Cuba, not Mr. Gonzalez. Mr. Gonzalez will do what he is 
told.

[[Page S2606]]

  I want your kid.
  OK; when do you want him? Where do I take him? Where do I drop him 
off?
  As recently as April 2, Fidel Castro called the Miami relatives of 
Elian Gonzalez, Elian's unpunished kidnappers. Do you think little 
Elian will go back and tell his classmates and his father and those 
people in Cuba that these people were kidnappers who took care of him, 
who saved his life, the fishermen and the family who took care of him? 
I don't think so. What will happen? We can't afford to have little 
Elian running around saying bad things about Cuba or good things about 
America. No. Elian will pay the price.
  We don't have the guts to stand on the floor of the Senate as a 
Senate, all 100 Members, take a vote and say he should go back to Cuba 
or the case should go to court.
  Some say we might lose. Yes, we might. I think the vote count is 
probably 45--maybe. So what? We could take a walk on a number of issues 
before this body such as whether or not we should go to war in the 
Persian Gulf. We could have taken a walk on that and let the President 
go ahead and do it, but we took a vote. It was a tough vote. We take a 
lot of tough votes around here, and a lot of people die as a result of 
votes, especially when we vote to go to war.
  The headline in ``Granma,'' the Communist Party newspaper, after the 
incident was: ``Tugboat Stolen by Antisocial Elements Loses Stability 
and Sinks.''
  On August 5, 1994, Fidel Castro declared that the roots of the 
accident were manifested in the conduct of the United States; it was 
the United States' fault that these kids drowned.
  Dr. Marta Milina, a Cuban psychiatrist who escaped Cuba in August of 
1999, stated: If Elian Gonzalez is returned to Cuba, he would have 
severe psychological trauma.
  Is that in the best interest of Elian? Is it about Elian? Or is it 
about his father? The answer is, a custody court would know that 
because a custody court, if the family could not agree, would listen to 
the facts. They would make that determination. But they have never 
spoken, and the Justice Department has never spoken to Elian.
  This is one smart little boy. Meet him. And I am sorry the Attorney 
General does not believe it is important enough to meet him, but I will 
never forget him. He carried around a little statue of the Virgin Mary 
in the home where we were. I said: Who is that? He said: Virgin Mary. 
He said: I saw her while I was on the raft.
  Another story that is not recorded, and the fishermen will tell you, 
when they found him, he was floating in that little tube, asleep. You 
can substantiate this by talking to the family if you don't believe me. 
He was in the ocean for 3 days in the bright sunshine, didn't have a 
sunburn, and he was surrounded by dolphins, and dolphins will ward off 
sharks.
  This little boy is a very special little boy in more ways than one. 
The fact that we allow him to go back to Cuba under the auspices of 
uniting a father and a son is the most outrageous decision this country 
will ever make. Frankly, I do not want that blood on my hands. I know 
that is tough talk, and I mean every word of it. I don't want it on my 
hands. I have seen too much of it.

  I am not going to read all the names, but they will be printed in the 
Record. The children in that incident, 4 years old, 11 years old, 11 
years old, 6 months old fire-hosed out of the arms of her mother, 2 
years old, 3 years old, 10 years old, 4 years old, 3 years old, 11 
years old, 2 years old--that is the age of the children.
  Let me close on a couple of points. Edmund Burke once said:

       All that is required for evil to succeed is for good men 
     [and women] to do nothing.

  Today we can do something. We can grant Elian Gonzalez and his family 
permanent residency status, which will send this case to the family 
court where Mr. Gonzalez can make his case without any Castro 
influence. We should have done it the day Elian got back, but we did 
not. We decided to make this a big political issue between the 
administration and Castro. So Castro starts whining, and suddenly this 
administration thinks the case has to be in INS's jurisdiction. We 
could not kowtow to a Communist dictator. What does Castro care about 
the interests of this little boy? I told you what he thinks of this 
little boy.
  There are no parental rights in Cuba. The children are taken away 
into these training camps. They are taught all kinds of drills. They 
are taught how to take an AK-47 apart, blindfolded, at the age of 6.
  Luis Fernandez, a Cuban diplomat, said as recently as yesterday:

       The boy [Elian] is a possession of the Cuban government.

  Cuban children, my colleagues, do not belong to their parents, they 
belong to Fidel Castro.
  Article 39 of the Cuban constitution--it would be nice if some of the 
61 percent of the people who say this had the facts. It would be nice 
if the pollster gave them the facts before they answered the question. 
Article 39 of the Cuban constitution, adopted in 1976 and revised in 
1992, declares:

       . . . the education of children and young people in the 
     spirit of communism is the duty of all society.

