Oswaldo Lastres. Chicago Tribune / Op. July 5, 2000
HINSDALE -- In the June 29 editorial, the Tribune praises the American legal system for allowing Juan Miguel Gonzalez to return to Cuba with his son, where he can "exert his parental right to raise his child as he chooses and where he chooses . . . " How sad that the Tribune believes
that this is what it "all should have been about in the first place." Now back in Cuba Mr. Gonzalez has no parental rights and has no say as to how his child is raised.
The government can now intensify Elian's "re-education" process. It will remind him over and over that his mother was a traitor for her attempt to bring him to the U.S., and he will never know free speech or be allowed to leave Cuba.
Politicians such as Gov. George Ryan of Illinois, who have toured Cuba on "humanitarian" missions, have been shown the deplorable state of Cuban hospitals, supposedly that way because of the U.S. embargo. But were they taken to the tourist hospitals, where everything is available?
Cuba can obtain food and drugs from its current trade partners. It isn't the embargo that punishes Cuba's people; it's the Cuban government that lavishes its best medical care and resources on tourists and ignores Cubans.
Gonzalez's rights.
Emilio E. Machado. July 5, 2000
CHICAGO -- The June 29 editorial regarding Elian Gonzalez's return to Cuba continues a pattern of distortion regarding life in Cuba for ordinary Cubans. How can one possibly argue that Elian's father in Cuba can now assert his "parental right" to raise Elian as he sees fit when
parental rights in Cuba are always subordinate to the absolute power of the Cuban state to control all aspects of children's lives?
If parental rights are so supreme in Cuba, why is it that the child cannot return to his hometown of Cardenas for months or that his reintegration into Cuban society is so painstakingly orchestrated by the Cuban government? How was it that Elian's classmates were shipped en masse to accompany
him pending the uncertain appellate process with or without their parents? Why is it that the Cuban government has systematically taken children from their parents' homes to labor in the fields for months or to indoctrinate them in the ways of the revolution? Why is it that Cuban parents have no
choices as to the type of education their children should receive, or have severely restricted rights for them to study outside of Cuba?
Cuban parents do have parental rights, so long as they in no way interfere with the absolute right of the government to stifle free speech, assembly and any such conduct that may be interpreted by the state as counterrevolutionary. |