"I Love My Child"

By NANCY GIBBS

This is how Elian's fairy tale was supposed to go: the loving father, Juan Miguel, had never been able to signal his true hopes for his son because Fidel Castro had him in chains. But once he broke free and made it to America, once he stepped off the Learjet at Dulles at dawn with his new wife and baby at his side, he would fall to the ground, kiss the tarmac and ask for asylum. Or maybe it would happen Friday morning, safe in the halls of the Justice Department, when he would look Attorney General Janet Reno in the eye and say thanks for all the help, but can we please just stay here? Then he could arrive in Miami in triumph, the angry vigil outside Great-Uncle Lazaro's house would turn into a carnival, father and son would be reunited at last, and all would live happily ever after in the land of the free.

That way, the really cruel choice would fade as the credits rolled. The father would get his child back, as a majority of Americans have hoped. Elian would get to keep his new puppy, drink chocolate milk to his heart's content and never have to go back to Cuba. Castro would be denied his trophy, his revolutionary crowds would disperse, and attention would fall once more on the dissidents he keeps throwing in jail. Republicans would welcome two new voters, the Clinton Administration would celebrate the rule of law, and the Cuban expatriate community in Miami would put to rest the impression that they fled one totalitarian state only to set up a satellite version across the Florida Straits. No one would be asked to choose between freedom and love.

But every chapter in this story has offered a twist, and last week was no exception. For the past four months no one could know for certain whether Juan Miguel was reading from a script, speaking from the heart--or both. But anyone who heard his passionate demand to be reunited with Elian, and his denunciation of the Miami relatives who had paraded his son in the streets and fed him to Diane Sawyer, had to believe he might be entirely sincere in his desire simply to retrieve his child and go home to Cuba for good. As Democratic Congressman Jose Serrano quoted Juan Miguel asking, "What do I have to do to prove that I love my child?"

He apparently proved it to Reno, who talked with him, in the absence of any Cuban officials, for more than an hour Friday morning. She wanted to see for herself: Was he really a loving father--and did he really, truly want to raise his child in a country where milk is rationed for children over 7 and soldiers drown citizens who try to flee? On the way over in the car, Juan Miguel's lawyer Greg Craig told him outright, "You are meeting with the highest law-enforcement officials in the land. It is an entirely private meeting. If you have any concerns or questions, feel free to raise them. Feel free to ask them for anything you or your family could want." Craig no longer has any doubts about Juan Miguel's intentions. "If he wanted to stay in this country," he says, "he could have asked."

When they met at last, face to face, Reno urged Juan Miguel to sit down with his Miami relatives and try to work things out. But it's too late for that, he said. There is too much anger and pain. He showed Reno his baby pictures of Elian and talked about their closeness. She told him, in Spanish, "It seems that Elian is a wonderful, bright and charming little boy. You and your wife did good work." Replied Juan Miguel: "All of the goodness you see is the goodness that comes from how we raised him."

By the time it was over, Reno had witnessed firsthand the devotion seen by INS officials in January, after they initially interviewed Juan Miguel at length and found that he was the kind of father who knows his child's shoe size and the names of his favorite teachers. He wanted Elian back, and he had no desire to live here. "Mr. Gonzalez and I do not share political beliefs," Reno said Friday afternoon. But "it is not our place to punish a father for his political beliefs or where he wants to raise his child." To do so, in fact, would "change the concept of family for the rest of time."

Even as she spoke, Juan Miguel's uncle and cousin were in the air, heading from Miami to Washington to try to get Juan Miguel alone and persuade him to come to Miami for a summit, show him the error of his ways, give him a taste of a new life. The family's options were fast drying up, even as the crowds chanted "Elian will not leave" and talked about using women and children as human shields. But Juan Miguel was not in the mood to talk to his son's "kidnappers." He and his family went sightseeing. On the phone Friday night, according to Craig, Juan Miguel told Uncle Delfin Gonzalez that no big family meeting was possible until Lazaro takes Elian by the hand, brings him to Juan Miguel and says, "Here's your son."

