They wept and wailed in Little Havana, but fearing further backlash, Cuban-Americans suppressed their bitter pain Thursday over the setback they felt in the Elian Gonzalez ruling.
Apart from scores of people who gathered in prayer outside Elian’s former home, there was none of the unrest that characterized previous twists in the case. No street blockades, no garbage bin fires, no flag-waving processions of honking cars.
Cuban-American leaders acknowledged such protests have done more harm than good to their cause, alienating Anglos and blacks who have responded in recent weeks with demonstrations of their own.
“We must present our plight in a humble way,” said Ramon Saul Sanchez, leader of the grass-roots Democracy Movement. A firebrand leader of past protests, Sanchez now exhorted Cuban-Americans to remain calm, to suffer their emotional blow privately, not publicly.
While the ruling stung Little Havana’s exile community, it was met with muted response in nearby downtown Miami, where Anglos seemed to suffer from Elian fatigue.
“I was more interested in the market,” said Bernard Mollett, a Swiss banker who has lived in Miami for seven years.
“I have no reaction,” one businesswoman snapped as she hurried to a meeting on Brickell Avenue, the financial district known as Miami’s Wall Street.
“I don’t think the basic Anglo community cares that much,” said Tim Wensing, a construction manager.
As they have throughout the case, most blacks and Anglos parted ways with Cuban-Americans’ feelings about Elian’s future. They agreed with the ruling, which denied Elian a chance for an asylum claim before the Immigration and Naturalization Service, paving a legal path for a return to his Cuban home with his father.
“I think that’s the right decision; he should be with his father,” said Steve Hood, a construction supervisor. “If that means he’s going back to Cuba, so be it.”
“I don’t think demonstrations are justified,” said Jose Basulto, head of the Brothers to the Rescue exile organization. “We can’t confront almighty Uncle Sam.”
Said Sanchez: “We are asking everyone to stay calm. There had been hope for Elian that the courts would hear the voice of a boy. But now we have to channel our energies toward Cuba.”
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Instead of street protests, Sanchez plans a flotilla from Miami to Cuba if Elian is sent home.
Though he, too, quelched any talk of protests, Basulto still denounced as “un-American” the legal process that seems to be propelling Elian back to Cuba and keeping him under wraps in Washington.
So did Raul Lerner, who stood vigil outside the house for hours. “I believed in the courts of this country,” he said, “but I don’t anymore.”
Maria del Carmen Suarez sobbed unabashedly. “I feel so terrible for that boy,” she said. “The life he’s going to have in Cuba, I don’t even want to think about.”
One woman suffered an emotional breakdown and was taken away by stretcher.
Non-Hispanic whites and blacks, minorities in Miami-Dade County who lashed out at Cuban-Americans after their prior acts of civil disobedience, encouraged the exiles’ more peaceful approach.
“If the Cubans stop obeying the law and disrupt the community, that would be a mistake,” construction manager Wensing said. “That would be a bad thing for their cause.”
Marilynn Cooper, a legal assistant, said she and others in Miami-Dade’s black community have felt politically short-changed as Cuban-Americans singlemindedly focused on their fight against Fidel Castro during the Elian case.
“Many of the people that were born and raised in Miami, the black and white, feel very disenfranchised,” Cooper said.
“They don’t fight that hard for us in the black community,” Rosa Owens-Frost said of the Cuban majority.
“The tension will continue,” Cooper predicted, if Cuban-Americans again take to the streets in protest. “My people will feel very angry.”
While some were wary that the ruling may deepen the chasm among Miami’s ethnic communities, they were confident of one cure: Time.
“I think in the short term there will be more tension,” said Mollett, the Swiss banker. “After that, people will get over it.”