CUBANET ... CUBANEWS

April 21, 2000



All about a boy

The Economist, April 2000

TO ANYONE but the most frenzied Castro-hater, any decision at all in the custody battle over Elian Gonzalez would be better than the current struggle. The six-year-old has been trapped in a tug of war between his father, his relatives, the courts and federal agencies for nearly five months.

The battle has gone on so long not just because of the bloody-mindedness of Miami’s Cuban-Americans. Nor can it really be blamed on any intrinsic legal complexity: American and international law are both clear—the boy should go back to his father. Rather, the case remains unresolved partly because almost every party has an interest in letting it drag on, except Juan Miguel Gonzalez and—though this is obviously debated—Elian himself. All the other parties—the attorney-general, the Justice Department, the Clinton administration, and Fidel Castro—have an interest in procrastinating.

Take the official most deeply involved, the attorney-general. Janet Reno had it in her power to send Elian back to Cuba early in the proceedings, as most refugees are sent back. Instead she decided to let Juan Miguel decide the fate of his son, sending Immigration and Naturalisation Service officials to interview him alone, in Cuba last December. But when these officials determined that he was a fit parent she also lent over backward to listen to the Miami relatives, allowing (even inviting) them to contest that decision in federal court. Her refusal to take a quick decision bogged the process down in appeals and counter-appeals.

Her dithering has been more than just a prejudice in favour of due process. Over and over again Ms Reno has intimated that a deadline was about to be reached, only to let it vanish in a puff of smoke. She has held discussions about discussions, meetings about meetings. She has treated Lazaro Gonzalez, the boy’s great uncle, with the sort of deference that most politicians reserve for a head of state. Her final humiliation came when she flew to Miami to collect the boy—an extraordinary gesture for an attorney-general to make—and then flew out last Thursday empty handed.

Many people blame this excess of deference on the political power of Miami’s vociferous Cuban-Americans. Certainly, they have been willing to use any means, from legal ruses to civil disobedience, in order to get their way. But Ms Reno has her own reasons for delay. April 19th is the seventh anniversary of the raid that she ordered on the Branch Davidian cult near Waco, Texas. Her role in that disaster is still a matter of public controversy and private regret. The last thing she wants is to risk more violence by ordering her officials to storm through crowds of human shields to enforce a federal decision.

Moreover, as head of the Justice Department, she is responsible for the Immigration and Naturalisation Service, which has its own institutional reasons for holding back. The INS’s main interest lies in ensuring that it—and it alone—decides who gets custody of the child. The actual decision is of secondary concern.

Several immigration lawyers in Miami claim that the INS was at first prepared to let Elian stay with his relatives (in fact it was the State Department which pointed out the worrying precedent that this would set, by perhaps infringing the Hague Convention on international child abduction). The chief concern of the INS, says Ira Kurzban, a Miami lawyer, was to make clear where jurisdiction lay. The Service did this by taking the unusual step of inviting the Gonzalez family in Miami to file a custody suit. The district court duly found that the INS is solely responsible.

While officials procrastinate, politicians grandstand. In Cuba itself, the stand-off is a Marx-send, an opium of the people. So long as it continues, Mr Castro can use it to stir up anti-Americanism. It is almost better than having Elian and his father back home, because Mr Castro does not now have to worry about their defection, which he will do, if and when they arrive back.

As for the American administration, it has reasons of its own for not speaking out. Bill Clinton, whom some Americans regard as a perjurer, is not in a good position to lecture anybody about family life and values.

Al Gore also decided to pander to the Cuban-American vote by calling for Elian and his father to stay. This about-turn seems to have hurt him with most Americans. Two-thirds of those polled for Fox News said that they thought Mr Gore had changed his mind for political reasons; his job-approval rating promptly fell.

But it is not true, as conventional wisdom holds, that Mr Gore gains nothing from his action because Cubans all vote Republican anyway. That is no longer so. Having turned Florida Republican in 1992 by voting for George Bush by a margin of two to one, the Cuban-Americans roughly split their vote between the parties in 1996. Indeed, Mr Clinton won a majority of the state’s Latino women, who are the group most determined that Elian should stay. So it is not at all clear that Mr Gore is being electorally foolish in pandering to their vote. But his decision makes it even harder for the Clinton administration to come out forcibly in favour of a court ruling against the boy’s father.

There has never been any chance of resolving this issue without causing pain to someone. But the pain gets worse with every day that passes. Elian has become attached both to his Miami relatives and his new homeland. The weaker the American government has seemed, the more determined have Cuban-Americans grown to keep him in the country. More decisiveness earlier could have kept the pain to a minimum. The danger now is that a belated show of decisiveness in the next few weeks will end in a bloody disaster.

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