By Peter T. Kilborn. The New York Times. February 9, 2000
MIAMI, Feb. 8 -- For more than two months the Florida family of Elián González has been a staple of the nightly news. There is Elián, the 6-year-old refugee, swinging a baseball bat in front of the little stucco house in a working-class neighborhood of Little Havana. There
he is kicking a soccer ball with his great-uncle Lázaro González and hugging Marisleysis, his cousin.
But not surprisingly, a closer look provides a far more complex portrait of an immigrant family suddenly caught up in an international spectacle of a dispute over the custody of Elián, who survived a crossing from Cuba in which his mother and 10 other people drowned. It is a striving,
hard-working, close-knit family that neighbors say is unassuming, helpful and easy to get along with.
The two-bedroom, one-bath home of Lázaro González, 49, his wife, Angela, and their daughter, Marisleysis, 21, is the gathering place for an extended family that itself is divided over Elián's future. And it is the focal point of a public relations struggle between Miami's
Cuban-Americans and the Cuban government of Fidel Castro.
But this extended family is also one that has run afoul of the law in ways that could affect their bid to gain permanent custody of Elián, whose father in Cuba wants him returned, experts in custody law say.
Lazáro González, an automobile mechanic who moved here from Cárdenas, Cuba, 15 years ago, has four convictions for driving under the influence of alcohol during the 1990's, according to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. His license was revoked or
suspended for a total of three years. He completed an alcohol treatment course after his most recent conviction, in July 1997.
Mr. González's brother Delfin González, 63, a fisherman who usually lives in Marathon in the Florida Keys but who is a staunch er of Lázaro's custody claim and has been staying here with the family, has four convictions for driving under the influence over the last
decade, most recently in May 1997. Two of the cases involved accidents with property damage or personal injury. Delfin González had his license revoked for a total of two years.
Two other relatives who have been periodic visitors at the home have also had run-ins with the law, the weekly New Times newspaper here first reported.
Jose Cid, 32, one of Lázaro and Delphin's nephews and a son of their sister here, Georgina Cid, went to jail last month to begin a 13-year sentence for grand theft, forgery and violating probation, according to the Miami-Dade Department of Corrections. His twin brother, Luis Cid, goes on
trial on Feb. 18 on charges relating to a robbery last September in Little Havana.
While legal problems like those of the Gonzálezes are not uncommon, lawyers say the drunken-driving convictions, especially, create problems for Lázaro González's claims for custody and give the government a new argument in defending its decision last month to return the boy
to Cuba.
"This does have an impact on the fitness of these adults to raise this child, unquestionably," said Bernard Perlmutter, a professor and expert in family law at the University of Miami.
Martin Guggenheim, a professor of law at New York University and a specialist in child and family law, said, "Increasingly in recent years, courts have been interested in any and all information that bears upon parental fitness.
"The child might be in the car and subject to an accident caused by drunk driving," Mr. Guggenheim said, "or the parent could end up injured, dead or in prison because of drunk driving."
No close González relatives in Miami could be reached for comment. Armando Gutierrez, a prominent Cuban-American political consultant here and the relatives' publicist and spokesman, said he had not heard of the driving records until today.
The driving convictions, said Spencer Eig, the relatives' lead lawyer, are less troubling than comments by one of Elián's grandmothers, who told Cuban television that she bit Elián's tongue when she visited him here last month to goad him to talk and unzipped his pants.
Lázaro and Angela González live in a neighborhood of fortresses and locks. Chain-link fencing cuts across the front of most yards, with padlocked gates across the front walks and the driveways. Many houses have wrought-iron gates to protect the front door, and wrought-iron grills
on the windows.
To varying degrees most households are reaping the benefits of the nation's prosperity. The most prosperous have central air conditioning, red ceramic tiles on their roofs, replacing asphalt tiles, and tall, spiked iron fences.
The González home, a 48-year-old, gray-white stucco house, is more modest than most. Except for Elián's outdoor toys, all donated, nothing is new. It is assessed for tax purposes at $67,298. Marisleysis shares her bedroom with Elián. Real estate agents said the rent would be
be$500 to $1,000 a month.
Only Lázaro, Angela, Elián and and Marisleysis are living their now, although Delfin often visits. William, Lázaro and Angela González's 27-year-old son, moved out about three years ago, after marrying the granddaughter of Guillermina Ferrer, the Gonzálezes'
next-door neighbor.
One member of the clan, Manuel González, a brother of Lázaro, is not welcome in the house because he has ed Elián's repatriation.
Angela González rises before dawn each day to work in a factory sewing clothes and devotes the rest of her day to domestic activity inside the home. Lázaro González works irregularly. Now and then he comes out to tinker with a red 1988 Thunderbird, ed in his wife's
name, that was bought four years ago.
Marisleysis is a loan officer at the main branch of Ocean Bank here, along with a cousin, Georgina Cid Cruz. Georgina is the sister of the Cid twins.
Mrs. Ferrer has lived next door for as long as the Gonzálezes have been there. She said she watched William and her granddaughter Jacqueline's 6-month-old son while the parents worked.
"Angela is a very quiet woman," Mrs. Ferrer said. "Even before all this started, you never even heard her talk. You never even knew when she was around."
"I've never heard of anyone in that family getting into any kind of trouble or anything," she added.
Maria Castillo, across the street, said, "They're always there to help you. That family gets along fine and is very close."
Neighbors said that for entertainment, the Gonzálezes tended to stay home with relatives, rather than go out.
Across this neighborhood, and across Little Havana, there are few signs of the epic war of words and lawsuits that have stirred Congress, the Clinton istration, Cuba and the Cuban-American leadership.
The media vans and the demonstrators, largely anti-Castro immigrants from outside the neighborhood, have the Gonzálezes to themselves. Just one household near Elián's, a block away, has taken any note of ther fight still raging in court. "Back To No Future," a sign on the
door reads.
But the case for holding Elián has taken another sharp turn. It is harder to argue for holding him in America, Mr. Perlmutter of the University of Miami said, in view of family's troubles with the law.
The family here is attempting to argue that it can offer Elián a better life than his father can, while the real issue is whether the father, Juan Miguel, is fit to raise his son, he said.
With the disclosure of the drunken-driving convictions, Mr. Perlmutter said, the Miami family's case is harder to make. Except for innuendo and unsubstantiated rumor, he said, no one has challenged the father's fitness to raise a child.
"He should win hands down," he said.
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company |