Deconstructing Elian: A Likely Lad
SOCGRAD MINI-LECTURES
by
Most scholars on the Right and Left despise postmodern approaches to the
knowledge process...and they have reason. On the Left and Right is concern for standards
of right and wrong...on the Right and the Left are concerns with accurate timely knowledge
and the power to control that goes with such knowledge.
Yet there is an affirmative postmodern analytic method which serves the knowledge
process...I want to use it to help sort out the controversies involved in events involving
Elian Gonzales...and I want to help fashion a research methodology in the social sciences
not captive to contesting versions of truth and ethical behavior.
The Elian Gonzales affair has been sad...everyone involved comes out looking bad except
the boy himself...seems a likely lad. With luck, he'll grow up a good, cheerful and
thoughtful man...in spite of the obstacles he faces and will face the next few years.
Cuba isn't that bad for kids...might be better than growing up in Miami...but then one can
never tell. The data on child development since the revolution are impressive...class
differences in height and health almost eliminated; free education, free health care, job
training and job placement in a land with low crime rates and ice cream on soft summer
nights...
Little Cuba in Miami might not be too bad for the lad either...a fairly coherent
community; lots of concern for his welfare by both the Miami Branch of the Gonzales family
and lots of attention from teachers, friends and family.
I hope the poor child grows up without too much more trauma...losing a mother was bad
enough; losing one's soul in the selfish struggle between people he doesn't know and who
have different agenda from his welfare would be still more tragedy.
So...what are the agenda hostile to Elian's well being?
The Miami Community and the Castro Regime, of course, are central to this
mini-drama...Elian becomes both a test and an icon for the vast differences between those
who left Cuba and those who govern it.
Those who left Cuba and who are central to the politics of Little Cuba are the solid
middle class who fit well into the political economy of Cuba before the Revolution...they
lost a lot when Cuba became a socialist state.
For many of those who left immediately after the revolution, life had been good and the
regime ruined that life...large ranches were nationalized; mining and monopolies were
taken over...Army officers and civilians connected to Batista fled for their lives...those
who stayed and carried on as before found themselves in unlikely prisons with few
amenities.
Those who left in the 80's and 90's had good reason to try to get to Florida as
well...some, the lumpen-proletariat, found that street hustling was not easy in
Havana...and promising in Miami. Those who opposed Soviet influence and the exclusionary
politics of the Socialist regime found life hard in a land where life was already hard.
Some ran toward a better version of democracy in Miami...and many simply wanted to join
friends and family.
Those central to the Governing Regime are fragments of a revolutionary intelligensia who
looked at the distorted health care system, the great inequalities in wealth on the
island, the months' long disemployment patterns for rutal workers, the sex industry in
Havana and around the Navy Base at Guantanemo...looked at the placid acceptance of a
military dictatorship supported by the USA (of Batista, FDRoosevelt said, 'He may be a
bastard but he is our bastard).
Young men and women at University in Havana in the 1950's looked at the ugly uses of Cuba
and made, at their peril, a revolution to improve the life of workers, women and
children...and, with the sometime aid of the USSR, made impressive progress...A lot of
young men and young women in the USA in the 1950's wished them well...and still do.
With the collapse of the Soviet version of Socialism, Cuba fell upon hard days...and are,
only now, recovering from bad policies and bad economics imposed by Soviet friendship.
1995 was, perhaps the low point...young women and young men once again turning to
prostitution; some escapism to drugs and a lot of black market profiteering...1995 was a
bad year. 1998 seemed better. The young people soliciting sexual business were off the
streets; Havana seemed, once again, a class city.
So...Elian is caught up in all this anger and all this partisan turmoil, the history of
which goes back before his mother and father were born.
Then there is the INS and the Cuban Community in Miami...Janet Reno and the Clinton
administration is not nearly as hostile to the Castro regime as Cuban Miami might like.
The use of 'reasonable' force by the Justice department in the taking of Elian was
propelled by the same kind of blind application of law that both right-wing and left-wing
partisans abhore.
Ms. Reno's position seems to be that the INS and its policies are the governing policies
in the Elian affair...the Right-wing affiliations of the Cuban exile community doesn't
endear it to the Clinton administration either.