When Elian was rescued from his inner tube by fishermen on Thanksgiving Day, the first information he gave was his father's name and address in Cardenas. And ever since then, the true relationship between father and son has been a central mystery to this tale. Elian's relatives in Miami say Juan Miguel knew that his ex-wife was planning to flee to America with Elian, and they produce a Sprint phone bill to prove he had called to alert relatives to look out for them. They even say he had applied for a visa for himself on a number of occasions--all of which fueled the speculation last week that if only he could get to the U.S. and finally speak out without fear, he would never want to leave.

And so he arrived at last, only to confound all those who cannot imagine that a man might prefer to raise his child in Cuba than in America. But interviews with family and friends in Cuba paint a clear portrait that the Miami branch of the family cannot stomach: namely, that Juan Miguel might be both a good father and a good communist, one who loves his son and truly believes he would be better off growing up in the faded, sandy precincts of Cardenas than in the hectic hothouse of the Cuban-exile universe in Miami. "It's an assault on the Manichaean mind-set of so many Cuban exiles," says Max Castro, an exile himself who teaches at the University of Miami. "To them, anything that's in Cuba is hell, anything here is paradise. If Juan Miguel wants to live in Cuba with his son, then they insist he's a diabolical father."

But those who have known Juan Miguel longest say he has always been content in Castro's Cuba. His father Juan Gonzalez was one of eight brothers and sisters, of whom five fled Cuba for the U.S. while three, including Juan Miguel's father, remained behind. "They sympathized with the communists and Castro," says cousin Marcia Gonzalez in Miami. Over the years the Miami branch often urged the others to join them. But INS officials say they have no record of Juan Miguel's ever applying for a visa, and friends in Cuba say he had made his peace with his life there. Uncle Lazaro even went back to visit in 1998--which was the only time he had met Elian before last December. Relations between the two branches of the family were warm, as long as the subject stayed away from politics.

Cardenas is a pretty, poor fishing town of palm trees and empty streets--few people can afford a car--and Juan Miguel lives, by relative standards, the good life. He is among the lucky elite who are paid in dollars, in his job as a guard and cashier at the Varadero tourist resort, Cuba's version of Cancun. Altogether, in wages, tips and bonuses, he earns more than 10 times Cuba's $15 average monthly salary--enough to afford to buy Elian imported Power Ranger toys and birthday pinatas fat with Italian hard candy and German chocolates.

Though he and Elian's mother Elisabeth were divorced, they remained close as they shared custody of their son; Elian typically spent four to five days a week at his father's house. Elian enjoyed that rarest of Cuban luxuries: his own air-conditioned bedroom. And before Juan Miguel sold it to pay, he says, for calls to Elian in Miami, the boy's father even had a car, a 1956 Nash Rambler, in which Elian rode through town like a prince, while many people relied on horse-drawn carts. "I'm not ashamed of the life Elian has here," he told TIME in a recent interview. "In fact, our friends say we spoil him." As for the world across the straits, a Cardenas cousin, Lourdes Velazquez, says that "Juan Miguel simply doesn't want the faster lifestyle he sees the others living in Miami. He likes it here, where he can walk Elian to school and there is family close by. It really is his choice, and it's mine too."

Yet his ex-wife evidently felt otherwise, strongly enough to pile her son into a makeshift boat piloted by her hustler boyfriend and set out to sea--a fatal choice, as it turned out. The last decision she made was perhaps the one that saved her son's life, when she dressed him for the journey in the bright orange jeans and sweat shirt that fishermen say they found him in, colors that often keep sharks away.

When Juan Miguel learned that Elian had survived the shipwreck and was safely in the hands of the Miami branch of the family, Lazaro and other family members immediately began quietly working out how father and son would be reunited. But that was before Castro began making his public demands that the Miami family return the boy, and before the leaders of the exile community swooped down on Lazaro's small house in Little Havana and drew the family deep into the local political swamps. Robinson Crusoe did not have the misfortune of washing ashore in a swing state.

