MB Civic

Amalia Gómez Marcheco* 2006-10-07
* A seventh grade pioneer in the Popular Republic of Angola School
in Alamar, Havana and delegate to the IV Congress of Pioneers.

A CubaNews translation by Ana Portela. Edited by Walter Lippmann. Thanks to Jose Pertierra for reviewing this translation!
http://www.cubadebate.cu/index.php?tpl=especiales-show&noticiaid=7621&noticiafecha=2006-10-07

An interview with the attorney who defended, from the United States, the return of little Elian to his father and homeland by a Cuban pioneer.

José Pertierra was born in Cuba but has lived in the United States since the age of nine, when his family emigrated during the beginning of the Revolution, although not for political reasons. During the 70s, he joined the Antonio Maceo Brigade, a brigade of young Cuban residents in that country to find their roots. As a lawyer he currently represents the extradition of Luis Posada Carriles requested by Venezuela. In Cuba he is has been known longer, beginning when the entire nation mobilized to rescue the child kidnapped by the extreme right of Cuban origin, in Florida.

Amalia Gómez Marcheco, a seventh grade pioneer has known him through her mother, a specialist in Genetics. It is too soon to think of Amalia as a colleague but hers is undoubtedly an excellent interview which Cubadebate and JR have decided to publish as recognition to the children who, today, defend the future of their homeland with sensitivity and knowledge which moves and surprises. 

Amalia: Can you please tell me a little about the story of Elian. Why didn’t his relatives in the United States want to return him? What happened?

José Pertierra: That’s a very good question. Why didn’t they want to return him? Partly because of money and partly because of politics. I believe that in the case of Elian’s distant relatives in Miami, the ruckus had more to do with money because if they had the child then they could get author’s rights for books and films about the case and they had been offered millions and millions of dollars. But if the child returned to his country, those distant cousins and those great-uncles couldn’t collect a cent.

But also, this family in Miami was absorbed by a series of anti-Cuban political groups, such as the Cuban American National Foundation and several other Miami organizations which wanted to use this case to promote the idea, that in Cuba, children “are indoctrinated by communists and that there is no freedom…”

What governed Miami as well as Washington was a flawed premise. They based their campaign on the premise that no Cuban who had the opportunity to stay out of Cuba would want to return.  But they made a mistake with Juan Miguel González. He is a simple man, a waiter in a Varadero restaurant with a modest salary and when they offered Juan Miguel –and I was there –four million dollars to stay in the United States, Juan Miguel turned the offer down.  He said “no” in the most simple, human and Cuban manner: “No because I love Cuba, I want to live in Cuba.”

And that is where their campaign collapsed, because Juan Miguel, like so many other Cubans living in Cuba, going through hardships, prefer to live in their town in Cardenas…I don’t know if you have met him, but he is a fantastic guy, …an ordinary man who wants to live with his friends, with the people he grew up with, with his mother, his father, his grandparents with people who he feels are truly his family and not those relatives who didn’t even know Elian until the day he found himself there.

Amalia: How did you join the case of Elian?

José Pertierra: I have been an attorney specializing on immigration law for many years. And Elian was basically an immigration case because, although the child was in the hands of these distant relatives in Miami, jurisdiction over his legal custody corresponded to the Immigration Service.

This means that the Immigration Service hands the child to his relatives in Miami, yet these relatives do not have legal parental rights over him.  The case was an immigration case from the beginning, and I was asked to advise on what could happen, what could be done for the child to be with his father, since there were different interpretations in the case and almost all were mistaken.

For example, the Miami relatives insisted that they had the right to present an asylum application on behalf of the child. They were trying to manage the case on that level. However, reading the law and the regulations at issue, I saw that the fundamental issue was instead to define who has the right to ultimately speak for a child who is too young to speak for himself. 

If Juan Miguel had arrived in the United States and said: “I want my child to request political asylum”, then the case would be handled as one of asylum because as the boy’s father Juan Miguel, has the legal right to speak for his own young child.  On the other hand, Lazaro, the child’s great uncle, had no voice in this matter; he is only a great uncle, a distant relative.  As for the cousin, Marisleysis, who became known by some as Virusleisis; well Virusleisis also had no voice in the manner. If she had a child she could decide over him, but Elian did not belong to her but to Juan Miguel.

