- guardian.co.uk, Tuesday April 25 2000 02.38 BST
The city authorities appealed for calm in Little Havana, home of Elian's Miami relatives and the centre of the protest movement which has developed in the past five months around the demand for him to stay in the US.
More than 800,000 of the city's 2.1m people are Cuban-Americans, and they make up about half the workforce. The city government said it would accept the stoppage, dubbed "Dead Tuesday", but would not pay employees who failed to turn up for work.
The mayor of Miami-Dade county said the strikers had been asked not to repeat their earlier tactics of blocking roads, the seaport and the airport.
The White House defended Saturday's raid, in which heavily armed federal agents stormed the Miami house to snatch Elian and reunite him with his father.
Its spokesman, Joe Lockhart, said: "This happened because the family did not respect the legal process that dictated the father should be reunited with the young boy."
Useful links
Campaign to keep Elian in US
Let Elian go home
Cubanet
Department of State: The US and Cuba
