By Gordon Bonin Of the NEWS Staff

The visiting American educators, including 30 from Maine, were met by a student chorus on the steps of the Nicolas Estevez Primary School in the Vedado section of Cuba’s capital Monday afternoon. The children greeted the educators with a song, a typical Cuban greeting.

They sang, however, about their homeland and Elian Gonzalez, the 6-year-old Cuban boy at the center of an international custody fight between his U.S. relatives in Miami on one side, and the U.S. government and his Cuban father on the other.

One student in the chorus held a poster of Elian that read in Spanish, ‘‘Free Elian.’’ In Havana, Elian’s image is everywhere. It is on T-shirts. Posters in shop windows and billboards call for him to be returned to his homeland.

The group of 38 Americans is discovering the Cubans’ consuming focus on Elian. As one of the maids in their hotel said, ‘‘Cubans are preoccupied and worried about Elian.’’
The educators are here this week on a trip organized by a Brunswick-based group called Let Cuba Live, which seeks to normalize relations between Cuba and the United States after 40 years of hostility. They are here to study the Cuban education system and to experience Cuban culture.

Being greeted by a song about the Elian situation — in Cuba they call it a kidnapping — took some of the educators aback. ‘‘It’s such a focus for them,’’ said Catie Dean, a high school Spanish teacher at Oxford Hills High School in South Paris. ‘‘I was shamed. It seems like such an obvious concept [that he should be returned to his father].’’

Karol Kucinski, a history teacher on Vinalhaven, said he was struck by the community consciousness the song and the chorus displayed. Kucinski said he struggled to find something other than a school shooting that would stick in the collective consciousness of U.S. children the same way Elian occupies Cuban children’s minds today.

Carl Smith, who works with gifted and talented children in the Augusta school system, wondered who proposed that song to greet the group, whether it was the students or school officials.

If Cuban educators visited an American school, ‘‘we would have avoided the subject and not done something to get a political reaction,’’ Smith said. Carolyn Bennett, a teacher on North Haven, said she was surprised by the song, and at the same time pleased and impressed.

‘‘What better way to send a message than through children?’’ Bennett asked. ‘‘In my opinion, they’re being no more manipulated than Elian is in the United States.’’

Elian survived a shipwreck off the Florida coast in November in which his mother and others drowned as they tried to reach the United States.
Now his great-uncle and a cousin in Miami are fighting the U.S. government. They want Elian to remain in the United States. The government argues that he should return to his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who lives in Cardenas, about 100 miles east of Havana.

In the 485-pupil Nicolas Estevez Primary School, which covers first to sixth grades, the fifth-graders in Bilma Tremino’s class had strong thoughts on Elian’s circumstances. Darril, a boy whose arm shot up and stayed up when the class was being asked questions, said Elian should be ‘‘reclaimed’’ by his father and by his homeland.

Elian is not happy in Miami, despite all the toys and things his relatives have given him, and he cannot stay there, Darril said.
Reinier, a tall boy with glasses, said anyone can see on the video the Miami relatives have released that the words Elian says are not what he really feels, that someone is coaching him. In the video, Elian says he doesn’t want to return to Cuba.

‘‘Even though [his cousin] loves him with all her heart, Elian loves his father and homeland more,’’ said a girl named Rosalaura. ‘‘And he also loves Fidel and he doesn’t want to stay in Miami.’’

Parents and grandparents waiting to walk the children home after school also had strong thoughts on the matter. Xisela, who has two 13-year-olds at the school, said Cubans are indignant and angry at what has happened with Elian in Miami.

‘‘It’s an abuse,’’ she said. ‘‘Cubans are not going to stop our efforts [to get him back]. He could be the child of any one of us.’’ Xisela was grateful that polls show the majority of Americans agree that Elian should be returned to his father.

Efrin Santana y Lopez, 84, lived in Philadelphia in the 1930s. He has a 7-year-old granddaughter at the primary school. ‘‘I think they will have to return him no matter what,’’ he said. ‘‘This child is Cuban and belongs to us.’’ Out of 23 students in Bilma Tremino’s class, no fewer than 10 had relatives in the United States, and in almost every case two or three relatives, including grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and godparents.

When asked how many want to see the United States, all of them raised their hands. They said they want to see snow, the landscape, skyscrapers, the streets and street life, and they want to hear American music. They want to see if children go to school every day and what the schools are like. And they want to see if children have both parents.

To depict their view of the life Elian would face if he stays in the United States, Cuban television runs an ad with videos of the aftermath of an American school shooting with wounded students, crying classmates and sobbing parents. The ad contrasts this with demonstrations in Cuba calling for the Elian’s return, as well as scenes of Elian’s school in Cardenas where his classmates have saved his seat for him.

 

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