By Douglas Haberman. Los Angeles Times. Thursday, February 10, 2000
Bob Edgar shunned Fidel Castro in Havana as he worked to get Elian Gonzalez returned to boy's father.
It was a critical moment in Bob Edgar's effort to help 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez return to his father in Cuba. The boy was rescued at sea on Thanksgiving after his mother and 10 others drowned during an attempted crossing to freedom in the United States by inner tube.
Edgar, the president of the Claremont School of Theology and newly named general secretary of the National Council of Churches, had flown to Cuba with two other council officials to see if they could bring Elian's grandmothers to the United States to tell people why he should be back in
Cuba with his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez.
The council officials landed in Havana. Cuban dictator Fidel Castro immediately requested a meeting.
Edgar could refuse -- and insult the communist leader. Or he could meet with him and face accusations he was a Castro pawn.
"We turned him down," Edgar said. Emissaries from Castro made his displeasure clear, he said.
The Cuban Council of Churches has a long-standing relationship with its American counterpart and had requested the National Council of Churches' intervention in the case on Elian's father's behalf, Edgar said.
"If this was going to work, it had to be a council of churches-to-council of churches thing," he said.
Soon Edgar was back in the United States with Elian's grandmothers, arranging for them to appear on television shows and speaking himself on their behalf. His prominent support for returning the boy to Cuba naturally angered the anti-Castro community in Miami, he said.
"In the same week I made Fidel mad and all the anti-Castro folks mad," said Edgar, a former Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania.
Roy Miller, chairman of the Claremont School of Theology's board of trustees and a Republican, praised Edgar for his cool handling of the situation.
"He did not allow the council to become a tool of Castro," Miller said. "He was truly trying to find a way they could reach a resolution."
Edgar said the Elian Gonzalez case is one where the right thing to do is obvious.
"This isn't about the United States versus communism," he said. Elian belongs with his father, Edgar said.
"I think every day he stays in the U.S. is probably a month more of trauma he's going to face."
Copyright 2000 Los Angeles Times |