America’s Sweetheart
by Shelton Hull
ELIAN GONZALEZ AND THE IGNOMINY OF CUBAN POLICY
A press release from the United Nations General Assembly, dated November 9,
1999, details two recent developments in US-Cuban relations(1). First of
all, the Gen. Assembly demonstrated its traditional disdain for the
US-imposed economic embargo on Cuba, in place since 1962. They reaffirmed
their opposition by voting 155-2 to adopt resolution 54/21, which “…urges
all states that applied laws and measures of an extraterritorial nature that
affected the sovereignty of states and freedom of trade and navigation to
repeal or invalidate them as soon as possible.”
The tally breaks up in a rather interesting way: 8 abstentions, from such
global superpowers as Morocco, Nicaragua, Estonia, Latvia, Uzbekistan,
Senegal and the Federated States of Micronesia. Only the US and Israel voted
nay on the resolution, which is more than enough to negate the opinions of
every other country in the world. Cuba’s UN representative introduced the
text into the record, saying “…that despite seven previous resolutions in
the same vein, the US has continued to engage in pressures and maneuvers
intended to thwart the will of the Assembly….The United States’ objective
since 1959 had been to destroy Cuba. That was pure and simple genocide. For
four decades, the blockade has caused illnesses, death, pain and suffering
to millions of Cubans. The guilty parties should be punished in compliance
with the convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide.” That’s an example of strong, unequivocal language. One may doubt
that all those other countries want the instigators of this policy hauled
before some masked tribunal, seeing as how time has already exacted revenge
on the guiltiest parties, most notably JFK.
When conservatives speak of the UN as an oppressive force trying to neuter
our virile democracy, this is what they mean. Representatives of 32
countries all spoke for 54/21 except us, including Japan (Nippon), Canada,
China, Russia, Norway, Indonesia and Mexico. Finland’s rep, speaking on
behalf of the entire European Union, said they’d love to trade with Cuba,
but our laws make that impossible. That same day, Cuba announced the filing
of a $100 billion-dollar lawsuit against the United States for damages
rendered by our bully tactics. These events went unmentioned on TV,
relegated in print to the wire service wasteland, a needle in the Internet
haystack. However, within three weeks the country became obsessed with a
photogenic young tot who cheated death on the high seas, in the process
becoming a posterboy for the immediate reevaluation of US-Cuban policy. His
name is Elian Gonzalez.
Six year-old Elian Gonzalez boarded a boat with his mother and her
boyfriend under circumstances that remain convoluted two months after the
fact. That’s because only the child survived; his mom and her boyfriend
drowned when the boat capsized just off the southern coast of Florida. He
was rescued by the Coast Guard (who were out looking for Haitians to send
back home), and taken to his mother’s relatives in Miami.
America was instantly captivated by the child’s sad tale, his boyish
charisma. He was like Ricky Martin, except he didn’t piss us off by trying
to sing all the time. He was showered with gifts: a trip to Disneyland, a
puppy from a congressman, and the opportunity to see his face plastered
across newspapers, magazines and TV screens for months. He was given cool
stuff and encouraged to play with it while strangers took pictures of him.
Wonderful, except that Elian has a father and two sets of grandparents in
Cuba, who want him returned there, as does the INS, which ruled in December
that EG must be sent back. Well, that’s just not going to happen. His return
was postponed by a congressional subpoena, and talk began to circulate that
EG might be declared an American citizen, even though both parents are Cuban
and he was not born in America. Elian was far too valuable as PR tool to
permit his return to what remains of his immediate family, and the law must
reflect our anti-Communist convictions. And so they have, from the 1961 Bay
of Pigs invasion to the ‘62 blockade, to the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act which
effectively grants citizenship to any Cuban who finds himself upon our
shores.
It’s a simple premise: 38 years of economic sanctions have lowered the
general conditions in Cuba to the point that many residents decide to flee.
Never mind that America is the main source of their problems; they quickly
assimilate into the anti-Castro clique in Miami and Washington, insisting
that Fidel’s ouster is the key to a Cuban ideal. The unofficial consensus
among my contacts is that our economic warfare will not cease until Castro
is deceased. That won’t be more than five years or so, and the resultant
power vacuum, soon filled by American influence, will likely spell the end
of communism in Cuba. Until then, however, it’s well worth the lives of
Cuban people to make Castro’s revolution look like a failure. So imagine our
shock when ABC News reported on January 13 that America’s Sweetheart, Elian
Gonzalez, had said something in Spanish that observers translated as “I want
to go back to Cuba!” That was very inconvenient, given his pending
congressional testimony, and efforts were soon made to alter the boy’s
values in advance of his DC debut.
The Florida Times-Union ran an unsigned article by the Knight-Tribune news
service on Jan. 20 that made it very clear what young master Elian is
learning in his first month at Little Havana’s Lincoln-Marti school.
Demetrio Perez is owner of the school and about a dozen others in the area.
His 315-page Citizens Training Handbook: Discipline, Moral, Civism, Urbanity
is the “main textbook…from kindergarten through 12th grade,” according to
the anonymous author, who really should step forward and take credit for
this. I read it with shock and horror, but such a piece brings squeals of
approval from the right, and it works great as political satire. L-M’s
curriculum is briefly encapsulated in the story’s lead sentence: “He lives
in a Christian society and should support prayer in public and private
schools. He should oppose abortion, homosexuality and racism. He should love
the American flag and realize that the influence of the United States in the
world has been beneficial to all.” Unless you live in Cuba, but that goes
unsaid.
I’d really like to read Mr. Perez’s book, especially the parts dealing with
US-Cuban relations, because nobody’s been able to explain the American
position in a comprehensible way since JFK died. The embargo was supposed to
trigger discontent with the Cuban people, who were expected to believe that
Castro was the bastard we said he was. That didn’t work, despite our best
efforts to accelerate his ouster, from providing training and intelligence
to potential insurgents to numerous Wile E. Coyotesque assassination
attempts, which officially never occurred. Instead of inciting his
displacement, our actions began to paint Fidel in a sympathetic light, and
any failures on his part could be dismissed as the consequence of resisting
the wrath of American power.
The last 38 years have been a continuous reductio ad absurdam of our bully
pulpit pretensions. So why continue? Because the Cuban people have to be
punished for failing to prove that they deserve American food and medicine.
Elian’s studies included a lesson on the teachings of Martin Luther King:
“‘Dr. King teaches people to love, not to hate,’ a picture caption said.
‘We want the children to love as long as they understand they must love the
liberty in this country, and not a Communist system,’ Perez says.
Lovely. Perez has a clear and decisive vision for his charter school and
its most famous pupil: “We want Elian to know that in this country, we in no
way support Cuba or people in Cuba who believe in that system.” Welcome news
for Castro’s apostates.
(1) www.globalpolicy.org/security/sanction/cuba/cuba9.htm. This site also
contains detailed information on Cuban policy dating back to the 1996
Helms-Burton act.
(2) “A different type of education for Elian: Private school teaches
specific values, politics.” Florida Times-Union, Jan. 20, 2000, p. A-1 &
A-8.
