>From Salon.Com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>>>The following quote extracted from the article that follows is something --
one among many things -- I've noticed as well. Another is the idea of the U.S.
as being this warm, soft pillow for the down-trodden and tired and whathaveyou
on which the peoples of the world can rest their weary heads. My forebears
were also immigrants, one side in this century, the other (at least) a few
centuries ago. Things were a little different back then -- a person, a family,
a group came to hew, to plow, to build their place, not relying on the
benevolence of the government but on the ability to stand shoulder to shoulder
with their neighbours.
Funny thing about Americans: whenever they get dissatisfied with things at
home, they got no place to flee to. They all gotta stay put and put up with
things or put their lives on the line to effect changes. No place to run, no
place to hide, no asylum ... just spirit, resolve, and the desire to stand on
their own two feet and move forward A<>E<>R
<"> One of the most disturbing elements of the Elián saga is the irrational,
mystical, quasi-religious aura that has emerged around the figure of the child,
a virtual Elián cult. <">
{{<Begin>}}
salon.com > News April 21, 2000
URL: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2000/04/21/miami
A world of their own
The Miami media recognizes and helps perpetuate a separate reality for Cuban
exiles.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Max Castro
"Family Defies Order," read the headline in the Miami Herald last Friday.
"Jubilo en Miami" (Jubilation in Miami) blared the headline in the same day's
El Nuevo Herald, the Miami Herald's Spanish-language sister publication, a
daily that regularly dishes out a version of reality at odds with that of the
English edition, and most of the U.S. press.
Miami in the days of Elián is a tale of two cities, and nowhere is the schism
more evident than in the pages of the city's two main dailies, despite the fact
that both papers are published in the same building and owned by the same
company, the Miami Herald Publishing Company, itself owned by Knight-Ridder.
The Herald, with its split personality, at once chronicles, mirrors and
perpetuates racial and ethnic divisions that predate the Elián case but have
now come to a head. After Miami relatives of Elián González failed to meet the
Justice Department's deadline for turning the child over and the government
declined to act, subscribers to the Miami Herald read a sobering tale of
defiance of the law, while El Nuevo Herald readers were treated to a
description of mass relief and joy over what was construed as a reprieve from
deportation. The stark difference in slant reflected a systematic pattern
present also in other media. Coverage by Miami's two Spanish-language
television stations was relentlessly sympathetic to those who want to keep
Elián in the United States.
Beyond their personal and passionate relation to the subject of Cuba, one
reason most Miami Cuban-Americans have such strikingly different views from
other Americans on Elián and issues like the embargo is that the part of the
press that caters to them strives mightily to tell them what they want to hear.
Examples are legion and sometimes comical, with recurring reports of Fidel
Castro's death at the top of the list.
One Sunday El Nuevo Herald carried a huge headline trumpeting the tale of a
Cuban neurosurgeon who had recently treated the Cuban president for a near-
fatal condition. Every aspect of the story turned out to be a complete
fabrication concocted by a nursing-school dropout masquerading as a doctor who
even lied about her name.
Little wonder then that the Elián case has underlined the fact that many Cuban-
Americans live in a separate reality when it comes to certain issues. A Herald
poll published April 9 showed 83 percent of Cuban-Americans want Elián to stay
with his South Florida relatives. That contrasts with the majority opinion of
Americans, and even more sharply with the attitudes of their African-American
and Anglo neighbors in Miami, who favor the return of Elián to his father in
Cuba by 92 percent and 76 percent respectively.
Many Cuban-Americans believe that fellow Americans disagree with them because
the national media has not told their story. But nowhere in the United States
has the media cast a more critical eye on the Cuban government of Fidel Castro
nor portrayed Cuban-Americans in a more sympathetic light than in Miami, and
yet here other Americans are even less attuned to the Cuban exile view of the
world.
For a Cuban-American like myself, whose views are distinctly in the minority in
this exceedingly emotional case, the Elián tragedy and our community's
isolation is excruciatingly sad and profoundly disturbing. I live in the heart
of the old Cuban community in Miami, not in a new suburb like most of my fellow
Cuban-American professionals. The house where Elián González is staying is five
minutes away by car. Yet I feel a million miles distant.
Am I really part of a tiny minority -- only 9 percent -- of Miami Cubans who,
according to the Herald poll, think parents are more important than politics? I
tell myself that most of the 8 percent who didn't answer or didn't have an
opinion were too afraid to break rank; they are really on my side. I tell
myself the data for the Cuban sub-sample has a margin of error of 5.6 percent.
I tell myself the pollster who did the survey recently predicted a tax
initiative would pass by a slim margin, and the next day it was defeated in a
landslide.
But put it all together and at best it means that perhaps I am outnumbered in
my own community by only 5-to-1 instead of 11-to-1. For some perspective, I
talk to a former prominent Washington official living in Miami, a white liberal
who was part of a minuscule minority growing up in Mississippi during the bad
old days. He knows exactly how I feel. It's small consolation.
