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When a boy is a political football, he gets kicked. Take it from me, says Salman Rushdie, some want to use six-year-old Elian as a toy, not a child

By Salman Rushdie

GLOBE AND MAIL Friday, April 7, 2000

When the world's imagination engages with a human tragedy as poignant as that of Elian Gonzalez, the six-year-old refugee boy who survived a shipwreck only to sink deep into the political mire of Cuban-American Miami, it instinctively seeks to enter into the hearts and minds of each of the characters in the drama.

Any parent can grasp something of what Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, has been going through back in Elian's hometown of Cardenas -- the pain of losing his firstborn son, a child who arrived only after seven miscarriages; next, the joy of learning that Elian had improbably survived, floating toward Florida on a rubber ring; and then, the seismic shock of being told by a gang of estranged relatives and total strangers that they were resolved to stand between him and his child.

Perhaps we can understand Elian's inside-out state of mind a little, too.

After all, this is a boy who watched his mother slip into the dark ocean and die. For a long time after that, his father wasn't by his side. So if Elian now clutches at the hands of those who have been with him in Miami, if he holds on to them for dear life the way he clung to that rubber ring, who can blame him? If he has constructed a kind of provisional happiness in his new Florida backyard, we should understand that as a psychological survival mechanism, not as a permanent replacement for his father's love.

And if politicians play politics with a small boy's life, nobody likes it much, but nobody's very surprised, either. U.S. Vice-President Al Gore weighs in with a poorly thought-through scheme to turn Elian and his father into U.S. residents (a scheme which Juan Miguel Gonzalez instantly rejects), and we know that he's trying -- and almost certainly failing -- to win a few Cuban Republican votes. The mayor of Miami-Dade County, Alex Penelas, irresponsibly declares that his police force will not execute any order to hand Elian back to his father, and we know that he's playing to his particular gallery, too. Cuban President Fidel Castro comes up with a succession of grandstand plays, turning Elian simultaneously into a symbol of national pride and the folly of emigration to the United States, and this, too, comes as no surprise.

Elian Gonzalez has become a political football and -- take the word of someone who knows what that's like -- the first consequence of becoming a football is that you cease to be thought of as a living, feeling human being. A football is inanimate, and its purpose is to be kicked around. So you become what Elian has become in the mouths of most of those arguing over him: useful, but essentially a thing.

You become the proof of the addiction of the United States to litigation, or of the pride and political muscle of a locally powerful immigrant community.

You become the location of a battle between mob rule and the rule of law, between rabid anti-Communism and Third World anti-imperialism.

You are described and redescribed, sloganized and falsified, until, for the howling combatants, you almost cease to exist.

You become a sort of myth, an empty vessel into which the world can pour its prejudices, its poison and its hate.

All of the foregoing is more or less comprehensible. But what's going on in the minds of Elian's Miami relatives -- that's a tough one. This poor boy's flesh-and-blood family has elected to place its own hard-line ideological considerations over his obvious and urgent need for his father, which looks, to most of us on the outside, like an ugly, unnatural choice.

There is strong evidence that Juan Miguel Gonzalez is a loving father; so when the Miami relatives' lawyers assault his good character, it sounds like a cheap shot. And while there is also evidence that Juan Miguel is being used by Castro for political ends, most of us would say, so what? Even if Senor Gonzalez is a full-fledged Red of the sort most hated by the Florida Cuban community, this does not override the rightness of returning his son to his care, and to argue that it does is, well, inhuman. When the Miami relatives hint that Elian will be "brainwashed" if he goes home, it only makes us think that they are even more blinkered than the ideologues they seek to condemn.

In a recent article Gabriel Garcia Marquez deplored "the harm being done to Elian Gonzalez's mental health by the cultural uprooting to which he is being subjected." This routinely anti-U.S. gibe is surely wide of the mark. President Bill Clinton, Attorney General Janet Reno and the U.S. federal courts have taken a sensible line throughout the protracted crisis, and American public opinion has generally backed their view that Elian's place is with his dad. This compares very favorably with, say, the actions of the

German authorities, who have in a number of notorious recent cases refused to return children to non-German parents living abroad.

Plainly, the Elian story is not an American but a Cuban tragedy; and "cultural uprooting" is at its heart, but not in the sense that Garcia Marquez meant. It is the Miami Cuban community that has evidently been harmed by being uprooted from its island in the sun. What began as a flight from bigotry has bred dreadful bigotries of its own. What began as a flight from tyranny has ended, or so it now seems, in a flight not only from reason, but from simple humanity, too.

Salman Rushdie's latest novel is The Ground Beneath Her Feet. His column, distributed by New York Times Special Features, appears monthly in The Globe and Mail.

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In the Mirror of Elián

by Warren Farrell, Ph.D.*

The twenty-first century will begin with a father and child reunion: the father of Elián González' reunion with his child, Elián.

Just as the last quarter of the twentieth century was marked by women's struggle for equal opportunity in the workplace, more than the first quarter of the twenty-first century will be marked by men's struggle for equal opportunity in the homeplace. By millions of dads trying to be reunited with their Eliáns.

Our response to the Elián González case tells us a little about how far we have to go. The moment the news broke of the mother drowning and the U.S. relatives taking over, the first responses reflected suspicion of the dad:

"Maybe Elián should be with the relatives, maybe the mom was bringing him to a better country, and helping him escape a dad who was perhaps abusive, incompetent and did not love the child." That is, we placed the father under suspicion until proven innocent.

