Elian saga wrought mixed legacy for Cuban exiles

A recent Florida International University poll of 1,975 Cuban-Americans in Miami-Dade County found that 82 percent of those polled believed the Elian case hurt the interests of the Cuban-American community.

The poll, which had a margin of error of 3 percentage points, also showed Cuban-Americans were in favor of engaging in dialogue with Cuba, even though they remain dead set against easing the trade embargo.

Moreno believes the most enduring byproduct of the seven-month custody battle now is ethnic and racial divisions in Miami-Dade County between Cuban-Americans and whites and blacks.

"I think there's still a lot of bitterness," he said.

Elian was rescued at sea on Thanksgiving Day 1999. On Thursday, Miami relatives of the boy spent part of the holiday gathered at the house where they lived with the boy. And on Saturday, the actual anniversary, they planned to mark the date with a vigil.

Elian was one of only three survivors among 14 people who tried to sail a small boat from Cuba to Florida. His mother was one of those who died when the boat capsized.

He was taken in by relatives in Miami and adopted as a symbol by Cuban-Americans who oppose the communist regime of Fidel Castro. But the boy's father insisted that Elian was taken from Cuba without his permission, and after a months-long court battle, armed federal agents seized the boy from his great-uncle's home April 22. He later returned with his father to Cuba.

Many non-Cubans here felt disenfranchised by Cuban-American elected officials who sided with Elian's relatives in their standoff with federal authorities, Moreno said.

He cited the September primary race for county mayor. The Cuban-American incumbent, Alex Penelas, won, but many whites and blacks voted for a white restaurateur who never held elected office, bypassing Penelas and his leading challenger, also a Cuban-American.

"They voted for (the restaurateur) because they didn't want to vote for a Cuban-American," Moreno said.

Moreno also estimated that 5 to 10 percent of the Cuban-American vote in the presidential election was motivated by a desire to punish Al Gore for the way the Clinton administration handled the Elian case.

"If Gore had received the votes Clinton received in 1996, he would have won the state by 40 to 50,000 votes," said Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation. Instead, the near-deadlock in the Florida balloting has left the presidential race undecided.

The Elian case cast a negative light on Cuban-Americans and, by association, South Florida, with the nationally televised images of exiles demonstrating, blocking traffic and flying U.S. flags upside down as symbols of protest.

"The community took some unwarranted blows to its reputation and it became acceptable even within the mainstream media to refer to those 'Miami Cubans,"' said Rep. Bob Menendez, D-N.J. "It's a code name for being right-wing extremist and intolerant. ... Those wounds still exist, and they're deep."