Editorial. Wall Street Journal, April 18
"I personally wouldn't send anyone to Cuba under the present conditions there. You must remember that everything that's come out of the mouth of Elian's father has been the voice of Castro-there is only one voice in Cuba. That's not to say that the father might not want to stay there, but
we don't know. Everything that is said must be approved." - Actor Andy Garcia
By now there can't be anyone who hasn't had his say on Elian Gonzalez: his father, Juan Miguel, Uncle Lazaro, Janet Reno, Dan Rather, a division of TV psychologists, the INS, lawyer Greg Craig, the Republican leadership and, of course, Fidel Castro. For all this, it was left to actor Andy
Garcia, himself a refugee from Castro's Cuba,. to refocus attention on the key unresolved issue: How anyone can claim to know what the father really thinks so long as he or his family remain in the hands of their Cuban minders?
Look at the poor man. When the Florida relatives released a tape of Elian saying (in Spanish) he wouldn’t go back to Cuba, the chorus went up: He was coached! But when his father reads a statement praising Cuba's leaders or hails the advantages of the socialist school system over the
American variety, does anyone wonder where he is occasionally trotted out for whether he was coached? Certainly Elian looks a lot happier in his Little Havana backyard than Juan Miguel Gonzalez does up in D.C. at the official Cuban residence.
This week being the 39th anniversary of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, we have to wonder why Ms. Reno finds it so important Uncle Lazaro be compelled to come to Washington to "surrender" Elian? And why doesn't Mr. Gonzalez just hop the first plane to Miami? Two different sources
suggested to us one reason: that the baby with Juan Miguel and his new wife is not her only one, that she has a son back in Cuba about Elian’s age.
And though the leader of Cuba's National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcon, denied on ABC a week ago that Juan Miguel's parents are now living in a special government compound, he did concede that they are no longer at their home in Cardenas. Truly no man would ever want to be in.the tortuous position
in which Mr. Gonzalez finds himself.
In legal spats between relatives, the normal course is to get them together to work it out themselves. From day one, however, those thumping most loudly for Elian's forced reunion with his father and his return to Cuba have worked hard to drive a wedge between the families and demonize the home
where Elian is apparently healthy and happy.
When the National Council of Churches orchestrated the visit by Elian's grandmothers, for example, they squired the women around New York and Washington for rallies and appointments before even going to Miami-only to fly back to Washington rather than show up for a dinner that had already been
set at Uncle Lazaro's table.
Now we have Juan Miguel Gonzalez put through the same drill, waiting for a federal judge to decide the various appeals while he and his Miami relatives trade charges of abuse. Thus, instead of showing up on his uncle's doorstep in Miami to see his boy -where his relatives say he'd be welcome- he
finds himself ensconced in Washington where he is occasionally trotted out for Dan Rather or escorted over to the Cuban Interest Section for a photo op with Randall Robinson of the TransAfrica Forum.
We've learned a great deal in the five months since Elian's Thanksgiving Day rescue: that not a few of Mr. Clinton's compadres have rather high opinions of the regime in Havana, that Janet Reno's inability to pursue evidence of Administration malfeasance could not have been for a lack or energy,
that maybe now we understand the kind of thing that created Waco. But we still don't know the answer to the - question Andy Garcia posed and that a. banner outside the Gonzalez yard in Miami puts to Janet Reno: "Only the father speaks for Elian. But who speaks for the father: You, Greg Craig or
Castro?" Don't both father and son deserve an honest answer? |