"In Dr. Fleming's rush to expose the shortcomings of American domestic and foreign policy, he has committed the error of whitewashing the last Stalinist dictatorship in the Western hemisphere."
On Elian
JUNE 01, 2000Thomas Fleming is wrong when he writes (Cultural Revolutions, April) that, by Cuban law, Elian Gonzalez belongs to his next-of-kin, his father. According to Cuban law (specifically the Codigo de Familia Ley, No. 1289), parental authority is subordinated to "inculcating" the "internationalist spirit and socialist morality." According to Article 95, section three, of this so-called family code, government tribunals can "deprive both parents, or one of them, parental authority," when both parents fail to indoctrinate their children in communist morality. Under Cuban law, Elian has one "father" who ultimately decides what value system he will be raised in, and his name is Fidel Castro.
Secondly, Dr. Fleming is guilty of an Orwellian use of the English language. He stated that Elian's mother "died in an illegal attempt to enter the United States." One may agree or disagree with current U.S. immigration policy, but one cannot dispute that, under Lyndon Johnson's 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, Elian's mother is given automatic residency upon reaching U.S. soil. How can her attempt to enter the United States be illegal if, upon entering, she would be granted residency a year and a day later? The Clinton administration's 1995 circumvention of the spirit of this law, without repealing it, in a migration agreement with the Castro regime is just another example of the lawlessness of the Clinton administration, not of Elian's mother. The claim that "by American law, the boy is simply an illegal alien who can either be returned to Cuba or stuck in a concentration camp" is just wrong. Under U.S. law, the child was granted humanitarian parole and was on his way to receiving residency a year and a day later before Castro's tantrum led to the INS reversing its decision.
Dr. Fleming cites the American abortion rate, declaring "it is hard to believe [Cuba] begins to approach the American level." Pax Christi sent a delegation to Cuba back in 1998 and was profoundly disturbed to report that, according to the Cuban minister of health, there is one abortion to every birth in Cuba. Pax Christi claimed that, at a "rather large nearby hospital, that we visit often, approximately thirty abortions take place daily. It is not unusual for women to be forced to have abortions. To rebel against the practice is futile."
Dr. Fleming's observation that "recent visitors to Cuba have not returned with stories of massive oppression and executions" should be placed in a larger historical context. I'd recommend that he obtain a transcript of Daniel Wolfs BBC2 documentaries. Tourists of the Revolution. It's amazing how visitors to some of the most brutal and murderous tyrannies of this century failed to mention mass murder and wholesale oppression. George Bernard Shaw visited the Soviet Union in 1931 and returned with stories of "an atmosphere of hope and security as has never before been seen in a civilized country on earth." Another visitor to the "worker's paradise" built by that wonderful humanitarian Stalin, Barbara Castle, then a journalist, reported "no atmosphere of repression" in pre-war Moscow, only glorious opportunities for women. Meanwhile, millions were being starved, massacred, and banished to gulags in Siberia.
There is a paradox at work in Cuba. The more foreign investment in joint partnerships with the regime, the greater the shrinkage in the Cuban private sector. Reuters reported in 1998 that "current and former members of the private sector blame the falloff on excessive state controls and taxes imposed after the introduction of some market-oriented features in 1993." This clampdown on the private sector coincided with the arrival of hard currency from European and Canadian investors. This hard currency has been used to sustain the Cuban police state. Dropping sanctions and providing U.S. credits and hard currency to prop up the regime will only earn the enmity of the Cuban people.
Reports of massive repression in Cuba have appeared in the Economist, in which Pedro Betancur reported on the brutal January 22 beating of human-rights activists by a government mob. Sixty-eight-year-old Gloria Gonzalez described the attack: "They hit one of my sons on the head with a stick, cutting him badly. They broke another's rib. They kicked me hard and knocked me over." Seven of the victims of the beating were arrested. According to the independent Human Rights and National Reconciliation Commission in Havana, almost 600 people have been temporarily detained since November, and the commission has documented 350 political prisoners. They call it the worst crackdown in a decade.
Dr. Oscar Elias Bisect, a medical doctor, was fired from his job after protesting late-term abortions at a government hospital where he worked and continued to enrage the dictatorship by carrying protest signs charging the regime with being "child murderers." Dr. Biscet was sentenced to a three-year prison term for his activism. This culture of death was manifested on July 13, 1994, when agents of the regime massacred 41 men, women, and children whose sole crime was trying to flee the island. Whole families were murdered. Agents of the Castro regime destroyed the parental rights of the fathers and mothers along with their lives, and the lives of their children, without mercy. In Dr. Fleming's rush to expose the shortcomings of American domestic and foreign policy, he has committed the error of whitewashing the last Stalinist dictatorship in the Western hemisphere.
- John J. Suarez
Coordinator Free Cuba Foundation
Miami, FL
Coordinator Free Cuba Foundation
Miami, FL
