By Jeff Jacoby. The Boston Globe. January 13, 2000
Elian Gonzalez is not the first Cuban child to arrive in the United States without his parents. From the earliest days of the Castro dictatorship, Cubans have gone to desperate extremes to smuggle their children to freedom. Between December 1960 and October 1962, more than 14,000
unaccompanied Cuban children were sneaked off the island -- with their anguished parents' blessings -- in an exodus that came to be called "Operation Peter Pan." Many of those parents never saw their children again.
All other things being equal, children belong with their parents. But all other things have not been equal in Cuba since 1959. All other things can never be equal in a country that treats children -- by law -- as political raw material to be exploited by the state. In the civilized world,
parents are entrusted with the freedom of shaping their children's values and guiding their education. But in Castro's Caribbean paradise, parents who try to raise their children according to the dictates of conscience have been punished with impoverishment, imprisonment -- and worse.
This is from Article 3 of Law No. 16, Cuba's Code of the Child: "The communist formation of the young generation is a valued aspiration of the state, the family, the teachers, the political organizations, and the mass organizations that act in order to foster in youth the ideological
values of communism."
From Article 5: "Society and the state watch to ascertain that all persons who come in contact with the child ... constitute an example for the development of his communist personality."
Article 8: "Society and the state work for the efficient protection of youth against all influences contrary to their communist formation."
Article 33: "The state grants special attention to the teaching of Marxis-Leninism due to its importance in the ideological formation and political culture of young students."
The Code of the Child proceeds like this through dozens of sections. "The words are very long and boring," says Alberto Luzarraga of the New Jersey-based Cuban American Research Group. "But their meaning is inhuman. They mean that in Cuba, the real parent is the Marxist state."
If Cuba were a normal country, no one would dispute that Elian would be better off with his father than anywhere else. But Cuba is not a normal country, and if Elian is forced to return, he will not enjoy a normal childhood.
Send Elian back and he will be allowed to live with his father until he is 11; thereafter he will be sent to work in a farm-labor camp for 45 to 60 days per year.
Send Elian back and he will face compulsory military service until he is 27.
Send Elian back and he will be indoctrinated in the glories of "the revolution" and taught to regard any Cubans who reject Castroism -- including his dead mother -- as counterrevolutionaries and traitors.
Send Elian back and he will be allowed to attend college only if his "political attitude and social conduct" -- to quote the relevant Cuban law -- satisfy the regime in Havana.
Cuba occupies a permanent slot on Freedom House's yearly tabulation of the most unfree states in the world. It ranks with the likes of Afghanistan, Burma, North Korea, Syria, and Vietnam as one of the planet's most repressive nations. It is the sort of country that people hurl themselves into
the sea by the thousands to escape. How could it be in the best interest of a child who got free of such a wretched place to be forced to go back?
And that is not to mention the gaping deprivations of Cuban life -- the shortages of everything from milk to medicine, the severe rationing of soap and meat, the lack of toothpaste and anesthesia. A parade of American pundits and editorialists, not to mention the deep thinkers at the
Immigration and Naturalization Service, have been arguing in recent weeks that for his own good, Elian belongs in Cuba. But there isn't a one of them who would wish for his own child the misery that awaits Elian if he returns.
In announcing her decision to send Elian back to Cuba, INS Commissioner Doris Meissner declared, "Family reunification has long been a cornerstone of both American immigration law and INS practice." But when the United States reunifies immigrants with their families, it is always by
letting the families come in, never by forcing the immigrant out! Mercifully, a Florida judge intervened on Monday, giving emergency custody of Elian to his great uncle until a hearing can be held on granting him asylum.
If Commissioner Meissner seeks a cornerstone on which to base Elian's fate, a more relevant one to focus on is this: For 35 years, US law has offered sanctuary to Cubans who escape Castro's clutches. We have a well-founded presumption that Cubans have good reason to flee their homeland. If
Elian's mother had survived the trip to freedom, no one would have argued that the boy should be sent back. Surely the case for allowing him to to remain is strengthened, not weakened, by the price his mother paid to get him here. To borrow a phrase from another era, Cuba is not healthy for children
and other living things. We cannot save every boy and girl from Castro's nightmare. But Elian is here now. Let us at least save him.
(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe. His e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com) |