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Charles Jaco has written opinion and commentary pieces for dozens of magazines and newspapers. Each week, read and comment on a fresh on-line version. The discussion page enables you to share your view points world wide. If you would like to make a comment go to the " Join the discussion" link below. If you would like to view past editorials visit the Editorial Archive.
Editorial: 1/14/2000 Make no mistake about it. The anti-Castro Cuban exile fanatics around Miami and
their ultra-right wing friends in Congress are in the process of kidnapping a six year
old boy. Little Elian Gonzalez is the victim of a game of cynical manipulation by
a group of people whose bleats about "family values" are as hypocritical as Hannibal
Lechter preaching the values of vegetarianism.
Look at the facts. Elian (then five) was packed aboard a 17-foot runabout with
13 adults by his mother. Her boyfriend owned the boat and the 50 horsepower Evinrude
outboard. He charged the passengers $1,000 a head to take them to the United States from
Cuba. Elian's father--whom the mother had divorced three years before--knew nothing
about the trip. Neither did the boy's four grandparents. The overloaded boat shouldn't
have gone more than ten feet from a dock on a flat Midwestern lake on a calm spring day,
let alone set out into some of the world's most treacherous winter waters in the Florida
Straits.
The boat capsized. Only Elian and two adults survived. A heroic flight for freedom?
Try felony child abuse. This isn't exactly Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. Elian's mother
was fleeing a repressive government and an economy that's dead in the water. There's no
evidence that any of the poor souls on the boat faced anything resembling persecution.
They were, instead, looking for a better life.
There's no harm in that for fully-informed adults. One woman on the boat changed
her mind and put her child back ashore when it became apparent that the trip was doing to
be rough. The kids have no choice. Mommy says we're going for a boat ride, so they go
along.
Elian's found floating in an inner tube on Thanksgiving day. And then he's taken in
by a great-uncle and aunt in Miami. They elbow him in front of TV cameras to say he wants
to stay in Miami. The Immigration and Naturalization Service finally gets its' manhood
out of a blind trust and rule they way it should have ruled from the beginning--that
Elian belongs back in Cuba with his father and grandparents.
That got the attention of Indiana Congressman Dan Burton, one of the finest minds of
the 16th Century. Rep. Burton--whose own record on family values is, shall we say,
as flawed as everyone else's--immediately subpeaoned Elian to appear before his House
committee, thereby stopping any repatriation. In steps a local Miami family court judge,
a Cuban-American who says she'll consider granting custody to the great-uncle and aunt.
Whoops. It seems Her Honor forgot to tell anyone that she'd had a long professional
relationship with a local Cuban-American political consultant who's now acting as the
Miami family's "advisor".
A former commission of the INS, an otherwise sensible man named Gene McNary, told
me that there's no way the boy should be sent back to Cuba. This from a rock-ribbed
conservative Republican who is now running for Congress and who uses every opportunity to
rip into the "intrusive" federal government. But in this case, of course, it's okay
for the Feds to intrude and tear a traumatized kid away from his father and
grandparents.
The stench of hypocrisy hangs over all of this like smog. The Miami "exiles"
(a term that indicates they're only using the U.S. as a parking lot until they can get
back to their beloved Cuba) have run U.S. policy toward Cuba for four decades. Enough is
enough.
Even conservative heartland Republicans like Missouri Senator John Ashcroft and
Illinois Governor George Ryan have had enough. Ryan just became the first U.S. governor
to visit Cuba and says the four-decade old U.S. embargo against Cuba is a failure and
should be ended. Ashcroft's sponsoring a bill to exempt food and medicine to Cuba from
the embargo. As one of his aides told me, "The whole embargo is a wall of glass. Poke
one hole in it, like food and medicine, and it all shatters."
The exiles and their treatment of Elian have done something Fidel Castro could never
have done. They've mobilized most average Americans against them, and against current
policy toward Cuba. Once Elian's returned to his family, maybe Castro can send over a
fruit basket to thank them.
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