This editorial is reprinted with permission from yesterday's Wall Street Journal: Published Friday, May 26, 2000, in the Miami Herald
The news that Elián González will be moving from the secluded Wye Plantation to an estate in a tony Washington, D.C., neighborhood came wrapped in the soothing words of Joan Brown Campbell of the National Council of Churches. She told the AP that Elián merely needed a change
of scenery and his family was ``just ready to do something different.'' Uh-huh. But perhaps the idea for the transfer came from the Cuban diplomats monitoring Elián, who would like easier access to him.
Because Cuba has no diplomatic relations with the United States (at least not at the moment), employees of its Interests Section office must get permission from the State Department to travel more than 25 miles from Washington. Wye Plantation is 70 miles away, making it inconvenient to drop in
on Elián.
It also means that their comings and goings are on file and can be obtained by congressional oversight committees curious about, for example, a Cuban newspaper publishing photos of Elián sporting a Communist Pioneer uniform on American soil. The day we reported on Elián's new
political duds last week, the State Department hauled Cuban diplomats in to chide them for publishing the photos. We suspect they were mainly upset at the Cubans for so publicly giving away the game of Elián 's psychological re-programming back into Castroism.
In a separate interview with The Miami Herald, Ms. Campbell acknowledged that the Castro regime's desires were a factor in the move. She said the restrictions were ``very frustrating'' for the Cubans since ``they have to ask permission every time they go.''
So Elián will move into a D.C. estate owned by Youth for Understanding, an international exchange program. There's room for Elián, his family, his Young Pioneer school chums and their parents. The Cuban doctor who had accompanied them has gone home, having had prescription drugs
she was carrying into the country seized by U.S. Customs agents, who must have missed the directive to give the Cuban government every benefit.
The Cuban Interests Section, whose diplomats recently beat up anti-Castro protesters on the public street outside their building, is just around the corner. A federal appeals court is nearing a decision on the asylum application that Elián filed last December when he was in Miami.
From the start, the Elián episode has been filled with mysteries and ambiguities. A total of 58 U.S. marshals have been watching one 6-year-old boy at the Wye Plantation. His security and motorcade length surpass that of Clinton Cabinet members. We've said before that the mystery of why
the Clinton White House invested so much political capital in placating a communist fossil like Fidel will occupy historians for some time.
For now, all that's clear is that the Cubans and the organization that speaks in the name of America's Protestant churches are making good on their efforts to prove that Elián's mother wasted her life getting him here. If she'd asked, Fidel and Janet Reno would have told her that before
she set out to sea.
©2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Copyright 2000 Miami Herald |