Yves Colon. Published Friday, April 28, 2000, in the Miami Herald
It was a simple gesture, from one father to another. Eduardo Fee invited me into his home and did more in an hour to help us understand the Cuban-American community's pain than all the politicians here and in Washington have done in the nearly two decades I've lived here.
Like most Haitian Americans who come from a country with a shameful record on education, I have bestowed high praise to Cuba's advances in education. We wish Haiti had Cuba's problems, Haitians tell each other -- but never too loudly in Miami.
Sadly, Haitians could not muster very much sympathy for Elian's cause. We're fighting another battle: to keep the U.S. authorities from deporting the parents of 5,000 U.S.-born children back to poverty, illiteracy and hopelessness in Haiti.
And, like most Caribbean immigrants separated from their children while working in the United States and hoping to send for them, Haitians believe Elian should be with his father.
But, Eduardo and his friends showed me that one pain is not more valid than another.
After dropping off my son at Eduardo's house for his daughter's birthday party, I got caught in a traffic slowdown along Hialeah's main shopping, street. It took me nearly two hours to get home and I was still angry on the return trip.
Eduardo helped change that. This was all in the extraordinary 15 hours after Elian had been removed at gunpoint from his Miami relatives' home in Little Havana. Miami-Dade, as well as the nation was polarizing -- a majority of Cuban Americans on the side of the Miami relatives and blacks and
whites on the other side.
It didn't take long for the subject of Elian to come up. Eduardo insisted on speaking his imperfect, accented but understandable English, although I could understand him in Spanish. His friends, some who had left Cuba only five years ago, only spoke Spanish.
Watching our children together, they were glad they made the sacrifice and left Cuba. That's why they were fighting to keep Elian here. What did we think?
The government was correct in its decision to reunite Elian with his father, I told them and tried to explain that most Americans were thinking only on that level, a simple father-and-son issue. Cubans were on a different plane, and we were missing each other's message. They shook their heads
understandingly. Eduardo and his wife came from Cuba 12 years ago with a 1-year-old daughter. Eduardo had lived 29 years of his life in Castro's Cuba.
``In Cuba, your child doesn't belong to you. He belongs to the state,'' one of the women told us. ``They must join the Pioneers when they're little and then military service. We have no say in the matter.''
She said she felt kinship to Elizabeth Brotons, Elian's mother, who got on a raft to escape Cuba. She and her family were rescued from a similar craft nearly six years ago and spent several months at the Guantanamo Bay naval base. ``It's not just any woman who gets the courage to board a raft,''
she said. ``She made that sacrifice, her child should not go back.'' Eduardo said that children, once they grow up, ``are taken to fight in Angola, in Ethiopa, and the parents can't say anything about it. What parents would want that?''
They were using the many of the same words as the Cuban American National Foundation and countless other Cuban Americans, but the message was different. Helped by the kindness and respect these people were showing me, it was easier to digest. Why wasn't their message getting out to the larger
community? Part of the reason, some Miamians will say, is that Cuban Americans haven't extended a hand in the past 42 years to other communities. They've always relied on politicians and high-powered public-relations firms to fight their cause. Alliances with other ethnic groups haven't been
necessary. That, I think, is a tragic flaw.
How many African Americans have been inside the home of a Cuban American, and vice versa? How many Anglos grow up in Miami never to know well a Cuban? Most Haitians know Cubans only as bosses.
As Eduardo showed me, Cuban Americans have a valid cause. However, their message has been kidnapped by a small group of people dictating the terms and molding the image the rest of the country sees.
Regular Joses need to reclaim that message as their own, then reach out to other people, Haitians, Colombians, Jamaicans and white Americans. Eduardo did it, why not you? All it takes is a simple gesture.
Copyright 2000 Miami Herald |