Dunleavy: Don't Give Boy To Castro
By Steve Dunleavy. The New York Post, April 3, 2000
IF Janet Reno and Bill Clinton sincerely believe that whisking Elian Gonzalez back to Cuba will end up with the boy living under his father's roof, they have the collective IQ of a gnat.
Not surprisingly, Sean Hannity, a conservative Fox news commentator, yesterday deplored Elian's possible return to Cuba as a case of "raping and stealing a boy's mind ... owned by the state and Castro and exposed to brainwashing."
But what to make of Rep. Robert Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat who reminded Tony Snow yesterday of the very basis of Fidel Castro's stated edict on Cuba's children?
"The children belong to the state, entrusted to the family to be brought up as a communist," Menendez, a Cuban-American said.
"Castro constantly separates families."
What? Is he the father of all children in Cuba?
Seriously, now, in another era, would we have returned a child to Nazi Germany?
Oh, say the hand-wringing apologistas who want Elian back on Cuban soil, Cuba isn't anything like a Nazi dictatorship.
"The hell it isn't," a friend of mine, Frank Vidal, a Cuban exile was saying. "Castro has not only ordered tortures, rapes and thousands of executions, he has personally murdered, with his own hands, people as far back as 1949.
"My cousin witnessed Castro shooting dead the president of the student union in Havana because he wanted to take over the position.
"Do you think Elian will go back right now and live with his father Juan Miguel Gonzalez and his new wife? No way. First the hospital and psychiatrists brain-washing him and then a special school for re-education. Elian will belong to Castro and the party.
"Of course, once he's back in Cuba, Castro won't give a damn about the little boy."
"America, please pray for this child," Rep. Lincoln Diaz Balart (R-Fla.) said yesterday.
"No lawyer in this country would have a client sign away his legal right even before an appeal was heard."
Here we're talking about Janet Reno and the Justice Department demanding that Elian's great-uncle Lazaro sign a piece of paper promising to turn over the little boy pending the decision by a federal appeals court.
Spencer Aig, the uncle's lawyer, told CNN: "They want the uncle to sign a blank check ... This is the United States -- if they force this issue, we might as well box up the Statue of Liberty and send it back to France."
The hand-wringers seem to forget something -- Elian's mother Elizabet Brotons left a last will and testament for Elian. In fact, a Cuban court, yes a Cuban court, had seen fit to award custody of the boy to her.
As high seas washed her away, she shouted to one of two men who survived the hell-crossing with Elian: "Please get my son to America and freedom!"
What does President Clinton, Hillary's campaign manager, know about fighting for freedom? He didn't give it much of a chance during Vietnam.
What does Janet Reno know about justice? She obstructs it on a daily basis.
What do we seriously know about the father and the circumstances of the divorce and the subsequent custody of Elian being granted to the mother?
As Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), said yesterday: "Nothing."
Here is little Elian, as innocent and content as a spring breeze, and the Clintonistas want to have him locked up on a Devil's Island where a political Mephistopheles wraps himself in an inferno of injustice, brutality and dictatorship.
This is not a good day for freedom.
Elian's Granny: 'Take Him By Force'
By Douglas Montero. The New York Post, April 3
CARDENAS, Cuba.
MARIELA QUINTANA stared into the TV as commentators discussed the prolonged saga of her grandson Elian Gonzalez.
"The U.S. should just bring him back," she said with all the feeling of a grandmother when a grandson is in trouble.
"They shouldn't even wait another 10 minutes. They should just go in there and take him by force.
"Please. Enough."
She's right. Enough is enough.
Quintana listened in wonderment as the commentators told how Miami police -- who warned that they won't help federal authorities take Elian from his U.S. relatives -- last week snatched 2-year-old Khalil Shanti from his mother Maria Pereira.
The mom had lost her child in a bitter custody battle with the boy's father, a Jordanian man. Pereira didn't want to hand the boy over to the father because she knew he would immediately take him to Jordan. After the police raid, the husband did just that.
Quintana's mouth gaped open. Her right hand pressed against her cheek. Behind her was a framed poster of Elian.
"Can you believe it?" asked a family friend who had a few harsh words for the American justice system.
Quintana, Elian's paternal grandmother, was reluctant to talk at length because the struggle for Elian has taken its toll on the family. Yesterday she just wanted to rest with her husband Juan.
But she described how frightening it had been to board an airplane for the first time when she came to New York in January, hoping to bring home her grandson.
She grew silent and again stared blankly into the TV when asked how it felt leaving the U.S. without him.
Her husband walked into the living room, wearing a crisp blue, button-down shirt. His appearance couldn't hide the weariness in his eyes.
"He's doing fine," said Juan Gonzalez, when asked how his son, Elian's father, was doing.
Earlier in the day, Elian's uncle, Tony, said his brother was growing increasingly "frustrated" and "irritated" by the inaction of the U.S. government.
Quintana and her husband walked out of the house and got into a car that would take her to her mother's home.
In times of crisis, people seek comfort in the arms of their mothers and fathers.
Yesterday, Quintana needed those arms -- the same way that she knows Elian needs hers.
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