A message from the American TFP
Where Is Elian’s Journey Leading Us?
The
steady stream of photos of a smiling Elian Gonzalez reunited
with his father could well foster the impression of a happy
ending to the sad story of this young Cuban refugee. Were
one naive enough to believe this, one might well conclude
that the entire matter was a tempest in a Miami teapot.
Moreover, one would think that Bernard Cardinal Law of Boston
was quite right when he said the whole thing was nothing
but a circus with a simple solution: returning the boy to
his father.1
With possession regarded as nine points of the law, Elian’s
is a closed case for many Americans. All too soon, this
family affair will be yesterday’s news. Father knows
best, and Fidel – who in a candid moment described
himself as the true father of all Cubans – will have
won more than meets the eye for his “new look.”
Cuba’s baseball team has already come to the United
States to play the Orioles, and American tourists, in turn,
are visiting the prison island in growing numbers. All’s
well that ends well.
In this prevalent – if perverse – mindset, the
valiant fight for Elian’s freedom is reduced to three
elements: a nonsensical case of parental rights, an emotional
group of aging anticommunist Cubans, and a government that
overreacted by using armed force to solve the problem.
Is that its real meaning? Is that how we will see it when
we look back years from now? Does the fact that Elian appears
to be happy with his father and stepmother end the story?
We’re not so sure. Before the final chapter is written
and the camera lights go out, we have a few words to say.
What is the real issue? Returning
a child
to his father, or dealing with Cuba’s stark reality?
Of course, if the Elian case really
concerned only the father’s rights, there would have
been no case – and no story to consume so much printer’s
ink and radio and television airtime.
Behind the question of the father looms the larger problem
of the fatherland, or rather, the unrepentant communist
dictatorship. That decrepit despotism lies at the heart
of the matter – and everyone knows it.
A courageous group of priests on the island recently declared
that Castro’s regime shows “diabolical efficacy”
in its domination of the Cuban people.2
Even the United Nations Human Rights Commission has again
condemned Cuba for its human rights violations.3
There is no freedom in that island prison, where the most
basic civil liberties – the freedom to practice one’s
faith, to own property, to associate with friends of one’s
choosing, to express one’s opinions openly, to travel
in safety – are routinely denied.
Elian’s return to Cuba – forced or voluntary –
cannot alter that fundamental reality. By holding on to
him, the Cuban-American community was fighting to defend
him from a police state whose constitution decrees that
“the formation of the communist personality of youths
and children” belongs, not to the parents, but to the
government.4
Let justice be restored in
Cuba and we will restore friendly ties
If, like Cuban-Americans, all Americans
had a family member languishing in a Cuban prison (well
out of sight of free-spending tourists), we would soon join
the anti-Castro chorus of our Cuban-American brothers and
sisters. And instead of inviting Castro’s baseball
team to come and play in our cities, we would demand that
Castro liberate our kinfolk before any improvement in relations.
We would settle for nothing less.
If, like Cuban-Americans, all Americans had relatives subjected
to the stifling oppression in Cuba, earning a pittance for
their hard labors, eating whatever rations are distributed,
while being forced to proclaim their allegiance to Marxist
doctrine and policies, would we tolerate any cozying up
to Castro?
Of course not. Rather, the American people would rise up
as one to demand that the regime branded by Joseph Cardinal
Ratzinger as the “shame of our time”5
be overthrown, and that freedom, private property, free
enterprise, and family life be restored.
If every American family had a relative in such demeaning
and unnatural conditions, would anyone dare raise the question
of loosening – much less lifting – the embargo
against so cruel a regime? Obviously, no. The only acceptable
option would be the total restoration of a free society
under the rule of law.
We must steer clear of this
“psy-war” maneuver!
A crafty maneuver of revolutionary
psychological warfare is under way, seeking to exploit the
good-hearted sentiments for which Americans are renowned
and blind our eyes to a rabid wolf in sheep’s clothing.
We are expected to accept as a legitimate ruler a blood-stained
despot – the unelected “President” Castro
– while closing our eyes to steps designed to normalize
relations with his police state. In short, we are being
asked to endorse the Neville Chamberlains of our day—or
at least to look the other way at their betrayal.
Would we have agreed to cozy up to Hitler in 1944? Unthinkable!
We must not forget that to uphold
the principles of freedom, America waged wars against Nazism
and its evil twin, communism, sacrificing legions of her
sons.
Are we not the same America? Why
should we renounce our principles and convictions now? The
very principles that made America great?
The American TFP does not believe
our nation will so dishonor itself. Rather, we cherish an
abiding hope, nurtured in faith, that we will defeat these
psy-war intrigues and work to restore the sound principles
of our nation’s glorious past that have made America
known across the globe as the “land of the free and
the home of the brave.”
Our future – and the future
of the world – depends to a great degree on our faithfulness
to that heritage.
We turn our thoughts and prayers to God Almighty and to
Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre, who watches over Cuba as
its patron saint. Divine Providence saved Elian from the
shark-infested waters of the Florida Straits. May Our Lady
and Her Divine Son intervene soon to liberate the millions
of “Elians” still groaning under the communist
yoke and, above all, to keep America faithful to its noble
ideals.
The American TFP
April 26, 2000
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