The saga of Elian

Ever insightful and corrosively droll, world-famous cartoonist Herblock depicted it best in a recent edition of the International Herald Tribune. All over the world, the story of Elian Gonzalez was the topic. Even a group of world leaders meeting at the summit interrupted their verbal labors to ask almost in unison: "What's the latest about Elian?" Well, the reply crackled on TV screens everywhere before dawn Friday in Miami (late Saturday afternoon, Manila time). It was a sight to see. In less than 10 minutes, the world's most famous six-year-old boy was whisked out by US Federal agents from his Miami house.

In less than an hour's time, Elian Gonzalez was reunited with his father Juan Miguel Gonzalez. And both are now closeted to the world at the Andrews Air Base near Washington, under the auspices of Bill Clinton.

It was a biblical ending, if you wish. But for the Cuban-Americans in Miami, it was Sig Heil all over again, the hobnailed boot now worn by the American federal agent, instead of the KGB, oh yes instead of the guardia secreta of Fidel Castro. The Cuban-Americans in Little Havana, Miami, who had threatened a huge human chain to stop the feds from taking over Elian, were caught off-guard. The assault took place just after 5 a.m. on a Holy Friday. The three dozen or so Cuban Americans on early morning vigil were immobilized by pepper gas. All of Miami was still asleep.

When eventually, they came out an hour after, they were stunned. They had sworn nobody could take out Elian from his Little Havana residence, and that there would be "Guerra! Guerra! Guerra!" in the streets. Cuban-Americans would rise by the thousands, and hell no, que se vaya el infierno, Elian would be theirs and not returned to his father Juan Miguel. They did not reckon with Janet Reno, US attorney-general, whose semi-scowl was a permanent sword-slash across her face. Grim business.

Don't get me wrong. Ms. Reno, recoiling from her shattering experience at WACO, where she gave the go-signal to exterminate a fanatical religious group who had already killed several FBI agents, was in no mood for anything like a Normandy landing. For days, weeks, months, she negotiated with Elian's family relatives in Miami, largely his great-uncles Lazaro and Delfin and cousin Marisleysis, his surrogate mother. They had learned to love Elian, and who wouldn't.

He was a six-year-old stripling, extremely good-looking, cute, the wonder of innocent boyhood forever minted on his face as though by a questing Raphael. Elian, by the way, was the lone survivor of a fragile boat attempt to escape Cuba six months ago and seek sanctuary in Florida. His mother, separated from Juan Gonzalez, died and so did several others. A fishermen found Elian hanging on to an inner tube. He was sent by God. So said his Miami relatives who made sure Fidel Castro would not have the satisfaction of seeing Elian's likes again.

See? Behind is the drama of a divided Cuba. The ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion, repeated attempts by President John Kennedy and his brother Bob to exterminate Fidel Castro, including poison pills concealed in bottles of aspirin. What everybody almost forgot was that Elian had a father, Juan Miguel -- who loved him very much -- who, whatever his faults, doted on Elian, even after the parents separated. But how could Juan Miguel reclaim his son if he remained in Havana and Elian was already virtually adopted by his grand-uncles and the fetching Marisleysis?

Fidel Castro, a political impresario if there ever was one, mobilized the whole of Havana. Nightly, daily, tens of thousands marched in Havana's grand plazas and boulevards, candle-lit and certainly propaganda-torched, demanding the return of Elian. American "imperialism" and "perfidy" were just two of a hundred invectives thrown at the Yankee. Hello again.

It worked.

In no time, the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Services) decided that Elian had to be returned to Cuba, be reunited with his father. The INS maybe had no choice. Old and New Testaments said it. The moral law and the natural law. The family was the core unit of society, all cultures, all civilizations. Parents towered over their children as the Gothic arches of Notre Dame towered over the faithful. Blood was the ultimate bond. Unless it could be proved that Juan Miguel was not fit to be Elian's father, then he and only he had custody over his son.

