The News from Cárdenas, Cuba

["Jose G. Perez" <jg_perez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

    The Cuba TV webcast (available as a link from Granma Internacional
Digital, www.granma.cu) reported last night at the conclusion of the mesa
redonda program that Juan Miguel González returned to work yesterday. A
Cuban TV report showed a small celebration to mark his return and carried
interviews with some of his coworkers. The snippets the report used
emphasized that Juan Miguel was the same as he'd always been -- easy going,
friendly -- and that they were glad he was back after such a prolonged
absence.

    Juan Miguel also was interviewed. He was quite the same as when we saw
him in the news before -- a man of few words, but to the point. He said he
was happy to be back at work and have his life return fully to normalcy, and
that what he hoped to do there was to help the facility achieve all the goal
set by the revolution. He did open up a tiny bit more when asked about
Elián. He said Elián was doing fine and his teachers had praised him for his
rapid progress. He could not suppress a smile of pride and satisfaction
discernible even through the murky images of the webcast.

    So much for the gusanos (and others!) who speculated either that Elián
and his family would wind up in some sort of gulag or "educational facility"
or that Juan Miguel would be given a cushy bureaucratic job with all sorts
of privileges as a "reward" for his "loyalty" to the "regime."

José