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A number of news reports suggested
that the Cuban government was claiming victory in the
propaganda war with the Cuban exiles, but it seems more
likely that the exiles lost the battle all by themselves.
Many of their spokespersons made inaccurate, exaggerated
or blatantly false statements on TV, which didn't help
their cause either. I heard respectable representatives
argue, for example, that Cuban parents have no rights
over their children in Cuba, but rather that the children
were the property of the state. While this of course has
a basis in the idiosyncratic Cuban Communist ideology,
the way that it was presented was so distorted as to make
it unrecognizable.
(Note: the next several paragraphs,
in lighter text, did not appear in the "Congress
Monthly" article.)
I was resentful that the congress
people and other Cuban American representatives in Florida
who spoke so often and passionately on TV would alter
the facts so blatantly. The inbred Miami Cuban community
has taken the trauma that they experienced and magnified
it to the point where just uttering the word Castro is
enough to send them into fits of uncontrolled weeping,
a phenomenon I watched on television numerous times. They
act as if this was a community that experienced something
of the magnitude of the holocaust. But this is not what
happened to them, and without slighting the degree of
trauma that they feel, I think I speak for a great many
who believe that they can and should move on with their
lives and that the American government should form a rational
policy toward Cuba based on legitimate American political
and economic interests, rather than on the intense hatred
of a segment of the Cuban American community in South
Florida.
Elian was a symbol for both the
Castro government and the conservative segment of the
Cuban American community. For the conservative Cuban Americans
the little boy represented freedom, specifically their
struggle to leave Cuba as it became increasingly Communist
and non-democratic. Most had their businesses confiscated
and they felt betrayed by the revolutionary government,
which many of them initially supported. For Castro, Elian
Gonzalez represents an opportunity to proudly reassert
the Cuban commitment to Cuban sovereignty. Castro has
always been able to combine Cuban nationalism with loyalty
to his own form of revolutionary government. The issue
was ideal, because most Cubans could easily support the
cause of returning Elian to his father to Cuba whether
or not they were supporters of the regime, whether or
not they were Communist sympathizers, and whether or not
they felt the country was being managed competently.
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Many American rabbis discussed Elian in their sermons.
Most are on the constant lookout for topics that their
congregants will be able to relate to, and that they can
conceptualize with a Jewish religious context. The Elian
episode fit very nicely.
Richard J. Shapiro of Congregation
B'nai B'rith in Santa Barbara, California, argued that
"there are many appropriate and moral ways in which we
can express our disagreement with the government of Fidel
Castro, but holding a 6-year old boy hostage is not one
of them (1)." Shapiro writes that he supported the federal
government decision to forcibly remove the little boy
from the home of the "Miami relatives":
"I have never been more
proud to be an American: proud that President Clinton
and attorney General Reno decided that upholding the
law was more important than playing to the crowds. It
would have been very easy to grant young Elian asylum
here, to grant his extended family custody of a motherless
child and leave it at that. But this is a country of
laws, and this child also has a father. We may detest
the political system of Cuba; we may even believe that
we have a right to work for its overthrow. But that
isn't the same thing as denying a father and son their
god-given right-absent any evidence of abuse or neglect-to
be together. Juan Miguel Gonzalez has a right to raise
his son, and if that means doing so in Cuba, as much
as I might believe they would both be better off herein
the United States, then so be it. I am proud that once
again we can be seen in the eyes of the world as a nation
of laws, not of political expediency."
An interesting aspect of the lengthy
debate on Elian was the comparison that was all too frequently
made between Cuban migrants to the U.S. and holocaust
refugees. Both politicians and commentators made this
comparison, directly or indirectly, a comparison that
is of course ridiculous. It is not necessary to add which
side was using this polemical tool. New York Mayor Rudolph
Guiliani stated that the federal troops that took Elian
from his relatives' Miami home were "storm troopers".
Senator Bob Smith of New Hampshire called the Wye Plantation
in eastern Maryland--where Elian stayed with his father-a
"concentration camp". One of Smith's aides later said
that the Senator had meant to say "re-education camp"
rather than "concentration camp." (2)
(continued
on page four)
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