By William F. Wright. USA Today. June 5, 2000
After all of the failed posturing, theatrics and legal maneuvering, Miami's Cuban exiles reasonably could be expected to concede defeat and allow Elian Gonzalez and his father to go home without further delay.
But to expect that is to overlook what drives the exiles' campaign to keep the boy here: blind hatred of Fidel Castro, decades of an evil empire across the Florida Straits, and the notion that to give in on the boy would be another shameful Bay of Pigs. It also fails to consider the dynamics of
that curious corner of the world where the boy was kept during the long standoff with the U.S. government -- a place so often given to the wacky and weird and sometimes downright disturbing that if it didn't exist, Hollywood (or Dave Barry) would have had to invent it.
Cuban exiles in Miami are wont to dismiss any notion that their anti-Castro enclave differs much from the rest of the country. But what is to be made of a community where ideology bordering on zealotry was -- and is -- expected to prevail over a father's fundamental right to reclaim his son?
What is to be made of expatriates who seem to have replaced one form of tyranny with another? Among the exile community, it's still unwise, even personally risky, to challenge the notion that there can be no accommodation with Fidel, that he deserves nothing less than banishment to a swampy
penal colony -- if he's not left hanging Mussolini style in the town square in Havana.
Just a little steam?
Miami Cubans would like to be seen as peaceful, law-abiding citizens given occasionally to vociferous reminders that an unredeemable communist state lurks off the U.S. coast. They may raise a bit of ruckus, stop traffic, shake a few threatening fists at vexing voices of moderation and reason,
but not to worry; they're just letting off a bit of steam.
''There's an old Spanish saying that the perro que ladra no muerde -- the dog that barks does not bite,'' says Uva de Aragon, assistant director of Florida International University's Cuban Research Institute in Miami and an exile. ''There's a lot of barking (among the exiles), but I don't think
there's much bite.''
This reassurance might come as a surprise to a not-insubstantial list of victims of Cuban-exile wrath.
In the 1970s, Cubans in south Florida had legs blown off by car bombs, or their houses bombed just for suggesting a dialogue with Castro. In 1988 and 1990, a Miami art museum was bombed. Its apparent sin? Displaying works by artists living in Cuba.
Hurling bombs, obscenities
Last fall, a bomb was thrown at a Miami restaurant operated by the promoter of a concert featuring musicians from Cuba. The 3,000 who dared attend the concert, including many Cuban-Americans, got off lightly: just a gantlet of protesters, who spit and hurled rocks, bottles and obscenities at
them.
In the early 1990s, after the Cuban American National Foundation, the powerful exile organization, accused The Miami Herald and its Spanish-language sister publication, El Nuevo Herald, of being propaganda tools of the Castro government, Herald executives received anonymous threats, news racks
were vandalized, and a rash of anti-Herald messages appeared on billboards and city buses.
De Aragon, however, doesn't see Miami Cubans as a violent community, just as concerned citizens exercising their ''right to be vigilant of the state'': doing no more than what civil rights, anti-Vietnam War and anti-globalization demonstrators did.
Those concerned about exile demonstrators' threats to block Elian's return to Cuba, she says, simply don't understand the ''cultural nuances of language.'' But the oft-repeated shouts of ''We won't allow it!'' over the airwaves from Miami left little room for nuances.
De Aragon foresees no massive violence if Elian is returned to Cuba. But she doesn't completely rule it out: ''I'm not saying the Cuban community are saints.''
William F. Wright, a columnist for Money.net and a former journalism professor at Florida International University, was raised in Latin America. |