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MIAMI -- The curtain has fallen and the Elian saga is over. The
political morality play which gripped America since Thanksgiving
Day has ended with a whimper. Yet, in parallel to the return of
the wayward boat boy Elian Gonzalez to his native Cuba, we see
Washington's rather shameless attempt to open unofficial trade
ties with the Castro regime.
When Elian Gonzalez fled to America, the tragedy in which
his mother perished at sea in the flight for freedom, most
Americans were endeared to the six year old. But before long,
Elian became a political pawn in the long running confrontation
between the USA and Fidel Castro.
To be sure, much of drama dealt with Florida politics and
the state's 33 electoral votes in the upcoming election; others
said its resolution represented a backdoor attempt by the Clinton
Administration to open trade ties to Cuba, long cut by the
embargo.
In this morality play Elian represented the force of
innocence and good while Fidel Castro played the role of the
villain. Before long though, Castro through a clever
manipulation of emotions and family links, turned the tables
first allowing Elian's two grandmothers to visit Florida and
later allowed the extended visit of his father Juan Miguel.
Sadly Elian became hostage to the legal ping pong game which
ultimately played out to his loss. Soon many Americans were
rooting for family reunion and thus his return to communist Cuba
rather than Elian's freedom in Florida.
The odious stormtooper-type snatch of Elian over Easter
weekend to reunite the boy with his father and the staged
recreation of Elian's school in Cardenas Cuba on American soil
clearly sounded like a social worker's dream. Seeing Elian and
his schoolmate campaneros playing Young Pioneers at US government
expense at Wye Plantation was yet another exercise in Clintonian
touchy-feely politics. I hesitate to use the word re-education.
Tragically the Cuban/American community, long a law-abiding
and hardworking mainstay of south Florida, has been crudely
portrayed by much of the media as the real villain in the saga.
Did any of the press perhaps realize that Cuban Americans, many
of whose personal experience mirrored Elian's -- may know something
about the lack of civil and human rights under the dictator
Castro?
So Elian is back in Cuba, being prepped in Miramar outside
Havana before his return home to Cardenas. Don't be surprised if
this child later appears in his Young Pioneer uniform to denounce
the USA and even his relatives in Little Havana, Miami.
In the meantime, Congress has through a lens of
rationalization, taken up the case of easing the Cuban economic
embargo, the logic being if we can trade with communist China,
why not communist Cuba? House Republicans and Democrats,
pandering to a narrow sector of the agri-business lobby seeking a
fistful of dollars, want to allow sales of American farm produce
to Cuba under an admittedly tightly scripted plan.
Part of the Congressional spin is that Cuba would open a new
market -- ok, that's certainly true but even if Cuba were not a
socialist quagmire, there's only eleven million customers. To
think that this island at its best will be a horn of plenty sales
for farmers simply does not add up. There are many other markets
in Latin America as there certainly will be someday in a free
Cuba.
Not long ago standing outside Elian's relatives modest house
in Little Havana, one could not help but think of the swirl of
hopes and emotions that swept this quiet Miami street. A turn of
fate in an quite unlikely place.
Now the play having ended, Fidel will take curtain calls for
a truly masterful manipulation, at least for now. Viva Cuba
Libre!
John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.