Amalia: What pressure do you think was applied to this family in the United States and about the political issues created around the child; all those demonstrations, all those battles that the people waged while the child was there?

José Pertierra: The demonstrations of the Cuban people were not only for Elian but also over other important issues.

In Cuba it was said that the child had eleven million lawyers and that was true. It is very difficult to kidnap a child as these relatives wanted to do, as well as the Miami political gang. But, kidnapping this child when eleven million lawyers demonstrate on the streets of Cuba, shouting that the child should be with his father, is even more difficult, because they were defending the rights of all Cubans to be fathers.

Do you remember what they said at that time in the United States? The argument the relatives always promoted; that the child would have a better life in Miami because his relatives had a late model car, or that the uncles had a boat, the boy could go to a private school, they could buy him all the toys he wanted. They even gave him an expensive puppy (in the United States many dogs cost a lot of money). Juan Miguel, on the other hand could not offer him a late model car, he couldn’t offer him a boat and could only give him a simple dog and a parrot that I later learned died of sadness when Elian was in Miami.  Very few people know that Elian’s parrot died of sadness in Cardenas.

The boy had to be returned to his father because his father, like all people of modest material means all over the world, has a fundamental right to be a father. The material things of life cannot grant parental rights to a stranger over a child that would trump those of a father.

Amalia: In all this battle by the people for the return of Elian, what role do you think the Pioneers had as an organization?

José Pertierra:  The pioneers were important to destroy the myth that, in Cuba, the communists tortured and treated children badly, a theme that was constantly repeated in the United States, not only by the relatives but, also, by the spokespersons of the extremist organizations. They said that in Cuba children were kidnapped from their homes and forced to work in the fields, that they were not allowed to be with their parents, that there were no healthy children …and when they saw those happy faces in Cuba, the myth was destroyed. Imagine, I can give you examples of how far myths went with these people. In the United States, after the rescue of Elian, do you remember that Elian was moved to a house on the outskirts of Miami, and later one in Washington, and Elian was kept from public view? A few weeks later, when the child was in public view morning, noon and night, in front of Miami television cameras? Then, when Elian returns to Cuba it is the first time that the cameras show his face. Many people in Miami, who were accustomed to seeing him every day; and after several weeks they saw him for the first time, I got a call on my mobile phone from a very well known journalist in the United States. The boy had not yet boarded the plane and that journalist said: “Pertierra, I don’t know how to say this, well I am a bit troubled but I need to ask you a question. Well, we have not seen the boy for several weeks and, well, Pertierra you have.  Now don’t get me wrong, but I wanted to know what had happened to the child’s teeth? I told him: “Hey man, when the communists arrived in Washington they took out all his teeth, one by one, while they tortured him. Don’t be an idiot, my friend, the boy was seven years old and at that age all early teeth fall out; that’s what happens.” That shows how messed up these people are about what is done to children in Cuba. And I can tell you that then, when they see children marching along, singing and happy in Cuba, all these myths collapse.

Amalia: After Elian’s return, they opened many web pages on the Internet to criticize Cuba and they used them to place political events which showed Elian saluting the flag, to say that the boy was always serious; that there he was always laughing. Why do you think they did that?

Pertierra: They always want to discredit Cuba, but the battle for the return of Elian was a victory of the Cuban people before public opinion, not only in Miami but in the United States.   Remember that the United States belongs to its people not to a small group in Miami who believe they own the entire country. Those people, in Miami, tried to convince the people of the United States that Cuba tortured children, that the communists kidnapped children from their parents, a whole series of things that are lies. But the  people of the United States saw the truth and understood that these people in Miami are crazy fanatical extremists who ended up completely discredited in the face of U.S. public opinion.

I believe that the best messages from Cuba are not the speeches nor the tribuna abiertas but people like you. Because in the United States and Latin America there is almost no 6th grade girl who can speak as clearly as you, and ask the questions you do.  And you do this partly on your own and partly because this country has formed and educated you.  When you speak publicly and are heard in the United States like I did, like many children during the Elian case, the United States people say: “Something is happening here, they’ve lied to me…look how the Cuban children are. Elian opened a window to the world to see what a Cuban child is really about.

Amalia: Let’s talk a little about the Posada Carriles case. I would like to know how you see the Posada case.