Elian's father seems to have been, as far as I can make out, content that his Miami
relatives take care of the boy...content, that is, until public opinion in Cuba and Miami
became crystallized in opposing camps...then Grand-mothers came and were badly treated by
the Miami Gonzales family...INS and the Justice department could have handled that fiasco
better but the fact they didn't do better doesn't excuse others doing badly on behalf of
Elian.
But the father is here and, as far as I can see, Elian sees him as 'father.'
It's hard to sort out partisan claims of the boy's psychological state and counter claims
of his best interests...
Most Americans, myself included, would have been content had Elian melted into the Cuban
Community. Most now, myself included, are content that he be remanded to his father's
custody and returned, in timely fashion, to Cuba.
Whatever happens, I hope the boy survives the sins of his grand-fathers generation and the
impersonality of the Immigration and Nationalization Service.
There are some subsidiary issues.
The battle of images in the media went badly for the government when armed and armored men
broke into the Gonzales' household in Miami. The tearful cries from the heart of that
household were touching.
A wiser approach may have been to use a few agents dressed in civilian clothing with
whatever armor they might need under those garments...and with real force on stand-by to
call in when needed. In defense of the show of force from the outset, there was a crowd
and there was high emotional drama to face the INS. It's always easy to second-guess.
Then there is the question of whether Elian was kidnapped by the INS or freed from the
Miami Gonzales family...both definitions of the issue seem to me to be self-serving and
distorted. Most Americans today believe Elian should be with his father. The question
became, who had the right to make that determination...the Miami branch of the Gonzales
family had had custody yeilded by the father...but it could well be claimed that that
custody had terminated when the father came to the USA and requested (then demanded)
custody of Elian. I vote for the father...in American law, a parent has custody until
shown to be unfit...that the Cuban government is unfit for the welfare of Cuban exiles is
hardly an argument that the father is unfit as a father.
Then there is the question of legal purview...the Miami Gonzales family branch wants the
question of custody to be settled in friendly Miami family court. INS refused to concede
jurisdiction. In most cases involving minors, legal jurisdiction (of INS) is not
challenges...but there was good reason to challenge it...at least until the father
arrived.
Then too, Elian is a chess piece in the battle between those who have great contempt for
Clinton as a person and the Clinton administration as an obstacle to conservative social
policies.
Having Clinton on the side of the boy--via Janet Reno and the INS--created still another
battle field on which the soul and psyche of the boy is jeopardized. Likely lads have been
used badly for all the centuries of human history...still it does not set well that those
who use him make moral claims.
Then there is the battle of media images.
Putting Elian on television saying, 'Papa, I want to stay here' was by the Miami Gonzales
family was, in my opinion, despicable. A child can be persuaded to say most anything when
those who have social, economic and moral power over him suggest he say such. Such use of
a child by anyone in Cuba or in Miami is reprehensible....that is why children have
guardians...to protect them from such exploitation.
After the child was taken to the father, INS fought a media battle of its own; again with
photos of the child in close embrace of the father. Again, reprehensible to the welfare of
the child.
Who ever is now calling the shots for the US Government seems smarter, even if not wiser,
than whoever sent armed agents to the house...bringing Elian's school mates and giving him
a dog to play seems a good way to counter the toys and attention Elian had in Miami.
Equally manipulative and managerial as was the Miami family.
There has been some smug satsifaction that one of the men who found Elian at sea was not a
fisherman as the media first reported...and that it was a cousin who pulled the child from
the water...such media coverage testifies to the senseless and silly side issues which
becloud the fate of the boy.
It really doesn't matter what the occupation, moral history or present ambitions of the
men who found Elian...the central fact is that they both saved him and deserve credit for
that.
With a bit of luck, Elian will merge back into his childhood and this 15 minutes will be
pushed aside by other drama involving adults. Maybe that is too much to hope for but that
is my hope for Elian. Someday, 20 years from now, I would like to talk to him and see how
he is getting on...see if he has managed to put the fragments of his life back together in
spite of those who want to use him to their own purpose.
Good
luck to you, Elian,
TR
Young
30 April, 2000
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Post Script:
U.S. sentiment has been, generally, in support of the return of Elian to the care of his father even if it means his return to Cuba. Two months after this piece was written, a Bill has been put before the Senate and Congress to end the U.S. embargo on food and medicine against Cuba. The efforts of the Cuban Exile in Miami to use Elian as a tool against Cuba has eroded support of the Embargo against Cuba. More later.
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