George Jonas. National Post. Wednesday, January 19, 2000
Politics can't be ignored when deciding what's right for Elian
Many people have accurately noted that the fuss over Elian Gonzalez, the six-year-old Cuban boy, is political. Under ordinary circumstances a custody dispute between a father and some distant Florida relatives would be resolved in a jiffy. If a mother passed away, and a father wanted his son
back home, the boy would be on the next plane.
But when the father's home is in Cuba, circumstances aren't ordinary, even if the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, along with many Western commentators and Fidel Castro himself, like to pretend otherwise.
While media opinions have been divided, most voices supported the position expressed by The Ottawa Sun as: "Cuba or not, let him go home to his dad." Across the Atlantic, Spain's El Pais used almost the same words: "The reasonable course of action would be to leave Elian in peace
-- with his dad."
Elian certainly shouldn't be kept in the U.S. for the wrong reasons. Keeping a minor child in Florida against his father's wishes because we disapprove of Mr. Castro's regime would definitely be wrong, no matter how much Mr. Castro's system merits disapproval.
Denying a fit and competent parent custody of his child because he supports Fidel Castro is indefensible. No parent should be denied custody for supporting even Adolf Hitler. Free societies should never deem fit parents unfit for their politics.
This should be especially plain to people who think of themselves as conservatives. It's the social engineers of the left who would arrogantly wrest children away from their parents because they've politically incorrect ideas about smoking, spanking or feminism.
We shouldn't support such notions even when they're directed against Cuba's comic-opera dictator. Far from emulating "experts" who claim to know better than parents what is in a child's interest, we should reject such insolence.
The desires of Elian's father must take precedence -- but how do we know what his desires are? When the lips of Juan Miguel Gonzalez move, how do we know that it isn't just Fidel Castro talking?
The thing to remember is that in a dictatorship all residents are prisoners and hostages. Mr. Gonzalez is no exception, and neither are his second wife, new child or his parents. We must not only consider, but assume that he is speaking under duress.
Journalists in former dictatorships recognize this. "The boy's father's words can be hardly treated as voluntary," writes Jan Wrobel in Poland's Zycie. Contrast this with Diane Francis, writing in The Gazette: "Castro remains wildly popular and unchallenged." Ms. Francis must
think it was Castro's wild popularity that made Elian's mother, Elizabet Broton Rodriguez, a chambermaid at a Varadero beach hotel, try to flee his rule in an open boat with 12 of her friends.
Mr. Castro counts on our collective inability to comprehend the nature of tyranny, including otherwise sophisticated Canadians and Americans -- sometimes even seasoned correspondents.
Many Westerners find wilful blindness politically expedient. A few, like U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, pretend that sticking their heads in the sand is "acting in the child's best interest."
In fact, Elian's mother, who had actual custody, wanted her son to live in the U.S. She, too, was a fit parent. She, too, must be presumed to have had Elian's best interest at heart. Yet she gave her life to the proposition that the boy would be better off in the United States.
True enough, as the National Post's Isabel Vincent observed last week, had Elian's mother survived, the boy would have had a better life in the United States for reasons that have nothing to do with Disneyland, McDonald's or Pokemon cards. But, unlike Ms. Vincent, I don't think Elian would be
better off "only" because he would be growing up with his mother. I suggest he'd be better off because he would be growing up in a free country.
We do not owe it to a dead mother's memory to countermand the wishes of a living father. But we do owe it to her memory to make sure the boy's father does in fact want to have Elian back in Cuba, freely, of his own volition.
If Mr. Gonzalez were to express his wish for Elian's return in Miami -- or in Geneva, or in The Hague, accompanied by his new family rather than by Mr. Castro's henchmen -- end of story. They could all be on the next plane to Cuba.
Until then I suggest Elian's place is with his great-uncle in Miami.
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