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Political child abuse
Miami's Cuban-American community is playing out the trauma of its exile by exploiting 6-year-old Elián González.

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By Bruce Shapiro

Jan. 13, 2000 |   There is nothing new about turning children into political symbols. In the 1950s, the young sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were thrust in front of news cameras in vain hopes of halting their parents' execution. Not long ago I spoke with a friend in his 70s who still feels exploited for being marched as a very young child to New York May Day parades with signs he did not understand.

But the Elian Gonzalez case has in the last several days crossed the line from political exploitation to child abuse. What else can you call it when a 6-year-old who three weeks ago witnessed the drowning deaths of his mother and stepfather now lives a series of happy-face photo-ops -- sucking down ice cream, being glad-handed by ballplayers, waving to reporters on the way to school -- choreographed by a veteran Miami political operative?

What else can you call it when a boy who clung to an inner tube and barely escaped his own death is subpoenaed to testify before a congressional committee, where if a hearing ever takes place he will be expected to effectively renounce his father?

Miami's Cuban-American politicians, and the family members who are fighting Gonzalez's father's request to return the child, seem intent on turning this case into a legal Bay of Pigs: pressing forward a courtroom war which by any reality-test imaginable is impossible to win.

As Janet Reno said today, "The question of who may speak for a 6-year-old child in applying for admission or asylum is a matter of federal immigration law." It has nothing to do with Florida Family Court Judge Rosa Rodriguez, who on Monday awarded "temporary custody" to Gonzalez's great-uncle in Miami, nor with the congressional subpoena issued over the weekend by Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., -- a subpoena Burton admits has no legislative purpose other than to stall Elian's return home to his father.

The Cuban leaders pressing Gonzalez's case are not landing adult volunteers, however doomed, on Fidel Castro's beaches. Instead they seem to be reenacting their own historic loss to Castro upon the stage of a traumatized child's infinitely vulnerable life.

. Next page | Cuba's not a bad place to be a kid





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