The Elián Gonzalez Case

As the Blockade of Cuba Continues — A Child Is Made a Political Football

by W.T. Whitney, Jr.

Versions of this article were printed in a Bangor, Maine, newspaper and in the Lewiston, Maine, Sun Journal of February 20, 2000, which identified the author as “a practicing physician in Norway [Maine] and member of Let Cuba Live.”

A 6-year-old boy is fished up out of the ocean and, having lost his mother, comes to live with a great uncle in South Florida. He is not returned to his father and grandparents in Cuba. The floodgates open to well-rehearsed recriminations and accusations. Many of them are untrue, and much remains that is unsaid.

U.S. officials and the media accept on faith the notion that, in Cuba, Elián would suffer because Cuba is a poor country. (The anti-Castro, pro-Batista Cuban exiles in their mini-state of South Florida say Elián must live in “freedom” in the U.S., not “dictatorship” in Cuba. Tell Black Miamians and deported Haitians about “freedom” in the U.S.)

The truth is that the well-being of children has long been a priority in Cuba, and a returned Elián would likely do just fine. The infant mortality rate — a sensitive public health indicator — last year was 6.4 deaths per 1,000 births in Cuba. The rate for Florida in 1998 was 7.1 for all children, 12.3 for Floridian babies of African descent.. Life expectancy in Cuba parallels that in the U.S. Literacy approaches 100 percent, and all children receive nutritional support regardless of their parents’ economic status.

An entirely different situation prevails in other poor countries, where the lives of millions of children are wasting away. (Throughout the former colonial areas, the so-called “Third World,” as many die each year of malnutrition and preventable diseases as in World War II.) That tragedy receives scant notice in the U.S., where general anguish is focused on the fate of one small boy.

Blockade of Cuba — The Great Unmentionable

Not surprisingly, the virtual state of siege against the Cuban people is also off limits to public discussion in the mainstream media. For forty years — ever since the revolutionary Cuban government, exercising sovereignty, took over the property of U.S. corporations in 1960 — the U.S. government has blockaded Cuba economically and threatened it militarily. Besides the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 and the “missile crisis” and near-invasion of 1962, the U.S. has backed guerrilla incursions by anti-Castro Cubans, assassinations, agricultural sabotage, payoffs to “dissidents,” and full-time radio propaganda.

Under circumstances like these, Cuba has had no chance to develop an expanded political life, and some responsibility for political restrictions that affect ordinary Cubans belongs to the U.S. government. Those who would protect Elián by keeping him in the U.S. fail to acknowledge the U.S. role in shaping economic and political conditions in Cuba.

Mainstream media coverage of the Elián Gonzalez case has also largely ignored a basic unfairness in the application of U.S. immigration policy. Refugees from Cuba have long enjoyed special privileges, and those without such protection, the vast majority, too often suffer injustice.

Ann Pilsbury, a Brooklyn lawyer, tells of siblings, ages 9 and 15, who left their home in El Salvador — a poor country where U.S.-backed death squads sowed terror for many years. Their aunt, who had cared for them, was no longer able to do so. Alone, the children traveled north to join their parents, who were working in New York. The children have since then been deported. (This was reported in the New York Times on January 14.) But Elián stays.

In its handling of the case of Elián Gonzalez the U.S. government has deviated from the usual course of action that child protective agencies take regarding child custody. The usual rule is that when one parent dies or disappears, custody is awarded to the other parent as next of kin, provided that the new arrangement does not threaten the child’s safety.

Would You Want Your Child to Live in — Communism!?

The prospect of a little boy being returned to “that awful place” — Cuba — works the way a bell does for Pavlovian trained dogs. Batista holdovers and their descendants, safe in Miami, rant about “Communism” and sport effigies of Cuban President Fidel Castro. They are eager to flaunt their political power, which is based on well-advertised anti-Communist credentials. After all, for decades they have done much of the dirty work in the U.S. corporations’ and government’s campaign against the Cuban revolution.

Yet every consideration of morality and common sense suggests that the blockade of Cuba should end. A 40-year trial is long enough to show that this method does not work. Restrictions on Cuba’s importation of food, medical drugs, and medical supplies are illegal and cruel. For the past several years the United Nations General Assembly has repeatedly voted that the U.S. embargo against Cuba must be lifted. In the world community the U.S government has been glaringly isolated on this question

Why, then, does the blockade persist, despite failure and condemnation? From beneath a trashpile of hyperbole and habituated incantations is unearthed that useful old tool, the “Red menace.” Compared to the teachings about the Soviet threat promoted  during the McCarthyite terror of the 1950s, Cuba represents a rather anemic version of “Communist evil.” No one claims that Cuba seeks world domination. Still, it seems that the top dog in the world economy need a “Communist” bone to chew on, and Cuba works just fine.

If Elián remains in the U.S., he might surprise his noisy caretakers some day by acting on his own, as other children have in reaction to contested divorce. (This has often been observed in pediatric practice.) Politicians and Elián’s distant relatives are operating in loco parentis by taking on the role of Elián’s mother. The Cuban government acts as a lawyer for Elián’s father, who is powerless. When parents keep on with old struggles after a separation, their children may suffer continued psychological stress. This is the kind of thing happening to Elián Gonzalez.

Like other preteen victims in contested family situations, Elián might fantasize about a former life in Cuba. “Wouldn’t I like to go down to the beach with father.” Or: “What wouldn’t I give to see my dog again.” He begins to search for his own identity, and later on, as a teenager, experiments with autonomy. He might decide then to return to Cuba. If he did, his parent substitutes would probably be looking the other way, Elián no longer being of use to them as a political football.