Jack Thompson . NewsMax.com.
Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2000
He was a refugee from Fidel Castro's Cuba, just an ordinary member of
Miami's large exile community, yet he took on the awesome power of the United
States government and for months fought it to a standstill.
When George Bush takes the oath of office as President of the United States
on January 20th, he can thank Lazaro Gonzalez – the man who put him there.
NewsMax.com has named Uncle Lazaro as its Hero of the Year 2000.
Each year the editors of NewsMax.com selects a person as the Hero of the
Year. The Hero of the Year is a person who makes great sacrifice and by their
actions changes the course of history.
Admittedly, Uncle Lazaro is an unusual hero.
Life changed abuptly for this Miami resident and his obscurity ended on
Thanksgiving day 1999.
On that day Donato Dalrymple plucked six-year old Elian Gonzalez from the
sun-drenched waters of the Florida Straits. The boy had miraculously survived
floating on an inner tube after the drowning deaths of his mother, Elizabeth,
and other Cubans fleeing Castro's Cuba.
Lazaro Gonzalez, the boy's uncle, took the boy into his home and, as was
later shown, gave him the shelter Elian's father, still in Cuba, had asked him
to provide his son.
Lazaro, his wife, and their daughter Marisleysis also gave the boy the love
he needed desperately. They made every effort to give him a real home filled
with the caring and warmth the motherless youngster craved.
But politics reared its ugly head, and Lazaro soon found himself in the
center of an international dispute.
Had Elian's father come to Miami to take custody of his son -- as any normal
father would have done -- Uncle Lazaro would have given the child over.
But after committing his son to Lazaro's care, and after waiting for months
before he decided to come here to secure his son, Juan Gonzalez, urged on by
Castro, suddenly demanded that his son be returned to him.
Castro himself got into the act and put pressure on the Clinton
administration to send the boy back to Cuba.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) which originally allowed
Elian asylum in the US, sided with Juan Gonzalez and, backed by Attorney General
Janet Reno, began a campaign to take Elian from his Miami relatives and send him
home to communist Cuba.
With the Clinton administration's backing, Juan Gonzalez arrived in the
United States. Suddenly, the pro-Castro administration went all out to help him
gain custody of the boy. The Clinton administration talked of "parental
rights," somehow ignoring the facts that citizens in Cuba, including
parents, have no rights.
Throughout it all, Lazaro Gonzalez faced the mounting pressure from both the
Clinton-Gore administration and its allies in the media with courage and
tenacity.
Surely it was not an easy thing to do.
A recent immigrant to this country, Uncle Lazaro barely spoke English. He
had little money. He was not politically savvy. He didn't have backers in the
media. Even some in the Cuban-American leadership wanted Elian returned.
But Lazaro stood firm. He said no.
He understood that he was an American citizen -- entitled to all the rights
our forefathers said he was.
For his pains, Lazaro was denounced by his government, by Castro, and by the
US media, but he steadfastly refused to cave in and allow Elian to be sent back
into the captivity from which his mother had given her life to free him.
He never flinched, even when the full power of the US government was turned
against him.
Finally that power arrived on April 22, Easter weekend, in the person of
armed federal thugs who, without warning, crashed into his Little Havana home in
Miami at dawn and seized Elian at gun point. This lawless act, which was
compounded by a brazen beating of two NBC cameramen, was applauded by the media
establishment.
Even then Lazaro remained defiant, taking the fight against the might of the
U.S. government to the Courts until he had exhausted all legal remedies.
But Lazaro Gonzalez was not alone.
His courage and determination won the enthusiastic support of the majority
of Miami's huge Cuban exile community, and millions of other Americans who were
not fooled by the pro-Castro media.
And when Elian was finally sent back to Castro's prison-like island,
Lazaro's fellow Cuban exiles, inspired by his example, his courage and his
refusal to bend before the INS, the Justice Department and the Clinton-Gore
administration, swore they would retaliate.
In the months after the June day when Elian was spirited off to Cuba, their
rage simmered beneath the surface, and, on November 7th, they took their anger
at the Clinton-Gore administration to the polls. There they provided the votes
that put George Bush over the top in Florida and gave him the presidency of the
United States.
No one doubts that had the raid not taken place, Miami-Dade county would
have swung decisively behind Al Gore. As the world knows, it didn't.
But one man made a stand. One man made a difference. His name is Lazaro
Gonzalez.
It is true that every hero has a flaw. If Uncle Lazaro has one it is that he
is loyal and trusting. Clearly, some members of the Miami community gave him bad
legal and political advice.
One Miami "shark" was Lazaro's attorney, Kendall Coffey, the
former U.S. Attorney for Miami and a one-time close associate of Janet Reno.
Some chalked up Coffey's every misstep as incompetence. Others, including
NewsMax.com, questioned how Coffey, supposedly acting in Elian's interests,
could have recklessly agreed with Janet Reno's Justice Dept. when he consented
to an expedited legal appeals process. This simply expedited Elian's return to
Cuba. Had he not agreed to such an expedited process, Elian could still be free
today.
Coffey's true intentions were made apparent after Election Day when the Gore
recount team tapped Coffey to head their Fla. legal team.
In many ways, Uncle Lazaro fits the hero paradigm -- one person who
manifests incredible courage and willingly making extraordinary sacrifices. Like
the greatest of heroes, however, this hero was betrayed by his closest advisors
-- Judas, if you will.
Still, all heros are optimists. They believe that in the final chapter and
the closing scene, the good guys always win, the cavalry comes charging over the
hill. We believe that too. We believe America will be better and stronger
because of Lazaro's heroism.
We also believe that both Elian and Cuba someday will be free. For sure,
Lazaro will have played a role in that process as well.
Lazaro Gonzalez, an American hero.
Jack Thompson, a Miami attorney, covered the Elian story for
NewsMax.com. | 