So the INS (Immigration & Naturalization Service) did investigate the dad, although he had already been investigated and awarded legal custody in Cuba (only to have it undermined by a lack of enforcement).1 When all indicators pointed to a loving dad, the prevailing view was still one of the case being a struggle between a mother who wanted a better life for her child in America and sacrificed her life to make that happen, and a dad who wants his child back. When the mother died, the American relatives fought to keep Elián as a way of fulfilling the mother's wishes, even honoring her sacrifice.

But if we substitute dad for mom, let's look at whether our view would be different. In real life, it was the mom and her boyfriend who took Elián. Had it been dad and his girlfriend, would we be focusing on the dad sacrificing his life to create a better one for the child, or, suddenly, would our binoculars be focusing on the fact that it was a man and his girlfriend who unilaterally took the child from a mother who had won legal custody? Would the media not be portraying this man and his girlfriend as "running off"together?

Had the roles been reversed, and a man and his girlfriend had run off together, snatching a child away from a mother who had custody, wouldn't we call this kidnapping? Would the U.S. cousins and uncles who had never before seen Elián be seen as potential substitute parents, or as co-conspirators in the kidnapping? If the U.S. didn't enforce the INS 's ruling to return the child, would the U.S. itself be seen as a co-conspirator? Would not a father's co-conspiracy with relatives be seen as indications of his manipulativeness, and his ability to persuade his girlfriend to join in at the risk of her life reinforce the image of his manipulativeness, even his Svengali-like nature?

Had the dad run off with --or kidnapped-- the child, would our focus have been on the dad risking his life, or the dad risking the child's life? Would the issue be the dad's sacrifice or child endangerment?

In real life, the dad was in the headlines for four and a half months, begging for the return of his son. If a mom were in the headlines for four and a half months, begging for the return of her son, would we know the mom's name? I think so. Well, did you, the reader, learn the dad's name in the four and a half months prior to his trip to Washington to pick up his son in April of 2000? No? Nor did most Americans.

Had it been the mom who was left in Cuba crying for her son, the image of her crying would be in our homes; her voice would create compassion in our hearts, and thus her name would be on our tongues. When the name of someone whose pleas surround us nevertheless remains invisible, it's a sign of a deep bias, a bias that prevents the dad from being heard as a person even when he does speak.² It symbolizes an instinct that creates suspicion of the dad where there would have been empathy for the mom. And in fact, our first response was suspicion of the dad.

I suspect that had it been the dad and girlfriend who had kidnapped Elián, our response to someone who said Elián might have a better life with his American relatives would be, "That's beside the point: the law cannot give permission for one parent to kidnap a child, overrule the law, ignore the parent with custody, and flee to another country. That should be grounds only for losing the right to the child. In any case, one parent cannot be allowed to unilaterally determine what is right for the child--especially when it involves depriving a six year old of the other parent. "

Had the mom and her boyfriend been seen as kidnappers, and the relatives as co-conspirators, Elián would have been returned to his dad immediately, not five months later -- after an argument could be made that the child should not be disturbed from his stable Miami environment. Had it been a mom waiting, feminists, Americans and Cubans would have been of one mind.

If a son was being deprived of his mom, pictures of never-before-seen relatives parading the son around Disneyland would have been seen as child abuse, not child amusement. The primary suspicion would not have been of the father, but the relatives. Thus it would not have taken over two months to discover that four of Elián's caretakers had recent histories of drunk driving, grand theft, and/or forgery: Lazaro and brother Delfin each had two convictions of driving under the influence, and both had their license revoked or suspended in 1997 and previously, each for two or three years;

Jose Cid, another relative, stopped visiting when he started his 13 year jail sentence for grand theft, forgery and violating probation. And his twin brother, Luis, visits Elián even as he is on trial for robbery.³ All of these relatives have one thing in common: they support Elián being kept from his dad. Lazaro's brother, who wants Elián's reunion with his dad, is barred from seeing Elián.

In brief, if a child were being deprived of mom, our empathetic minds would have opened the path to an immediate "mother and child reunion"; instead, when a child was being deprived of dad, suspicious minds investigated the dad with custody before the relatives with prison sentences, inviting roadblocks to a father and child reunion. In the mirror of Elián, we see ourselves.

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*Warren Farrell, Ph.D. is currently completing Father and Child Reunion. He is also the author of Why Men Are The Way They Are; Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say; and The Myth of Male Power. He resides in Encinitas (San Diego), California, or, virtually, at www.warrenfarrell.com. His ear can be reached at 760 753 5000.

References:

1. Richard Serrano and Mike Clary, "Elián's Father Arrives, Says He Feared for Son," The Los Angeles Times, April 7, 2000, p. A1 and A18.

2. The father's name is Juan Miguel González.

3. Peter T. Kilborn, "A Bumpy Path for Miami Kin of Cuban Boy," The New York Times, February 9, 2000, pp. A1 and A13.

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Quotable Quotes from Janet Reno, the US Attorney General

From: "American Fathers Coalition"
Subject: ABCNEWS: Nightline: Elian Town Meeting, April 7, 2000 (Transcript) Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2000 10:28:29 -0400

http://www.abcnews.go.com/onair/nightline/transcripts/nl000407_trans.html

ABC NEWS Nightline     Friday, April 7, 2000

(This is an unedited, uncorrected transcript.)

Prepared by Burrelle’s Information Services, which takes sole responsibility for accuracy of transcription

Some wonderful quotes from

JANET RENO, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY GENERAL

"I do not agree in any shred of a way with the political beliefs of the government of Cuba. But a father should not be punished for his political beliefs, and I think that the law provides in this instance that the father, who has a special bond with that child, should be reunited with him."
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