In the weeks that followed Elian's rescue, Juan Miguel watched from a distance as his son was ushered into the American Dream. Congressmen like Dan Burton flew to Miami to meet him and report to the waiting media circus that they had discussed every Yankee virtue from the Federalist papers to 401(k)s. Elian went to Disney World, hugged Barney, celebrated his sixth birthday with the gift of a toy gun. He fell in love with chocolate milk; a Florida cousin who visits regularly told TIME that whenever Elian's cousin Marisleysis poured him a glass, she made a point of adding that "Fidel Castro won't let his grandmas make that for him in Cuba."

Though the family says it has done nothing to turn the child against his father, relatives did not hesitate to tell him about the horrors of his native country whenever they had the chance--which may help explain the fear Elian is said to express when asked about seeing his father and returning to Cuba. Says a Miami child psychiatrist, who was asked by the Miami family to evaluate Elian but declined because he "didn't want to get sucked into the politics" of the situation: "Of course he's afraid of being reunited with his father--because by now so much uncertainty has been planted in his head about all the relationships he had before that night the boat capsized."

In Cardenas, meanwhile, Juan Miguel was growing more distraught about his son's predicament. "His hair has been falling out, and he's had stomach problems since this whole thing started," says Fidel Ramirez, 32, Juan Miguel's best friend since school days. "He was extremely gregarious, but now he has turned bitter and quiet. When it dawned on him that his Miami relatives were keeping Elian up there, he came to me and said, 'Hermano, they took my son--they're hitting me where it hurts most.' He cried for three days."

It did not help when, in January, Juan Miguel saw the TV pictures of Elian, dressed in a crisp new school uniform, heading off to a private school run by a Cuban-American political leader. Cuban psychiatrists had advised the father to tell Elian during their regular phone calls that the boy was "on vacation" and that they would be reunited soon. But starting a new school put a lie to that promise, and the family seemed determined to drag the case through the courts. Juan Miguel pleaded with INS officials to speed up the process, and they complied--worried that with each passing day, it would be harder to ease Elian smoothly back into some semblance of "normal" life upon his return to Cuba.

Castro, of course, has some experience with re-education, and he had a plan for Elian. TIME has learned from high-level Cuban sources that he considered whisking the boy and his immediate family off to a beach spa, where psychiatrists, teachers and Cuban officials could help him "reassimilate"--purging Elian of Pokemon and turning him back into a Young Pioneer. But then Castro had an even better idea: Why not have Elian's "reinsertion" into Cuban society take place inside the U.S., namely by sending Juan Miguel--surrounded by Elian's teachers, classmates, psychiatrists and family members--to Washington to create a little slice of home? Havana even wanted to send his old desk from school, which has since become something of a shrine.

The State Department balked at handing out dozens of visas for a traveling re-education camp, and last week attorney Craig flew to Cuba and persuaded his client and Castro's inner circle that it would be better to let Juan Miguel come with just his new wife and baby, rather than wait for Washington to agree to play host to the circus. The Cubans wanted some assurances of a swift reunion. Craig told them that Reno's patience with the Miami relatives had run out and that the law was on Juan Miguel's side. INS officials were just waiting for Juan Miguel to set foot in America, and they would move to strip Lazaro of custody. Even if no one else in the entourage was allowed to come, Craig said, Juan Miguel would get custody of Elian and could decide for himself whether to return immediately to Cuba or wait out the appeals process in Washington. "The time," Craig kept telling Castro and the Cubans, "is ripe."

So there was the big-gun lawyer, who had helped save the American President from impeachment, instructing the Cuban President how best to work the system. It was enough to persuade Castro and Ricardo Alarcon, president of the National Assembly and Castro's point man on Elian, to turn on the runway lights at Jose Marti Airport. Castro personally saw Juan Miguel off at 4 a.m. Thursday. He had already ordered that diplomatic immunity at Cuba's Washington outposts be waived--to make the point that Juan Miguel would be free to defect if he wanted to, which reflected Castro's confidence that he would not.

