Little Havana, crowd toasts deadline's passing

By BILL DURYEA and WES ALLISON

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 14, 2000

MIAMI -- An ultimatum. A tantrum. An anthem.

The dramatic arc of what began as the most fateful day of the 4 1/2-month Elian saga was traced in the measured words of the attorney general, the finger-wagging pique of a 6-year-old boy and the jubilant singing of a crowd that believed it had stared down the top law officer of the most powerful nation on earth.

Many in the Cuban-American community went to sleep early Thursday knowing that Janet Reno had set a 2 p.m. deadline for Elian Gonzalez's family to decide whether they would travel with the boy to Washington, where he would be reunited with his father.

They woke up to a widely televised video clip of Elian, sitting cross-legged on his bed, telling the camera: "Dad, I don't want to go back to Cuba. If you want to, you go."

It appeared there would be a showdown by mid-afternoon on a cramped Little Havana street.

But by the end of the day, after half a dozen of Miami's favorite entertainers trooped through, after a federal court stay was issued, after the crowd had swelled to well over a thousand, the scene was more carnival than civil disobedience.

The tension was palpable immediately.

By 8:30 a.m., more than 100 protesters had gathered at the barricades. It was unusually early, but the crowd was unusually angry. Protesters pressed against the barrier, their faces splotchy with rage that did not yet have a direction.

Reno would say later she had awoken to a scene of calm and beauty over Biscayne Bay, proof to her of her hometown's essential goodness. At the same moment, to the west of her, posters denouncing her as an agent of Fidel Castro were being waved.

Miami Mayor Joe Carollo set the tone early.

"This will be a black, sad day for America," he said.

The gate on the skimpy chain link fence in front of the Gonzalez home was scrupulously locked and unlocked by beefy men wearing Brothers to the Rescue T-shirts.

Ramon Saul Sanchez, the Gandhi of Calle Ocho, had worked for weeks to train the crowds in civil disobedience. He worried that his words would not be heeded when they counted most. Uncharacteristically, he avoided the beckoning reporters.

By 10 a.m., Miami police officers, who had been called in from vacations and days off, trucked in more barricades. Undercover officers mingled in the crowd, looking for violent agitators. A 35-square-block area was gradually cordoned off to dissuade cars from trolling by, blaring their horns.

Rumors swept through the crowd and the horde of reporters. Federal authorities were said to be preparing to move the protesters and the media. The American Civil Liberties Union intervened.

Late morning, actor Andy Garcia, wearing a button down Polo shirt, appeared on the ad hoc stage bordered on three sides by the Gonzalez's yard and the barricades restraining the media and the public.

"If the child does not want to go and he expresses that to his father, he should be allowed to live here," Garcia said to applause.

Across the Miami River in downtown, Reno called her second news conference in 12 hours.

She said she wanted to talk to the people of Miami to clear up some misunderstandings. She said that Elian's family had refused the offer to meet with Juan Miguel Gonzalez in Washington, and probably would not be complying with the 2 p.m. deadline. But she promised the public "they will not see marshals at 2:01 attempting to remove the child by force."

In contrast to Reno's conciliatory tone, at the same moment outside the Gonzalez home, family attorney Manny Diaz reaffirmed Lazaro Gonzalez would not deliver Elian.

"Stop imposing conditions on the family and let them discuss it," Diaz said.

Around noon, Angela Moore, a 32-year-old mother of four, explained why she had come from predominantly black Liberty City.

"We wanted black American people out here to get down with Elian," said Moore. "His mother died for this."

"We'll be there for you when something happens to you all," said Ohilda Baguer, 36, whose family fled Cuba when she was one.

At 1:30, Gloria Estefan entered stage right.

She was ushered with her husband, Emilio, through the locked gate to the back of the house.

From the opposite end of the street, a clutch of five girls in plaid uniforms, second- and third-graders from a nearby parochial school, trooped into the edges of the throng. They were led by their mothers who thought it was important the girls see what their grandparents had endured.

Elian should stay here, said Natalie Alatriste, 9, "because they treat him really bad in Cuba and Castro's really mean."

While Estefan was inside, Marisleysis Gonzalez, evidently on the mend after her hospitalization for exhaustion, passed water to the panting protesters.

The deadline neared, and Estefan remained inside the home. Twenty-two people chanted Hail Marys, clutching rosary beads and Gatorade.

At 2 p.m. as the crowd swelled to its peak, a nearly solid mass from NW 24th Ave. to the edge of the Gonzalez's yard, Estefan emerged.

"The father is a victim, too. He is a victim of the repressive government of Fidel Castro," she said. "We extend our hand to him. We extend our prayers to him. We understand he is in a difficult situation."

The crowd cheered though it was almost impossible to hear her over the din of three helicopters hovering and a small plane towing a banner that read: "Liberty and Justice for Elian. www.agenda-cuba.org."

2:01 p.m. No marshals.

2:15 p.m. Spanish radio quoted Reno saying no marshals would show up at 2:01. More cheering.

2:30 p.m. A woman with a bullhorn reported that Janet Reno had resigned. Heads swiveled to her. "The Virgin Mary has told me," she said.

A series of musicians performed for the crowd as it grew slowly less tense. Arturo Sandoval, the trumpeter, played the national anthems of Cuba and the United States. Car horns blared for hours.

Ramon Sanchez, mindful of the unstable dynamics of large crowds, kept a steady march up and down the barricades, carrying bits of information like a pollen-coated bee. Still, he avoided the media.

When word came that the federal court had issued a temporary stay, the smell of cigar smoke began to waft over the crowd. The singing intensified. So did the defiance.

"When the Cubans protest, we, like, own Miami," said Jeannette Walled, 21, who lives in the heart of Little Havana. "People get scared. I guess Janet Reno got a little scared of that, seeing us all together."

Cigar in hand, aspiring singer Fabienne Dominique, 28, said the will of a unified Cuban-American community is an irresistible force.

"It always gets us what we want."

By 4 p.m. Armando Gutierrez, the family's counselor, felt jovial enough to show a reporter a curious barometer of how big this story has become. Flipping open his cellular phone he showed the number of minutes of incoming calls he has logged since December: 53,849.

"Lucky for me incoming calls are free," Gutierrez said. "The company probably wants to drop me."

A Miami officer ran up to Sanchez, who was speaking his first words to a reporter all day, and hugged him because he was so happy about the court's decision.

No one was really minding the lock on the gate anymore.

At 7 p.m., Elian emerged for the first time, waving his arms like a little politician. The crowd erupted in delight.

"Libertad! Libertad!"

Gutierrez said he knows that Miami's hold on the little boy is tenuous and could change as soon as this morning.

But the front gate is unlocked. For now.

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