Elian

The Miami Kidnapping

Us Brits often take a wry look across at events unfolding on the other side of the Atlantic and proclaim, after Terry Thomas in "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World" that "This could only happen in America".

Well pardon me if this little episode doesn't take the biscuit (to use another phrase that our North American cousins probably don't understand). It's all completely unbelievable, each new phase of the drama becoming less credible. Surely this has only happened in some news editor's imagination. Either that, or it is proof positive that the whole nation is sinking under the joint manipulation of the media barons and the legal profession.

Let's just recap...

1. A young boy is rescued off the coast of Florida. His mother has died in an attempt to get asylum in the US, having fled from Cuba.
2. Members of the boy's family, resident in Miami, refuse to return the boy to his one surviving parent, even after court orders are issued.
3. When the US law enforcement system take the only route open to them to return the boy to his father, an entire city goes on strike!

The people who took the boy hostage (and that's effectively what they did), and the thousands of people who have gone on strike, are being about as grown-up about the whole affair as the boy himself. Why can't they all just grow up!

Send Elian Gonzalez home to his daddy

Judge rules against Elian's Miami family
Tuesday, March 21st, 2000
10:50 AM GMT

Judge rules against Elian's Miami family

MIAMI, March 21 (UPI) U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore ruled Tuesday against the Miami family of 6-year-old refugee Elian Gonzalez.

He said he has no jurisdiction to overrule U.S. immigration officials.

The ruling could result in the boy's return to his father in Cuba, but the family's attorneys have said they would appeal to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and to the Supreme Court, if Moore ruled against them.

It was not clear what would happen to Elian if his family appealed the ruling whether a stay of Moore's decision would follow but the Justice Department in Washington said it would be moving slowly in any case.

"We're not going to be taking any precipitous action...We are not going to be sending any jackbooted thugs...to pick up Elian," a justice department officials said.

The youngster was rescued as he was clinging to an inner tube off south Florida on Thanksgiving Day, following a tragic trip from Cuba. He had left Cuba in a 17-foot boat overloaded with 14 people, but the boat capsized and 11 people, including Elian's mother, drowned.

After Elian arrived in the United States, he was turned over for care to his great uncle's family, which began efforts to keep Elian.

But the Immigration and Naturalization Service ruled that the only person who could speak for Elian was his father in Cuba, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. Gonzalez has been firm in his desire to have Elian returned, and Cuban President Fidel Castro has made the dispute an issue of passionate concern to Cubans.

The family, with the support of the Miami Cuban-American community, resisted the INS order by filing a lawsuit against Attorney General Janet Reno, who oversees the INS, and by seeking help from Congress.

Congress so far has failed to act on bills that would grant Elian citizenship, and now the family has suffered a major defeat in federal court with their failed effort to gain a political asylum hearing for Elian.

"The determination to grant asylum is within the discretion of the attorney general," Moore wrote.

He said that by law the only person who can speak for the boy is his father.

"At age 6, Elian's recorded past is a profile of survival and courage in the face of adversity," he wrote. "Even this well-intended litigation has the capacity to bring about unintended harm."

Now that the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Attorney General, and a U.S. District Court judge have said that Elian Gonzalez should go home to his daddy, maybe the rabid Cuban-American community in Miami will allow the boy to return to Cuba to avoid any further psychological damage he may have suffered as a result of his ordeal. All this talk about his "Miami family" is horseshit, because he never had a relationship with these people before, yet he has a father in Cuba waiting on his return.

From the moment the boy was found clinging to the raft, he has become a poster child for the right-wing extremists in Miami, whose only mission is to see Cuba restored to its pre-Castro condition as a gambling and prostitution mecca for the rich. This has been their motive for more than 40 years and they have become a major campaign contributor to both parties in exchange for favorable votes when Cuba issues come before the House and Senate. (Rep. Dan Burton, R-IN, is a good example here because he receives more contributions from South Florida than he does from Indiana. He is co-author of the 1992 Helms-Burton bill, which enhanced an already damaging U.S. economic blockade by interfering with how third countries trade with Cuba.)

There is a Berlin Wall around Cuba. This one isn't made of brick and mortar, but it is nonetheless real. When the Cuban people (not just Fidel Castro and Che Guevara) overthrew the repressive Batista regime and nationalized the United Fruit Company in 1959, the wall went up. Rather than do the right thing and tear the wall down by opening up trade and diplomatic relations with Cuba, the U.S. Government, the CIA and the right-wing exiles in Miami sought to take Cuba by force in the Bay of Pigs invasion. When that failed, they imposed an economic blockade and tried numerous times to assassinate Castro and to disrupt the Cuban economy by introducing diseases. Now, the favorite method is to go after Cuba's trading partners and make it difficult for them to trade with the U.S. if they also trade with Cuba.

The exile community hasn't had much to smile about lately, as there is growing support in the House and Senate to at least end the embargo on food and medicine, and a small but growing number of legislators are calling for ending the blockade altogether.

Then Elian was found clinging to a raft and the exiles rallied around him. Surely he wouldn't be sent back to that repressive Cuba, where education and cradle-to-grave health care are free for all citizens. Surely it is Castro, and not the boy's father, who wants him returned. They took every opportunity to parade the boy in front of the media and encouraged him to put two fingers up in a victory sign. When his arms would begin to fall, one of his "uncles" was right there to push them up again for the cameras. Then he was given lots of toys -- in front of the cameras, of course -- including a new bike and a puppy. How sweet? Little Elian enjoying life here in the land of freedom and democracy for all.

How much longer is this going to drag on? What psychological harm has already been done to the boy by keeping him apart from his father? The Miami exile community is not only shameless, but heartless...