MIAMI -- A Cuban farmer in a child custody dispute spent a third day on the witness stand defending his action and inaction as a father before his daughter moved to the United States.

Attorneys for the Florida Department of Children & Families are trying to prove Rafael Izquierdo is not a fit father, and that the now-5-year-old girl should be permanently placed with the Coral Gables foster parents who are currently raising her.

Attorneys probed the reasons Izquierdo gave official permission for the girl's mother, Elena Perez, to move their daughter to the U.S. in late 2004, knowing Perez admitted to being mentally unstable. They questioned why Izquierdo trusted the long-term care of his daughter to Perez's new husband, who abandoned Perez, her daughter and an older son the day they arrived at Miami International Airport.

Izquierdo said Perez's husband seemed trustworthy during the time they were together in Cuba.

"I told him at any moment to keep in touch and let me know about anything," Izquierdo testified through an interpreter. "The conversations, man to man, I had with him was (and) is about my daughter. It was everything about my daughter."

The DCF attorneys questioned why Izquierdo failed to send cards or gifts to his daughter on her 4th birthday a year ago Saturday. They asked why he didn't send photographs to keep in touch.

Izquierdo insisted photographs are considered luxuries in Cuba.

"You have to pay the photographer," he said. "It's expensive. All this is expensive. That's why I didn't take pictures. Don't think for a minute I didn't want to send one."

The judge stopped a DCF attorney who questioned why Izquierdo wasn't now calling his daughter more often at the home of her foster parents.

"Wait a minute," interrupted Judge Jeri Beth Cohen. "Now you're angry at him because you contend he's not calling more, and I'm telling you if he was calling more, you'd be in here saying he's calling all the time. I don't want to use a bad word in court, but you're darned if you do and darned if you don't."

The judge decided to allow videotapes that were recorded during supervised visits Izquierdo had with his daughter into evidence later this week. She is hoping to evaluate the reintroduction and relationship between father and daughter since Izquierdo has been in the U.S. working to gain custody.

Two court-appointed psychologists have offered the court differing analyses of the visits, one reporting that father and daughter are bonding well, while the other is concerned that the girl is confused and disheartened that she will be removed from the foster parents she calls "mami" and "papi."

"He may not have had the relationship that you would have liked," Cohen said to the DCF attorneys. "But we don't live in a perfect world. There are a lot of less-than-perfect fathers."