Luis Aguilar Leon. Published Wednesday, April 26, 2000, in the Miami Herald
Luis Aguilar Leon is a former opinion page editor of El Nuevo Herald, from which this column is reprinted.
They came in the dark. They wore black masks and wielded assault rifles. They smashed the doors of the modest home, yelling at the sleepy residents and waving guns in their faces. One of the intruders pointed his weapon in the direction of a 6-year-old boy and snatched him from the arms of the
fisherman who had saved his life.
They were federal agents under orders from the attorney general and the president of the United States. Their targets were not terrorists, drug dealers or criminals but law-abiding American citizens. They could have been Mexicans, Puerto Ricans or Nicaraguans.
Three days earlier, a federal court had denied the president's sought-for legal cover and sided tentatively with the boy's attorneys. But the same president who flouted the rule of law by lying to a federal grand jury decided this time to ignore it, and sent storm troopers crashing through a
humble family's home.
It was a preordained conclusion. On one side stood the president of the United States and the dictator of Cuba, on the other a small minority determined to keep the boy from that dictator, a hope that cost his mother her life.
The two leaders' propaganda machines went into overdrive. They spoke about a father's rights in a country where fathers have no rights. They called the exile community child abusers, kidnappers, thugs. An administration-hired pediatrician determined that little Elian Gonzalez was in imminent
danger from his Miami family, without once having spoken to the child. Thus, the best interest of the child dictated that he be seized screaming at gunpoint from his family and the man who rescued him.
It was easy to demonize the Miami Cubans. Patriotic, religious and noisy, they ask nothing from the government other than that it not aid the regime that turned their beautiful homeland into a repressive hell. These traits make them politically incorrect, even for the usual watchdogs of minority
defamation -- members of Congress such as Maxine Waters, D-Calif., Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-Texas, Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., Rev. Jesse Jackson and all Clinton-Castro apologists, none of whom would tolerate a similar assault.
In Cuba, Fidel Castro must be laughing. Plucked from near obscurity by the politics and cowardice of Bill Clinton, he masterminded the rescue of a poster boy of freedom from the clutches of capitalist imperialism. Once in his power, that boy will repudiate what America stood for before the
current president -- a country where people are free from tyranny, pre-dawn raids and abuse of power.
Special mention should go to Janet Reno for her comprehension of history. She used not only Gestapo tactics in seizing the boy, but an old Japanese trick from just before Pearl Harbor. Up to the very minute of the raid, her people were negotiating with legal representatives of Elian, who thought
they had found a peaceful compromise. Thanks to Reno, April 22, 2000, is another date that will live in infamy.
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