A City Under Emotional Distress
MIAMI — Even before up to 100,000 Cuban exiles take to the streets today in yet another protest against the federal seizure of Elian Gonzalez a week ago, this city is seething, and its leadership is in turmoil.
The city manager has been fired, the police chief quit Friday and dozens of residents have complained they were roughed up by police in last weekend's demonstrations. "Emotions are raw. The situation is tense. The patience of the community is being worn thin on all sides," said attorney John DeLeon, president of the Miami chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. "Tomorrow is going to be a very telling day."
The man at the center of the upheaval is the city's mayor, Joe Carollo, an outspoken backer of the Miami relatives' efforts to prevent Elian from being returned to Cuba. Carollo has complained bitterly that local police officials did not give him warning that armed federal agents were coming to take Elian from his great-uncle's Little Havana home.
Barred by the city charter from firing the police chief, Carollo ordered City Manager Donald Warshaw to fire William O'Brien. Warshaw refused. So Carollo fired Warshaw.
O'Brien, 56, a 25-year police veteran, announced his resignation Friday. "I refuse to be the chief of police in a city that has someone as divisive and destructive as Joe Carollo as mayor," said O'Brien at a news conference as about 60 police officers, including some Cuban Americans, cheered in support. Crying, some of the officers later embraced the chief, who himself was in tears.
DeLeon said the ACLU has received about 100 calls from people who said they were roughed up by police, who made more than 300 arrests to quell demonstrations last weekend by Cuban Americans. Police used tear gas and pepper spray to break up crowds that blocked traffic and set tires ablaze at several intersections.
Today's demonstration, called by a coalition of exile groups, is planned as a peaceful, flag-waving march down 20 blocks of 8th Street in the heart of Little Havana.
But DeLeon and others warn that many people who had invested heavily in Elian as a symbol of their decades-long opposition to Cuban leader Fidel Castro are "feeling powerless, humiliated."
"The city is going through an upheaval right now," said DeLeon.
