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Morning News

'Return Our Son,' Chant Tens of Thousands of Cuban Women for Elian Gonzalez

Aired January 14, 2000 - 10:30 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: The imagery and emotion of Elian Gonzalez's case and his situation ratchets up, this morning, in his Cuban homeland. We were showing these pictures live in the last hour from Havana, where an estimated-100,000 mothers and children are taking part in this protest. They're demanding the return of the six- year-old to his father.

Our Havana bureau chief, Lucia Newman, is among the demonstrators, and she joins us now by telephone -- Lucia.

LUCIA NEWMAN, CNN HAVANA BUREAU CHIEF: Yes, I'm standing now in front of the U.S. diplomatic mission her on the Malacon, Havana's waterfront, and there are just tens of thousands of mothers going past this building, shouting (SPEAKING IN SPANISH), which means, "Return our son, Return our son." They are referring, of course, to six-year- old Elian Gonzalez.

Now, this enormous march was headed by the boy's two grandmothers and by his half brother, Yammy (ph) Gonzalez, who's four months old. He is being held by the child's stepmother. The crowd is enormous, there is a huge helicopter going overhead right now, so I'm having difficulty to hear, but people are being very peaceful, they're smiling, they're carrying Cuban flags. There are many, many pregnant women also taking part in this march. And of course this is part of an ongoing campaign that's been going on now for nearly two months, where Cubans come out on the streets by the thousands and demand that this child be returned to his grandparents, to his father and to his country.

KAGAN: Lucia, I know it's loud there, I don't know if you can hear me.

NEWMAN: It's very loud. I keep -- I can hear you just a bit. Go ahead.

KAGAN: OK, I'll try. I know we've seen other protests. How does this compare in terms of number of people who have turned out?

NEWMAN: I just lost you there because it was -- the helicopter is going overhead right this minute. It will be gone in just one second.

But I don't -- by the way, there's supposed to be 100,000 mothers taking part in this, which means that although the people have been marching now at quite a fast pace for more than a half an hour, it's only half over.

I can hear you now again, Atlanta. Go ahead.

NEWMAN: OK, Lucia, it's Daryn Kagan in Atlanta.

I was asking you, I know we've seen other protests take place in Cuba over this incident, but how does this compare in terms of numbers of people who've shown up to protest?

We've seen protests around this size, there have been a few, but there's been a mixture of students, old people, young people, but this is the first time that it's been actually concentrated just on women. It think there's never been a demonstration of this kind, certainly in this country, ever in the 40 years of the Cuban revolution.

Now, I also wanted to mention that this Interests Section building, the U.S. diplomatic building here in Cuba, which is not quite an embassy because there are no formal diplomatic ties between the United States and Cuba, is at this moment being surrounded by students and cadets from the military schools of Cuba, three rows deep, in fact. It's a sort of protective cordon around the building, but nobody is making any attempts to go actually near the building or to throw anything at it. They're very peaceful. In fact, in other demonstrations, we saw the marchers shaking their fists at the diplomatic mission, but we're seeing none of that now. They're just simply chanting over and over again apparently the new catch cry, which is, "Return our son, return our son" -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Lucia, quickly, how did they get the word out that people were supposed to show up to this, and how much is the government involved?

NEWMAN: Earlier this -- yes, earlier this week it was advertised on television and in all the newspapers, on the radios, and as you know, Cuba is a country that is very organized in a very vertical way. Everyone belongs to some kind of an organization or another, women's organization, children's organization and so on, that ultimately answer to their government, to the state. So there's been a lot of publicity, and this was, certainly, a very well organized demonstration indeed, Daryn.

KAGAN: Lucia Newman, reporting from Havana. We'll continue to dip in and show you these live picture as the morning goes on.

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