Elian Gonzales Revisited
Joe Gandelman
Ever wonder what happened to Elian Gonzales, the focus of a bitter binational custody fight during the Clinton years?
According to the Orlando Sun-Sentinel, the boy, now 11, is living a(supposedly) normal life in Cuba:
CáRDENAS, Cuba · Elián González says he wants to be a gymnast when he grows up. But his grandfather, Juan González Sr., knows Elián's future career choices are as variable as any normal preteen's and could change next month.
"I want him to be a good man, to do good deeds, not do anything he will regret. Everything else is all right," he said, sitting in his home in the coastal town of Cárdenas under a large photograph of a very young Elián.
At age 11, the boy whose bitter custody battle stands as a symbol of the Cold War conflict between Cuban-Americans and Cuba has been saddled with high expectations.
But, as you'll see, life has a way of unwinding turbulence. Conflict — and the height of fame — can't last forever.
Five years ago this month, armed federal agents stormed into the home of Elián's Miami relatives and scooped him up in a lightning-fast, predawn raid that crushed the hopes of Cuban-American exiles. Within hours Elián was reunited with his father, Juan Miguel González. Two months later, after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal from the boy's Miami relatives to keep him in the United States, Elián and his father boarded a chartered Learjet and returned to Cuba.
Today, Elián and his family live in a roomy blue home with red trim on Cárdenas' main street, 80 miles east of Havana. It has a tidy, fenced front yard, a porch swing and a menagerie of pets, including parakeets, fish, dogs and a rabbit.
The town's people have embraced Elián as a local celebrity. But there are few signs of the boy's moment in the international spotlight, when he famously survived a shipwreck at age 5 and floated across the Florida Straits for two days in an inner tube after his mother and 10 others drowned.
"Sometimes it seems like a dream, something that should not have happened," González Sr. said, recalling the shipwreck and the ensuing battle over custody against his siblings in Miami. "It's not easy for us to forget it; neither is it for the [Cuban] people. I think despite people's political positions, they identified with our situation."
Today, Elián is a model student, favoring math and Spanish classes. He has been chosen leader of his sixth-grade class and will begin middle school this fall.
And, the paper says, life goes on for the boy. The paper interviews various associates and relatives who have nice words about him and take an interest in him — as does Fidel Castro:
And we're sooooooooo sure that Fidel lies awake thinking about what's best for the boy...that he's not with those relatives in Miami. Speaking of which:Indeed, Castro takes a special interest in his schooling. Elián's father, who was elected to Cuba's National Assembly in 2003, tries to see Castro whenever the family is in Havana. González is often seen in the front row of government-organized rallies, sometimes accompanied by a bored-looking Elián.
"We almost always talk [with Castro] about the family," González Sr., a retired police officer, said. "How [Elián's] studies are going, sports. He [Castro] is always interested in how Elián is doing in school."
González Sr. said he would like to repair the rift, but wants his siblings in Miami to "understand that what they did had no sense.""They need to recognize they did a great harm to the whole family," González Sr. said. "If they don't, that will be their sentence."
A sentence...because, of course... in Cuba Elian will be free.
I thought then and I think now that Juan Manuel Gonzalez was right to insist on taking his son home to Cuba, or anywhere else where he wished to live, and that the Clinton administration was right in granting his father's right to do just that. He could have chosen American exile. He could have chosen just about any Spanish-speaking country. He chose his own home in Cuba. Communism or no communism. That was his right.
Remember. I judge every situation strictly on its own merits. Politics or no politics. Ideology or no ideology.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
If the Miami mafia were halfway sincere in their alleged hatred of the Cuban system, they would have pooled their resources and brought it down years ago. Instead, they pursue symbolic issues like Elian that have no more real importance than the Schiavo nonsense did.
You guys might be interested in this blog post about Elian Gonzalez and, well, the lying Clinton administration: (The whole thing is a quote till the last line.)
"One of the most controversial issues (in the Elian case - Ed.) has received almost no follow-up investigative reporting by the press: namely, that the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) had a memo written before Elian was seized, indicating the INS was weighing political asylum for Elian days before the feds seized him."
The press refused to follow up on something that would have actually helped Elian and agreed in principle with the exile community?
But wait, there's more:
"Elian was returned to the Castro government and his father in Cuba. The father was depicted as a faithful communist who wanted Elian back with him. That line was accepted by the Clinton Administration. But the memo, authored by INS attorney Rebeca Sanchez-Roig, stated that Elian's father may have made his "own attempts to depart Cuba," and had made two phone calls "from a pay phone in Cuba" to let his family in Miami know that Elian was coming. In addition, the memo says that "the Cuban government installed what somebody described as a speaker phone" in the father's home in Cuba so that Cuban government agents could coach him on what to say."
Just like we've been saying all along, a father only wants what's best for his child.
"The memo said if coercion could be shown against the father then the INS could accept the child for entry into the U.S. Then-INS chief Doris Meissner ordered Sanchez-Roig to destroy the memo. The raid followed within days."