  Law No. 16 of the ``Children and Youth Code,'' adopted in 1978, says 
the state's goal is the creation of ``Communism's new generation'' and 
requires all adults to help mold a child's ``Communist personality.'' 
If the parents do not bring up the children to be good Communists, then 
the neighborhood spy will report them to the authorities and they will 
be taken away and ``reeducated.''
  Talk to some of the Vietnamese who escaped Vietnam and ask them what 
a reeducation camp is. If anybody thinks little Elian Gonzalez will not 
be put under a severe and thorough Communist indoctrination when he 
goes back, then they are blind. He is going to suffer. He is going to 
pay--big time. For what? Surviving a near drowning, surviving a wreck 
on the open sea. That is why he is being punished, because his mother 
did not live.
  She has rights, too, but we don't know about them. But somebody could 
represent her in a custody court and put her rights on the record. But 
not Janet Reno.
  Let me give a little idea of what he is going to do some summer when 
he gets back. He is going to be in a ``voluntary" labor or military 
drill camp. He will learn there is no religion but communism. He was 
put in a church a few days after he arrived. He had never been in a 
church before in his life. He didn't know what the inside of a church 
was.
  He will learn that Fidel is God. He will learn the Communist Party is 
of more value than his father or anybody else in his family. He will be 
told his Miami relatives who cared for him and loved him, including his 
surrogate mother, Marielysis, are nothing more than traitors and worms 
and kidnappers. That is the language they use.
  Marielysis Gonzalez, 21 years old, has been hospitalized off and on 
for the past 2 weeks because this little boy clings to her every day. 
He will not leave her alone. Every time somebody knocks on the door, 
every time somebody comes in the yard, every time the phone rings, he 
wonders if somebody is going to take him away. And he asks her: 
Marielysis, are they going to take me today?
  How would you like to live like that? That is what Janet Reno has put 
this boy through for 4 months, and I am sick of it. I am not going to 
defend it. She has put him through it. It is her responsibility and the 
President's. These people have been vilified, these good people, these 
decent people in the Cuban-American community in Miami--good, decent 
people who have shown a lot of self-restraint, frankly, under the 
circumstances, but especially Lazaro and Marielysis and other members 
of that family who have taken such good care of this boy. All they care 
about is the best interests of the boy.
  It is funny, I did not hear some of those people saying anything 
about the rule of law--these same people today who are saying, the rule 
of law says he must go back with his father. It is funny, though, those 
same people when their President, the Chief Executive of our country, 
was impeached for repeatedly breaking our law, not one of them had the 
courage to step out and say: He broke the law; he lied to me.
  It just depends on whose law it is, doesn't it, and whose law you 
break. That is what matters.
  I believe in the rule of law, but can you understand why they do not 
want

[[Page S2607]]

to send Elian back to a totalitarian state? I have talked to the family 
about this. They love Juan Gonzalez. He is a family member. There is no 
difficulty between these family members. The reason Mr. Gonzalez did 
not come here is that he could not come here. The reason Mr. Gonzalez 
can't defect is that he is afraid to defect because he knows what is 
going to happen to some of his family who are still back in Cuba. We 
are playing the game. We are just giving them all the cover.
  ``I spoke to Mr. Gonzalez, and he didn't indicate to me he wanted to 
defect.''
  Do you remember learning about the Fugitive Slave Law of the 1840s 
and 1850s? It made northerners return escaped slaves back to their 
masters. Would anyone begrudge abolitionists who opposed that law?
  Picture this: A little black child in 1840, Anywhere, U.S.A., in the 
South, picked up by his mother. His father says, ``No, get away, I'll 
cover for you.'' She takes the Underground Railroad and makes it to the 
North and is caught. She dies. Same logic--send him back to the father. 
Send him back to slavery.
  This kid is going back to slavery. He is not going back to his 
father; he is going back to slavery. So all of you out there, all 61 
percent, including many of my colleagues, when you watch him paraded 
around the streets of Havana as they teach him to become a pretty good 
little Communist, think about it. Think about how you might have stood 
up and prevented it.
  In 1939, the U.S.S. St. Louis arrived from Germany with 937 refugees 
aboard. Do you know who they were? Jews fleeing from Hitler. The ship 
was denied entry because the law did not allow it. The refugees went 
back to Europe and Hitler and to their deaths. Was it right to uphold 
the law in that case?
  The fact is, no law governs this case. Janet Reno is not telling you 
the truth. She has total discretion. There is no law that is dictating 
to her that she has to send this boy back. No law. Show it to me. 
Somebody come to the floor and read to me the law that says the 
Attorney General must return this boy. There is no such law. There is 
nothing in the law that says it. There is no age restriction. There is 
nothing. What it says is that she has discretion. So her discretion is 
to send him back, but do not tell me it is the law because it is not.
  She made the wrong decision. With this simple bill, on which I have 
been trying to get a vote for a month, Senators can be on record as 
saying it is wrong to make this an immigration case. He has rights. He 
is only a 6-year-old boy, but he has rights. His mother had rights. 
Let's let the family sit down and talk about it without the Justice 
Department. Let them meet alone. If they cannot work it out, they can 
go to the Florida custody court and decide what is in the best interest 
of Elian. That is the way it should be.
  Will evil succeed, as Mr. Burke said? That could be Elian. That could 
have been Elian and might still be Elian. My conscience is clear.

                          ____________________