By E. J. Dionne Jr. The Washington Post. Tuesday, April 4, 2000; Page A29
To treat the controversy over Elian Gonzalez as an outbreak of national insanity is understandable, but it misses the point. All the actors in this drama are behaving rationally, given their own assumptions. Things look crazy because it's impossible to reconcile the conflicting assumptions.
The key is that the battle over Elian's fate is not between the United States and Cuba but among Cubans themselves over their island's past and future. What matters to the Cuban exile community is that no one who escapes Fidel Castro's dictatorship should ever be forced to live under it again.
What matters to Castro is that his regime be treated normally, which would mean doing the natural thing and sending Elian back to his father. But to treat Castro in a normal way is exactly what the exile community opposes.
The American people and our government also have a rational view. For all the criticism that has come their way, Attorney General Janet Reno and the Immigration and Naturalization Service have done the proper thing. No matter how much media attention Elian's case gets, they insist, it should be
dealt with under the law like every comparable case.
And polls suggest that the predominant sentiment among average Americans is the old-fashioned one: The boy belongs with his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez.
Now, it's true that contradictions develop quickly once all the actors take their rational assumptions and run with them. It's been amusing to see anti-Communist conservatives who revere family values above everything say that, well, no, in this case, politics--meaning the oppressive Castro
regime--matters even more. On the other hand, advocates of returning Elian to Cuba have embraced a soaring rhetoric about the sacredness of family life. Never have so many progressives sounded so much like Pat Robertson or Gary Bauer.
But since the Cubans, in Miami and Havana, are the central actors, it's important that they analyze where their interests really lie. Both sides are in the process of losing friends and influence.
Many Americans have been stunned by the public statements of Alex Penelas, the mayor of Miami-Dade and an able politician. Penelas announced he would effectively nullify federal law if Washington tried to return Elian to his father. The local police wouldn't cooperate, he said. Even more
incendiary were his remarks suggesting that if violence broke out, it would be Reno's fault. It's the kind of statement against law and order that those supporting the cause of keeping Elian here typically condemn.
By highlighting its separateness from American law, the exile community is endangering the natural sympathy that otherwise goes to refugees from oppression. The rule of law, after all, is one of the central differences between Castro's government and ours.
But Castro has made the exiles' argument much easier. It was striking on Sunday that Elian's father's new "position" on visiting the United States to take custody of his son was made public not by him but by Castro himself. What better way for Castro to prove the argument of his
enemies that Juan Miguel Gonzalez has no freedom in the matter of custody of his own son? And Castro's insistence that Gonzalez be surrounded by a massive entourage that would no doubt include the regime's secret police hardly encourages the idea that this is about family values and not politics.
In the end, there is only one solution that might cut through this thicket of competing claims, but it will require a miracle.
Castro, who has an interest in softening American opinion toward his government, would help himself if he let Elian's father come here freely (with anyone in Mr. Gonzalez's family whom Castro might be able to threaten back home) and be given as much time as he needs to decide where he and his
son should live. The exile community should guarantee the father's safety and pledge that if father and son make a genuinely free choice to return to Cuba, they should be allowed to do so.
This solution would square the values of freedom and family. But the exile community is so whipped up that Mr. Gonzalez might be forgiven a certain skepticism about guarantees of safety and autonomy. And Castro doesn't want to concede his trump card, which is Mr. Gonzalez. Thus do rational
political calculations threaten an irrational outcome for a 6-year-old boy held hostage to a conflict that began 35 years before he was born.
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