Pertierra: Well, I represent the Venezuelan government in the extradition case of Posada Carriles. The Venezuelan government wants Posada Carriles extradited to face justice in Venezuela for blowing up a Cubana Airlines plane in 1976. When Posada Carriles was arrested in Venezuela shortly after the plane was blown up, a legal process began to try him for murder but he escaped with the help of the United States; he escaped and went to live in hiding in Central America until he returned to the United States, last year.  He left a pending case in Venezuela for the homicide of 73 persons, including a pregnant woman.

The extradition treaty requires that the United States extradite him or try him in the United States. United States officialdom does not want to extradite him or try him; they want to let him go but cannot, partly because the law demands they do the opposite and also because when they try to let him go a million Cubans will demonstrate along the Malecon in front of the Interest Section, demanding justice.

Amalia: The Cuban people have developed a battle against the United States and the people from the United States has started to join us as well as the peoples of Latin America. However, the U.S. government continues growing and taking power. It is a great power economically and militarily. It says it will not allow any country in the world to reach their economic level and military power.

Pertierra: The United States is the most powerful empire, economically and militarily in the history of civilization. They’ve crushed the Iraqi army; they have done incredible things. However, despite this, the war in Iraq continues in a different manner. In military terms the United States can crush all the countries of the world but it cannot dominate them because domination is not only military but also political and economical.

HEARTS CANNOT BE CONQUERED AT THE POINT OF A GUN

You cannot conquer hearts at the point of a gun. Part of their problems in Iraq is that they have destroyed the Iraqi army but have made the Iraqi people an enemy of the United States with the massacres they have committed, and the torture of prisoners in Iraqi jails. United States military power is much greater than its economic and political power. Movements are rising up with an important economic component. The countries of Latin America have understood for the first time that they cannot ally themselves economically with the United States because that is an uneven alliance where the United States dominates and the Latin Americans obey. They have understood this and said no.

And when that happens this continent shakes and changes; there are different dynamics at work in Bolivia, Chile, and Uruguay. The question is when the U.S. people are going to wake up and truly change their own government. And that, sooner or later, will have to happen; it won’t happen yet, but we must not lose hope because it will happen.

I think that the U.S. people are partly responsible for the government it has. Bush stole the 2000 elections but in 2004 he was the elected president and the U.S. people must assume responsibility for this the same as Germany was responsible for the barbarities committed by Hitler, who was also elected. I think that the movements of Latin America and some in Europe are moving to the left. The U.S. needs another government, a government that is more respectful of the sovereignty of other nations.

Amalia: You said that America is changing, that there are countries where the people have elected leaders who truly represent their interests. Our country is waging a battle of ideas. We hope that all those peoples join us and that even the U.S. people join us. But still there are European countries that support the U.S. policies. What direction do you think the battle of ideas will take from a universal point of view?

Pertierra: I believe that the battle of ideas is very important for many reasons, primarily because it means that the time of rifles is now history, at least in this continent. This time the climate that exists is not one of war and what is happening is that through the battle of ideas, the peoples of Latin American are taking power and applying different measures in different countries.

Bolivia has a president who represents his people and he even looks  like the people of Bolivia. I remember having seen Bolivian politicians that looked like Frenchmen or Germans. I even remember a President who had an English accent and later learned that he had studied in the United States. Evo Morales has an accent but an indigenous accent because his first language is an indigenous language. In Venezuela Chavez looks like his people: mulatto, indigenous and that manner of his of talking like his people. It is something that goes beyond politics and demonstrates that something important has changed in those countries.

At the same time you find other countries that are also changing, perhaps not as much as Bolivia and Venezuela. For example in Chile a woman has assumed power, a woman who was tortured by the Pinochet regime. She is not as radical as Evo Morales, but represents the Chilean people and we will have to wait and see to what point she can resist the economic and political pressure of the United States… but little by little these countries are joining in terms of an economic and political alliance to confront the United States.

I don’t think that the United States is going to join this progressive battle any time soon. What must be done is to neutralize the US government and prevent it from dominating the continent as if it is Washington’s backyard, like the U.S. has done for decades. This is possible. And in this the example of Cuba is very valuable because Cuba has always been the leader of progressive movements in Latin America and the world.