So, Elian gets sent back to the hellhole, Clinton and Reno wash their hands of a politically unsavory situation by most assuredly ordering an underling to see to it that no evidence of anything contrary to their stance is forthcoming, and fidel pats himself on the back.
[...]
"This is not the first time that news about the memo has surfaced. Christopher Caldwell, senior editor for The Weekly Standard, wrote an article, "The Elian Cover-up" back in 2002, citing evidence that INS chief Doris Meissner knew that Elian's father was acting under duress and didn't want his child returned to communism."
"Actually, the memo's existence was known at the time that Elian was in the U.S. If its contents had been exposed then, the reporting would have had a significant impact. I was told about it by an individual in Ft. Lauderdale who said he could not "get anyone at the Miami Herald interested in covering this." Sanchez-Roig didn't speak to the press, but surely some intrepid reporting could've led to uncovering and publicizing the truth about the real wishes of Elian's father. Elian could be living and prospering in freedom today if the press had done its job."
I never hated the Clintons until I read this.
And then stage an invasion, predicated upon promises of U.S. support that's withdrawn at the last minute?
Latin American dictatorships are notoriously unstable. Castro is not well-liked by his own people. So why has he remained in power for 45 years? And why is it that the Miami mafia, with all the money it makes from smuggling drugs and sex slaves, money laundering, and even legitimate businesses, hasn't been able to arm and support an insurgency in Cuba? And why do they prefer the kidnapping of 5-year-old children to insurrection?
The reason is, of course, two-fold: first, they're pussies; and second, they profit by the status quo, as many of them maintain all sorts of illegal business ties to Cuba.
Like I said, if they were sincere they could have found a way to bring Castro down in the 45+ years he's been in power.
There was a glorious day the miami Cubans formed their own guerilla army, Brigada 2506.
And there was an equallly inglorious day when the United States government, then under control of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, sold them out while they were right on the battlefield on the shores of Cuba, fighting a battle that Eisenhower's and Kennedy's government had recruited, armed and paid them to wage, for purposes of restoring Cuba to non-communist rule.
I don't have to be a Val Prieto to research this stuff and tell what I have learned about it, and I'm with him and the Miami Cubans on this question, even if he hates my guts for insulting all the Cuban women, then refusing to recant.
Because Kennedy sold these guys out, Cuba has slept the sleep of the dead under their communist dictatorship, which will probably last for a while even after Castro croaks.
All because a bull-shit filled US president and his little brother Robert lost their nerve in the middle of a fight they had agreed to help provoke, and sent their hired soldiers to imprisonment and death.
All told, it was one of the most squalid events in the history of the United States.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Get serious, dude.
What kidnapping? The mother gave her life trying to get her son to freedom. The father was well aware he was going to Florida and may have even attempted to escape a couple times himself. The government had information he was under duress, but they covered it up.
A better question would be: What is your problem with Cubans?
If Kennedy and his ubiquitous brother Bobby had not sold out the Cubans at the Bay of Pigs, Castro would have been dead for 43 years. Yada, yada, yada, indeed. Fact is, I just can't get it out of my mind when a commander in chief coommits treachery against the lives and freedom of men whom he sent out into battle.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
The child was not kidnapped. The mother had custody AND the father knew the child was coming to the US.
Sure--and the fact that the rather successful Korean-American community hasn't found a way to take down the Kim Dynasty in NK is a sign that they don't really mind seeing millions of their cousins starved and enslaved.
It takes real effort to sound as inane as you do, Bennett--kudos on the accomplishment.
Wrong and wrong. The custody was shared, and there is no evidence that the father knew of her plan or would have approved had he known. He's a member of the Cuban National Assembly and a commie believer.
We don't take people's children away from them because we don't approve of their politics.
And as to the failure of the Miami mafia to do anything about Castro, the facts speak for themselves. There have been dozens of uprisings and revolutions all around Cuba in these 45 years, but nothing inside that pathetic little Commie paradise. I wouldn't compare it to Korea owing to the presence of a close and supportive ally in China - that would be a truly inane comparison.
Elian wasn't beaten or raped, only kidnapped and exploited.
It is obscene to attack an oppressed people because you think they haven't risen up--all because you want to pout over Elian and your own take on "family values."
Good grief, yes, Mr. Bennett is quite talented.
Face it, the status quo benefits the Miami mafia. They're not only able to engage in all sorts of illegal smuggling thanks to their Cuban connections, they get great welfare from the American taxpayers as well.
"Family values" isn't just any empty phrase to all of us, Dean. In my book, any time a kidnapped child is returned to his father it's a good thing.
I take it you don't have children yourself.
You keep repeating what seem to be some pretty slanderous phrases. If you would be so kind as to provide links to back them up, you might appear far less churlish. I am more than willing to concede the possibility that you know what you're talking about; but frankly, your pronouncements have been so outrageous that they make you seem a bit shy of credible.
I would be happy to be educated, and to apologize publicly if you can persuade me that "Miami mafia" is anything but a vile and possibly racist slur used to avoid a real discussion. But so far, you have simply asserted it as fact. I am disinclined to accept your authority on this matter.