The great challenge for Juan Miguel was that he was caught between a government with its own authoritarian rules and a family that was making them up as it went along. A month ago, when relatives assumed Castro would never let Juan Miguel out of the country, they said if he just came to the U.S. they would turn Elian over. Last week when he appeared, a thousand conditions had bloomed. In one breath the relatives promise they will obey the law, but they seem to mean only the laws that work to their advantage. Even though the courts ruled last month that this was an issue for the INS and not a custody fight that belonged in family court, the Miami relatives say they won't be satisfied until local Florida judges--the elected ones most sensitive to the Cuban-exile community--have a chance to rule. The law may not be on their side, but loads of local and national politicians--even a mutinous Vice President Al Gore--are.

The longer Juan Miguel stayed in Havana, living under Castro's surveillance in a government residence, the easier it was for the family to challenge his motives. But once he stepped onto American soil last week, a parent come to claim a lost child, the emotional balance of power began to shift, and so did the relatives' story. One day they would declare that they believe he is a loving father and that they are resisting his claims only because they fear he is being cruelly pressured by Castro. But the next moment family allies would revive charges that Juan Miguel beat his ex-wife and was too explosive to be a fit father. Juan Miguel himself had provided some ammunition: he told ABC's Nightline last January that he hadn't come to Miami yet because he was afraid he would take a rifle and "strafe the s.o.b.s" in Miami's Cuban-exile community.

Unable to get the case transferred to family court, the family convened one of its own. Last week they couldn't resist using a psychologist's findings to bolster their case. "Elian has expressed that his father freely expresses his anger out of control and in an abusive manner," said Miami psychologist Alina Lopez-Cottardi, whom the family had hired to evaluate Elian. Relatives insisted that Elian should undergo psychological evaluation to determine whether it was in his best interest to return to his father; separating him now from Marisleysis, his new "mother," they said, would be another unbearable trauma. Immigration officials replied that the whole question of custody was already settled, and that the only role for psychiatrists was to help determine the least scarring way to bring this whole drama to a close.

As a result, other lawyers on the team tell TIME, the family has no intention of "participating in any action to voluntarily hand Elian over to his father" under these conditions: "The family will step aside if the government does come knocking--they'll cry, and their hearts will be broken--but they will not participate in this."

Tensions may remain high in parts of Little Havana, but demonstrators who have adopted Elian as their cause say they will take their cues from the boy's relatives in Miami. If they decide to give Elian to his father peacefully, the crowd will not resort to violence. Some had vowed they were prepared to die to prevent his return to Castro's Cuba. Until the boy is handed over, they plan to continue to descend daily on Elian's house, bearing signs: FREEDOM SUPERCEDES FATHERHOOD. IT'S THE OPPRESSION, STUPID. GRINGOS FOR ELIAN. LET HIM STAY FREE.

If Juan Miguel has a fairy-tale ending in mind, he too may have a bitter surprise ahead. Castro's critics believe he has invested too much in this child's symbolic power to let him resettle in peace in Cardenas, as he has publicly promised to do. The boy's picture is now as ubiquitous in Havana store windows as it is in Little Havana. However much Elian's privacy was stripped away by his Miami custodians and their rolling press conferences, is it going to be respected by an aging dictator in need of a new revolutionary icon? Who better to exploit than a bright-eyed magical child, saved from the sea by dolphins, soaked in the gifts and poisons of capitalism, who is reunited with his father and has returned to claim his place as a Young Pioneer in the revolution that never ends?

--Reported by Tim Padgett and Elaine Shannon/Washington, Tim Roche/Miami and Dolly Mascarenas/Cardenas

With reporting by Tim Padgett and Elaine Shannon/Washington, Tim Roche/Miami and Dolly Mascarenas/Cardenas