Then came the more difficult problem. Okay. So President Bill Clinton, Janet Reno, and federal America were for Elian. His human rights prevailed over everything else? Did it? Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush sounded his own horn of Gabriel to the effect that Elian belonged to the US and not Fidel Castro's Cuba. So did vice president Al Gore. In a switcheroo that could only be explained by power of Florida's Cuban-American vote, Al Gore's heart suddenly beat for Elian staying with his Miami relatives O sole mio! Mainstream America was caught up in presidential politics.

It was before that that Fidel Castro flipped another ace on the political poker table.

To make sure the father-son bond would touch the heart of America, the Cuban caudillo took a big gamble. After psychologically wiring Juan Miguel to make sure he would come back to Cuba with Elian, Fidel Castro sent him to the US. Juan Miguel was the goods. There was no false note about him, nothing concealed, no fugitive streaks in his eyes, no tell-tale lapses in his language. No strut at all. He came alone and unaccompanied to most appointments and interviews in Washington. Dan Rather of CBS had him for more than five hours, so did other TV talk-show hosts.

But even as INS' talks with the Miami relatives of Elian continued, there was one thing obvious. They would never surrender him to the custody of Juan Miguel. Not even for brief periods in a proposed arrangement where the father would be lodged in a neutral residence in Washington and be with his son. Then Elian would be returned to the Miami relatives. Then they would continue to meet in the marathon search for an amicable solution. In the meantime, the Miami relatives fixed up a TV footage wherein Elian addressed his father by video, saying: "Papa, I don't want to go back to Cuba . . . If you want, stay here."

Juan Miguel was in shock. He couldn't believe it was his son on the TV screen. They had brainwashed the boy. The father broke into tears. In Havana, they were almost always together. "I couldn't even go to the barber shop alone," he said. "We always had our hair cut together." Psychologists say that at the age of six or thereabouts, a child is very susceptible to what they call "child-parent alienation." Miami piled goodies on Elian, goodies he could never have in Havana. Go back to Havana, he was told, and you'll go back to a life of slavery. Maybe. Castro's Cuba was starving.

The prosecution needed a face. Janet Reno had to unhand somebody, outside of the so-called Miami Mafia, who she could lean on, flesh and blood. And Juan Miguel filled the bill. His earnestness as a father convinced everybody he met. Anecdotes he would relate about he and Elian bonded in Havana despite separation from his first wife. You can't fake that. You can't fake a man's tears. You can't fake a heart beating like mad against its walls. And so when Janet Reno realized there could be no honest deal with Elian's Miami relatives, she pulled the wraps off Plan B. Bingo.

There they came, the federal vans even before dawn broke.

Everything worked as planned. There was the air of guttural violence but there was no violence. Except that the family residence door was broken down with a battering ram. The feds were in black, some armed. A lady fed who spoke Spanish took hold of Elian, very presumably from a bed which bore the sign "Gracias, Dios". Elian was screaming. She bore the boy in her arms to a waiting white van. They sprayed pepper gas on whoever sought to obstruct them in the room and outside -- only a few really. Then they sped off, as stealthily as they had come. Not a moment wasted, not a second. Dawn was breaking.

It was Holy Friday. The death, the resurrection, and the life.

What happened an hour afterward was ugly. When word wild-fired that the feds had whisked off Elian, hundreds of Cuban-Americans poured into the neighborhood. They vent their wrath on American media, called them words we cannot publish here, screamed, wept, jumped, thrashed the air, shouted it was a shame this could happen in America, said they were ashamed to be Americans. Families, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles got together, embraced and wept, wept the anguish of Cubans who had become Americans, and thus could not inflict physical punishment on US media except to stick their third fingers close to the camera, and hiss four-letter words associated with genitalia.

President Bill Clinton and Janet Reno would later say on TV that justice of the ages had prevailed. A little boy had been reunited with his father. And that was all really. Nothing else mattered.