Cuban mother asks if son can stay in US*** ''I want him to stay with his father,'' Orozco told the lawyer Grisel Ybarra by telephone from Cuba. Ybarra said she wanted to avoid a repeat of the case of Elian Gonzalez, who became the subject of a tug-of-war between the Miami relatives of his mother, who died at sea, and his father in Cuba. ''The reason we're doing this is so that we don't have another Elian where'' President Fidel Castro of Cuba ''alleges that the parent wanted the child back,'' Ybarra told The Miami Herald.***
Venezuela's Chavez denies new leftist axis during visit to Ecuador-Castro rails against U.S. empire *** QUITO, Ecuador - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez denied that a leftist front is taking shape in Latin America despite recent election victories of left-leaning politicians in Ecuador and Brazil.
"I would not call it a leftist axis because I do not believe it is about left or right," Chavez said early Friday in Ecuador, where he and Cuban President Fidel Castro were visiting to attend the inauguration of an art museum designed by a late leftist artist, Oswaldo Guayasamin. Rather, it is time for Latin America to leave behind 500 years of "domination, exclusion and inequality," said Chavez, whose leftist rhetoric has divided his nation.
Beside Venezuela and Cuba, Ecuador and Brazil will also be led by left-leaning governments with the election of Lucio Gutierrez, a nationalistic former coup leader, as president of Ecuador and leftist labor leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as leader of Brazil. ***