Any hope that the resolution of the dispute might soften Castro’s attitude toward Washington was quickly dashed. “Elian is back,” said Granma, the official organ of the Cuban Communist Party, “but the greater battle continues.” On state-run television, newscasters gloated at wire photos of Elian’s disconsolate relatives in Miami, and Ricardo Alarcon, president of the rubber-stamp National Assembly, publicly belittled a move by congressional Republicans to resume food sales to Cuba after 38 years. “This not only doesn’t modify the [U.S. economic] blockade,” Alarcon said, “but in some parts it makes it worse.” Jaime Suchlicki, director of the Institute for Cuba and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami, scoffed at the idea of a thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations. “I don’t think they’re going anywhere, because we have an election,” Suchlicki said. “If Bush wins, it’s going to be very tough, and Gore is more conservative on Cuba than Clinton.”
Tersely rejecting a last-ditch appeal from Elian’s relatives in Miami, the Supreme Court in effect agreed that Juan Miguel Gonzalez had the right to decide his son’s citizenship. According to his lawyer, Gregory Craig, Juan Miguel never wavered in his determination to take Elian back to Cuba. When the family flew to Washington in April, Craig said, he obliquely raised the possibility of defecting because Juan Miguel “needed to know what his options were.” Juan Miguel wasn’t interested, Craig said, and the subject was dropped.
For the next eight weeks, while the courts considered the case, Elian and his family lived in luxurious limbo, first on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and then in Washington. Juan Miguel “would ask ‘When can I leave?’ but he never challenged the legitimacy of the process,” Craig said. Aware that the Supreme Court was about to rule, the family held a little gathering at their temporary home in Washington last week. “Everyone was in good spirits, but you could feel the level of tension and anxiety,” Craig said. The tension evaporated with the ruling the next day, and within a few hours, Elian and his family were flying home on a chartered jet.
For now, according to Cuban sources, the Gonzalezes will stay at a seaside government villa in Miramar, a Havana suburb. Current plans call for their return to Cardenas at the end of July, in time for Elian to start the second grade. There is talk that Juan Miguel, once a parking-lot cashier in the resort town of Varadero, might be tapped for a seat in the National Assembly. And there’s Elian, who survived a terrifying ordeal at sea and the extraordinary upheaval of the past seven months. “Their lives have completely changed,” says a foreign diplomat in Havana, “and Cardenas is too small for a national hero.” Which may mean you can’t go home again, even if you’re only 6.
