By Lisa Baertleina
MIAMI, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Julie Seamon's painfully interrupted childhood drew her to Miami's Little Havana recently to see Elian Gonzalez, the 6-year-old shipwreck survivor at the centre of a bitter custody fight between Cold War enemies in Miami and Havana.
``I felt sorry for him for what he endured. You have to go through it to know what it's like,'' said Seamon, who came from nearby Miami Beach with her son and two grandchildren in tow to stand outside the house where Elian is staying.
The plight of the motherless boy struck a chord with Seamon and other Cuban Americans who were among 14,000 children sent by their Cuban parents to live in the United States between 1960 and 1962 in an exodus called Operation Pedro Pan.
The massive flight, sponsored by the Roman Catholic Church, resettled children whose parents feared they would be indoctrinated into communism after Cuban President Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution.
The parents planned to be reunited quickly with their children, about half of whom wound up in Miami camps and orphanages or were placed in foster homes around the United States. Some families, though, were separated for years after U.S. flights from Cuba were halted following the 1962 Cuban
missile crisis.
``What's happened with the tragedy of Elian is that it has brought to the surface the feelings of those years that we were alone,'' said Elly Chovel, a Pedro Pan child who is now president of the Operation Pedro Pan Group Inc., a charity that helps abused and immigrant children.
SYMBOL IN WAR OF WORDS
Elian survived two days adrift in the Atlantic Ocean after a boat smuggling would-be migrants capsized, killing his mother and 10 others. His Miami relatives say he would have a better future in the United States and are fighting a U.S. government ruling to return him to his father in Cuba.
While Elian has become a symbol for both sides in the rhetorical battle between Castro and anti-Castro exiles in Miami, he also has come to symbolise the Cuban experience, which over the last four decades turned family ties and freedom into competing values.
``Both family and freedom are part of your undeniable rights, you shouldn't have to choose one or the other, you should be able to have both,'' said Chovel.
As adults former Pedro Pan children have played key roles in the ongoing battle over Elian. Dominican nun Sister Leonor Esnard co-hosted the boy's warring relatives in a meeting in Miami Beach. Miami Mayor Joe Carollo travelled to Washington to lobby Attorney General Janet Reno to allow the boy
to remain in the United States. And Orange County Chairman Mel Martinez helped organise Elian's visit to Disney World.
Pedro Pan grew out of the desperation felt by some Cubans at the height of the Cold War, said Martinez, who left the island at 15 and is now a top government official in Orlando.
``We are involved in living what would be contrary to the natural tendency of families to stay together,'' said Martinez who, like Seamon, believes Elian should be allowed to stay with his great uncles and cousins in Miami.
'GREATEST SACRIFICE'
``It's the greatest sacrifice a parent can do, to separate from their child to do whatever's best for them,'' said Yvonne Conde, a Pedro Pan child who surveyed 442 of her peers as research for a book she published on the operation in 1999.
While Pedro Pan children say they empathize with the pain Elian must feel at his separation from his family in Cuba, his situation is different in an important way. Parents of Pedro Pan children sent them to the United States, but Elian's father says he did not know the boy was leaving and wants
him back.
While most Pedro Pan children say the hardships they endured in the United States were worth it, not all agree Elian should stay with his Miami relatives.
``The reason our parents sent us here is because they feared the state would take away their parental authority,'' said DePaul University political science professor Maria de los Angeles Torres, who was 6 when her parents put her on a Miami-bound plane with her brother.
``Now some are turning around and attempting to take away this father's authority. I think that's a great irony,'' she said.
19:35 02-03-00
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