By Maria Luisa Salcines. The Monitor Newspaper McAllen, Tx. April 30, 2000
Early Sunday morning the house was quiet everyone was asleep except me. I had spent the day watching the Elian saga on television, talking to newspaper and television reporters on the phone. The phone rang non-stop all day long as family, friends from Miami and people from the Valley who
read my column called to talk about what had just happened.
I lay in bed switching channels until I saw James Taylor playing at the Earth Day 2000 Rally taking place in Washington D.C. He was playing songs I have grown up listening to -those soft mellow songs the kind of songs you want to listen to when you're at the beach or sitting out in a park
relaxing. The kinds of songs that make you sigh and say "Thank you God for my life, for my family, for everything that I have."
It was a beautiful day in Washington and there were children everywhere enjoying this event. This was a rally about our earth- about protecting it and taking care of it. This is the kind of rally that will never take place in Cuba. The only rallies that children attend have to do with
communism and defending it against the Yankees.
A rally about our earth is so very American. Americans are good and decent and are always willing to help others. This is why there are over a million Cuban-Americans living in this country. We are here because this great nation stands for freedom and human rights.
Elian's father Juan Miguel will never know what it feels like to raise his children in a free country. Even now that he is on American soil, he is with Cuban diplomats at all times. He has not been allowed to experience what life is like in America.
Why has the Cuban community made such a big deal out of one little Cuban boy? Because we've all come to this country one at a time. Because for the past 40 years the chain of love and hope that connects Cuban-Americans to their families 90 miles across the Florida Straits has never been
broken. For 40 years now Cuban-Americans have been helping Cubans on the island reach freedom.
For Cuban-Americans returning one child to communism is too much, to painful to allow. Every Cuban-American that you have seen on television sees himself in Elian. Elian represents all the small children in Cuba who are being raised not by their parents but by Fidel Castro and he represents
all the children in Miami who at one time found themselves in the same situation Elian is in.
Norberto Santana Jr., a staff writer with the San Diego Union Tribune, asked a Cuban independent journalist who recently arrived from Cuba about how children live in Cuba. Most people, Santana commented, see the children playing on the streets of Havana who seem happy and look well-fed. "It's
just like looking at a little piglet in their pen," the Cuban independent journalist said. "You may look at them and say to yourself, 'They look happy and well fed.' But the whole time, they're just being fattened up for the kill."
The media criticizes the Cuban-Americans they describe us as fanatic individuals who will do anything to bring Castro down. However, they fail to see that this whole story has been about Elian and that the only loser in this charade of political games played by the Clinton administration and
Fidel Castro is Elian.
Over the past 25 years an entire generation of Americans have grown up without knowing very much about Castro. Well-meaning Americans have been led to believe that Elian's father has parental rights over his son. They don't know anything about the way children are raised in Cuba.
When children attend day care in Cuba they are taught to chant slogans such as, "Fidel is our Father." In kindergarten they are asked to put their heads down on their desks and ask God for a piece of candy. When they raise their heads and there is no candy they are asked to put
their heads down again. This time they are to ask Fidel Castro for a piece of candy. Their teacher then proceeds to place a piece of candy on each of their desks.
By seventh grade they are forced to spend 3 days of the week away from their parents in agriculture work camps. At the age of 15 all boys go into mandatory military training and have to spend months away from their families. Article 38 of Cuba's constitution mandates that "the state must
promote the Communist education of the generations." Cuban children are not allowed to choose their future careers unless they get good recommendations from their "mass organizations," for activities that include spying on their own families and friends.
Any student wanting to go to college must by the 10th grade attend special schools in the countryside and live apart from their family, reinforcing the belief that the revolution comes first.
I hope that I am wrong but Elian is not going to get his day in court and we're going to wake up one morning and find that he is in Cuba living in Miramar in the house Fidel Castro has ready for him. He will live in this house for three months or how ever long it takes for him to be
indoctrinated in the communist theology. He will live in this house with his father and family, his grandmothers, his teacher and classmates. Every time Elian says something against the communist doctrine he will be corrected.
Cuban-Americans wanted Elian to have the opportunity his father does not and will never have. His father belongs to Fidel and now we have returned Elian to Fidel Castro. Castro has won once again.
Throughout this whole ordeal the media has focused on the parental rights of the father. However no one mentions Elian's mother. Her name was Elisabeth Broton. She deserves her name and her wishes written about in every newspaper and in every billboard across the nation.
Elisabeth had a dream. She wanted her son to grow up free. It's ironic that the one person whose actions said it all is the one person whose wishes no one talks about. She lost it all- her life, her son and his right to live in a free country.
Elian's freedom slipped quietly into the ocean the day his mother drowned.
Her hopes, her dreams and voice will never be heard they are buried deep in the ocean forever silent, forever lost. |