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Politics : About that Cuban boy, Elian -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E. Taylor who wrote (2172)	4/24/2000 10:07:00 AM
From: Michelino	Respond to of 9127

Well stated: During the Cold War we built a "hate" machine, and now we don't know how to turn it off In fact, every November we watch while it submits a slate of candidates.

To: E. Taylor who wrote (2172)	4/24/2000 12:11:00 PM
From: JEB	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9127

Castro doesn't seem as old and decrepit as everyone wants to make him out to be. I firmly believe he can and will run rings around Clinton.

To: E. Taylor who wrote (2172)	4/24/2000 12:24:00 PM
From: JEB	Respond to of 9127

Saturday, April 22, 2000 Cubans plan to continue rallies even after Elian returns By JOHN RICE --- Associated Press Writer HAVANA (AP) -- Day and night, on television and on the radio, the crusade for Elian Gonzalez has dominated public debate in Cuba for nearly five months with a fervor as if the nation's fate was at stake. So what happens if the boy returns? More of the same, it seems, with Cuba fighting for the future of its socialist revolution. The intensive national mobilization over the case of the 6-year-old boy is a "strategy for this generation," President Fidel Castro said late last month, a strategy that will extend long after Elian's case is settled. After months of almost single-minded concentration on returning the young shipwreck survivor to Cuba, the government last week mounted an Elian-style march of more than 100,000 people to condemn a U.N. Human Rights Commission vote criticizing Cuba. Nightly three-hour specials on most television and radio frequencies, initially launched to inform Cubans about the Elian case, were twice devoted to the U.N. measure. Cuban officials speaking privately confirmed that those events were a portent of what is to come. From the start, shortly after Elian was rescued from a shipwreck off the Florida coast in late November, Cuban officials have used his case to attack a U.S. law, the Cuban Adjustment Act, which grants Cubans who reach U.S. soil the right to remain. They argue that the law, meant to aid Cubans fleeing communism, in fact encourages Cubans to risk their lives crossing the Florida Straits rather than waiting years for a legal visa. In a document introduced Feb. 19, the government explicitly expanded its range of targets to include a series of U.S. laws meant to isolate Cuba. That document is called the Oath of Baragua, recalling a famed moment in Cuban history when in 1878 at the town of Baragua, Cuban independence hero Antonio Maceo denounced a civil war cease-fire proposed by Spain that included neither independence for Cuba nor abolition of slavery. Cubans across the island have been asked to sign the new document as a commitment to patriotism and revolutionary struggle. "The combat for the return of the kidnapped Cuban boy has become the first episode of a much more prolonged struggle," the oath says, adding that the Elian case has "unleashed a great battle ... to end the causes which have led to so cruel and sad an event." Only moments after news that U.S. officials early Saturday had removed Elian from his relatives' house in Miami, Otto Rivero, head of the Union of Communist Youth, repeated that message on Cuban state radio: "The struggle we have unleashed is not only for Elian," he said, vowing to continue to protest against U.S. laws "that made it possible for Elian to be kidnapped in the United States." The government seems to be aiming that campaign at the generations it must count on to maintain the revolution after the 73-year-old Castro is no longer on the scene. The Cuban leader for years has warned Cuban youth against the temptations of capitalist materialism -- temptations that can be hard to resist for a generation that never knew the fervor of the 1959 revolution. Instead, they have experienced the hard times that followed the crash of the Soviet Union and a limited economic opening that has made Yankee dollars the tickets to chic clothes, restaurants and stereos. Castro has put much of the Elian campaign in the hands of youth movements linked to Cuba's Communist Party. The featured speaker at many rallies has been Communist university student leader Hassan Perez, who evangelizes for the cause with the hyperbolic fervor of a tent-meeting preacher-turned-Marxist. During a rally in front of the U.S. Interests Section on Thursday, Perez dismissed the "filthy rats of Miami" and warned that if Elian were not returned, "it would take more than 100 years, with all the money of the Federal Reserve and all the international organizations ever invented to recover the prestige of the U.S. nation." Whether the campaign will work beyond Elian is unclear. Even now, the mass rallies for Elian start to empty out long before they are over. Sociologist and Cuba specialist Susan Eckstein of Boston University noted that the Elian case may appeal to many Cubans more because of the issue of parental rights than anti-U.S. rhetoric. "I don't think that revolutionary sentiment is what is appealing to the youth," she said. "But I do think Castro is trying to make use of the situation to try to bring youth into the system more." At a late-March meeting of the Federation of University Students, headed by Perez, Castro reminded the youths that the battle against the U.S. laws would continue even after Elian comes home to Cuba. As the Oath of Baragua states: "There is work for many years." canoe.com