One of the most disturbing elements of the Elián saga is the irrational,
mystical, quasi-religious aura that has emerged around the figure of the child,
a virtual Elián cult. The cult combines elements of a religious mania and a
Manichean political crusade. It's a toxic and potentially dangerous
combination. Love of the angelic Elián, who has been compared to Moses and
Jesus and in whose Miami residence an apparition of the Virgin Mary has been
reported, is the counterpart of intense hatred for the devil Castro. The angel
must not be returned to Satan in hell, also known as Cuba.
Resorting to the realm of the mystical and the irrational is a convenient
psychological move when what is desired is not achievable in the worlds of law,
logic or reason. There is an element here of manipulation of symbols for
political ends, but the effect is no less real. What might people who have
internalized the cult of Elián do in case of a confrontation with authorities?
The question becomes more pertinent each day as the legal options available to
the Miami relatives to prevent the child to be returned to his father
evaporate. Now President Clinton has for the first time said forcefully that
Elián must be returned to his father. Justice Department sources also say that
Attorney General Janet Reno is finally preparing for what has come to seem
inevitable: the forceful removal of the boy from his Miami relatives' home.
How did it come to this, when little over a week ago Elián's return seemed
imminent? Last Thursday a state judge threw out the relatives' lawsuit seeking
temporary custody, foreclosing what had been the Miami relatives' best legal
hope -- to turn the custody issue into a political trail of the Cuban
government before an elected Miami judge.
In dismissing the suit and even denying a hearing, Miami-Dade Circuit Court
Judge Jennifer Bailey wrote, "There is no purpose in prolonging the anxiety of
this family and other people who feel so strongly about this case when the law
is so clear and when the inevitable result would be ever more crushingly
disappointing."
Subsequently, however, federal judges have ordered that Elián stay in the
United States and will hear arguments as to whether the 6-year-old is entitled
to an asylum hearing as the Miami relatives contend. The Justice Department
contends only Juan Miguel González can make legal decisions for Elián,
including petitioning for asylum. The elder González has said he does not want
asylum for his son, who he wishes to return to Cuba.
Meanwhile the relatives and their political supporters have played a game of
seduction and destruction with the father, Juan Miguel González. Seduction,
getting him to defect, was by far the preferred outcome for the hard-line exile
political forces at the very center of the campaign -- including the Cuban
American National Foundation and three Cuban-American members of Congress. That
is the only ending that guarantees them a clear-cut political victory over
Castro. According to Juan Miguel himself, he has been offered $2 million to
defect.
I am convinced that if Juan Miguel had stepped off the plane and asked for
political asylum, he would have been hailed as a hero and a perfect father and
would now be reunited with his son. Instead, a relentless 11th-hour character
assassination got under way, aimed at portraying him as an unfit father. No
credible evidence has been presented to support the charge. Character
assassination is just one line of attack.
"Cuba is a prison, and if you desire to return to a prison, you don't get to
take your child with you, no matter how good father you are," says George
Fowler, a New Orleans lawyer associated with the Cuban American National
Foundation.
Such reasoning has chilling implications for every parent in Cuba, not to
mention countries like China, Vietnam, North Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Iraq,
Afghanistan and many other states with questionable human rights records. The
federal government quickly filed a brief arguing the argument is deeply flawed.
Yet it represents the essence of the bargain offered Juan Miguel González:
Defect or lose your child.
Now González has appealed to the American people, asking them to write to
Clinton and Reno on his behalf. "Don't let them continue to abuse my son," he
implored Thursday. "I was promised that I was going to be reunited with my son.
Two weeks have gone by and it hasn't happened. I have always understood, I have
always thought, that the United States is a country which abided by its laws."
Gonzáles was scheduled to meet with Reno again Friday.
While the majority of Americans has always been on his side, Gonzáles' words
are unlikely to move his implacable enemies in the exile community hellbent on
preventing the return of Elián to Cuba. But perhaps they will strengthen the
will of Clinton and Reno to enforce the law and put an end to one father's
suffering.
As I write this a mile from the scene of what is beginning to look like a
hostage situation, I am as weary and apprehensive as nearly all Miamians -- and
a little sadder than most of my fellow residents, as I watch the madness that
has gripped a substantial sector of my community.
In the absence of any leadership willing to risk imparting a dose of reality to
the community, I join most Americans in wanting to see father and son reunited,
and most Miamians in dreading the difficult and uncertain days that surely lie
ahead. Upholding the law in the face of intransigence sometimes requires a
forceful assertion of authority. This is one of those times. It appears that
Reno has finally understood this and is preparing to reunite father and son in
the face of opposition by the Miami relatives and their diehard supporters.
salon.com | April 21, 2000
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer
Max J. Castro, Ph.D., a sociologist, is currently senior research associate in
the Dante B. Fascell North-South Center at the University of Miami and a
regular op/ed columnist for the Miami Herald.
{{<End>}}
A<>E<>R
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