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Imagine yourself a father whose six-year-old son was found floating in the open sea, his mother, drowned. You yearn to embrace and comfort your first born. But you cannot, until officials of a foreign government decide your rights and suitability as a father. You wait for your son, fearing you may never see him again.
Cubans Juan Miguel Gonzalez, the father; Elizabeth Brotons Rodriguez, his late former wife; and their son Elian, are real people trapped in just such a nightmare, victims of the endless Cold War between the U.S. and Cuba.
Since the death of his mother, who was fleeing Cuba, and his rescue at sea on November 25th, six-year-old Elian’s picture has been plastered all over Miami. He is the new poster boy for the Cuban American National Foundation’s latest campaign to overthrow Cuban President Fidel Castro. In Cuba, Elian has been elevated to national symbol, proving the heartlessness of the U.S. policy. In Washington, officials have delayed their decision on whether Mr. Gonzalez speaks on behalf of his son, whatever that means.
The people using Elian in Florida for their own political ends have made him a TV celebrity, touring Disneyworld, playing with toys he would never have had in Cuba. In the middle of his own political race for the U.S. Senate Mayor Rudolph Giuliani even tried to invite him to open the Millennium celebration in New York.
Everyone wants a piece of the little boy who lost his mother--the orphan, unlucky enough to be kept from a father who wants him. It is unbelievable that in the last Christmas of the Millennium, the sanctity of a bereaved family means so little and politics so much.
Officials at the Immigration and Naturalization Service or Florida courts may be responsible for deciding Elian’s fate. But the deeper problem is our grudging refusal to give up on a failed 40-year-old Cold War with Cuba, which brands the island of 10 million people a dangerous communist enemy.
Yet we’re trading vigorously and exchanging visits with communist China. We’ve opened diplomatic relations and making trading inroads with communist Vietnam where we lost more than 50,000 U.S. troops, and reaching out to communist North Korea, and even our old nemesis, Libya.
Our policy toward Cuba simply doesn’t make sense, as every retired U.S. Secretary of State has admitted, once leaving office. Pope John Paul on his visit to the island last year condemned the U.S. embargo, and the United Nations has repeatedly voted against it, arguing that it intensifies the economic hardship of the Cuban people.
Earlier this year, the president of the U.S. of Chamber of Commerce returned from a visit to strongly urge a change in U.S. policy, for the benefit of American business. Last month 70 Senators voted to lift the embargo on food and medicines, but were rejected by the leadership in the House of Representatives.
In conversations with lawyers at the Justice Department this week, I was unable to elicit a single reason for our refusal to reunite Elian with his father. Lacking legal explanations, it becomes increasingly difficult to deny that we are playing politics with a little boy’s tragedy.
Our own laws, as well as a bilateral accord with Cuba, require that migrants picked up at sea must be returned. The accord grew out of the 1994 migration of tens of thousands of illegal Cuban boat people which alarmed Floridians and forced the Administration to act.
President Castro has indicated he would not allow a repeat of his highly insensitive policy that opened the floodgates to would-be migrants. But our own handling of the Elian case may well offer encouragement to another wave of poor Cubans. Elian’s lavish reception and the belief that we would flaunt our own laws on their behalf will encourage desperate people to risk their lives on a false hope.
President Clinton has been right in his statements on this issue. The matter must be resolved under the rule of law, not politics. He has also been correct in arguing that we should be guided by what is best for the child. Every day of delay will make that more difficult and complicated to accomplish.
Procrastination draws us closer to complicity in a tragedy that would mark a moral low point in our dealings with Cuba. A daily soap opera on television, the case jeopardizes our international reputation for fairness and compassion. Whatever you may think of Cuba’s government, it doesn’t take a lawyer or political scientist to imagine yourself in Mr. Gonzalez’s shoes as he worries whether his Elian is sleeping with nightmares. If Elian’s nightmare is allowed to continue, it could become our own.
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