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After the grandma meeting, each side quickly resumed the salvos. Sister O'Laughlin, the once neutral nun, announced she now favors keeping Elian in the U.S., in part because the abuelas seemed manipulated by fear. Elian's father, a Communist Party member, claimed in papers filed in the federal lawsuit that the Miami camp had offered him $2 million, a house and a car if he would move to America.
If Elian is sent back, the grandmas--who were expected to return to Elian's hometown of Cardenas, Cuba, over the weekend--will almost certainly be the ones to retrieve him. Abuelas are usually respected moral authorities, but that Cuban tradition isn't worth a knitted shawl in this fight. In fact, the Miami exiles have assailed the grandmas--for not thanking Elian's granduncle Lazaro Gonzalez for taking him in. "We are thankful to Lazaro for what he did at the beginning," Quintana told TIME. "But now he is using my grandson."
In the week's tug-of-war, the grandmas seemed to have the stronger grip. Congressional support for citizenship for Elian waned, even among Republicans. The federal judge moved up the deadline for the Miami relatives to present their final case and scolded lawyers for their media grandstanding. Which means these abuelas' first visit to the U.S. may not be their last.
--With reporting by Jeanne DeQuine/Miami and Dolly Mascarenas/Cardenas