Site Presented By
Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
The battle over Elian has led non-Cubans to threaten secession, and to back a recall drive against the mayor.
May 11, 2000 | The threat of secession is dividing the deep South. A confederacy of Miami voters, incensed by the Elian Gonzalez affair, is pressing for a recall of the Cuban-American mayor, and, possibly, a partition of the city.
"If we can't live with them -- I mean with the radical Cuban element -- then let's live without them," says Annette Eisenberg, a fomenter of what has become known as the Bayshore Secession movement. According to the rebels' plan, the predominantly non-Cuban neighborhoods that hug Biscayne Bay -- including the liberal enclave of Coconut Grove and the downtown business center -- would break away from Miami and form a city known as Bayshore Miami.
On Thursday the action in the Elian saga moves to Atlanta, where lawyers for the Miami Gonzalez family on one side and Elian's father on the other will battle in federal court over the boy's right to be considered for political asylum. Whatever the court decides, the hearing will keep alive an issue that many Miami residents are ready to see resolved.
The idea of a Miami confederacy is a long shot. Attempts to divide or dissolve the city have failed in the past due to legal technicalities and the voting power of Cuban-Americans who don't want to cede relatively affluent areas of the municipality.
On the other hand, a movement to recall Cuban-American Mayor Joe Carollo is dead serious, its supporters say, and it may have political legs. They are organizing in the wake of a series of divisive moves by Carollo after the federal government removed Elian from the home of his Miami relatives April 22.
First, Carollo ordered the city manager, Donald Warshaw, to fire Police Chief William O'Brien after learning that O'Brien knew ahead of time about federal plans to snatch the boy, but didn't notify him. When Warshaw refused to do so, Carollo canned Warshaw. O'Brien then resigned. "I refuse to be chief of police when someone as divisive and destructive as Joe Carollo is mayor," O'Brien announced.
Those events sent City Hall and the largest city department, the police, into turmoil. But the mischief wasn't over. Warshaw briefly fought his dismissal and accused Carollo of having violated the law in the past by secretly requesting illegal surveillance of 20 people -- city commissioners, political foes and journalists, including the publisher of the Miami Herald.
Carollo denied those accusations, breaking new ground in hyperbole, in a town known for hyperbole. "These are outrageous lies," the mayor said. "Warshaw is the most evil man I have met. He makes Rasputin look like a child."
Some citizens challenged Carollo's comparison between Miami and czarist Russia. They preferred the term "banana republic," and delivered bunches of bananas to the front steps of City Hall as tribute to the mayor. But most people aren't joking. Many non-Cubans in Miami are outraged that strictly Cuban political issues have been allowed to unhinge their civic affairs and have led to the firing of experienced non-Cuban public servants.
Both the police chief and city manager were replaced by Cuban-Americans, creating an ethnic stranglehold on power in the city, and angry non-Cubans blame Carollo. Several citizens' groups have cranked up the recall campaign. The activists include George De Pontis of Coconut Grove, a chief political strategist in Carollo's past campaigns for city commissioner and mayor.
"I've always been in his corner in the past. But Miami really needs leadership right now and what is the mayor doing? He's throwing gasoline on a smoldering city," De Pontis said. "Many people who have lived here all their lives are getting the message that this is not their city. Many feel they are not being represented," De Pontis said.
The recall campaign is targeting six Miami neighborhoods, including the Carollo stronghold of Little Havana. "We feel that even there you'll find large numbers of Cuban-Americans for whom this has all been an embarrassment," he said.
This week, members of the recall movement applied for legal recognition as a political action committee from the state government in Tallahassee, the first step in any Florida recall movement. They say they will soon start circulating petitions. De Pontis said they need 6,000 verifiable signatures to achieve the first legal requirement, but they are aiming to get 6,000 in each of the six neighborhoods. With 35,000 bonafide signatures, the Carollo opponents can then demand a citywide vote on whether the mayor should be recalled. If Carollo loses that vote, he must stand for reelection. Neither Carollo nor his spokesperson was available for comment on the recall Wednesday.
In relatively affluent Coconut Grove, where residents pay 15 percent of the taxes and receive only five percent of the services, the movement should be extremely strong. Organizers also expect to get major support from the city's two African-American bastions, Overtown and Liberty City.
In polls, 92 percent of South Florida blacks opposed Carollo's position on Elian, and relations between blacks and Cubans have always been rocky. "People in our part of the city are overwhelmingly in support of recalling that nut," said Nathaniel Wilcox, executive director of PULSE, a black community organization, referring to Carollo. "The only people in this city who could support him are other nuts."
