Sunday, April 23, 2000
Adults made a mess of everything for little Elian
Thank goodness children don't know how unsure adults can be. If kids understood that age doesn't equal wisdom — it only means you've been around longer — we adults would be in big trouble.
We've read all the words. We've seen all the pictures — thank you, CNN — of the demonstrators, the great-uncle, the trip to DisneyWorld, the heart-wrenching statement from Elian Gonzalez himself. When the 6-year-old boy looked into the camera and told his father he'd rather stay in Miami, with or without his dad, I'd rather have been anyone in the world but Juan Miguel Gonzalez.
What a mess we've made of this, for a 6-year-old boy who trusted us. What a sad ending adults have guaranteed, regardless. If Elian returns to Cuba, he'll cry for his Miami relatives and the creature comforts they have provided. No DisneyWorld in Cardenas.
If he is granted asylum next month, Cuban-Americans will dance in the streets of Little Havana. For Elian's relations, this is nothing more than a competition: Them against Castro. “Crazy Fidel” will have lost. Juan Miguel Gonzalez will have lost more; Elian, more still.
If Elian stays here, he breaks his father's heart.
There is no winning. The adults have made sure of that.
Until I was 12 or 13, I took it on faith that my parents, and adults in general, had the world all figured out. That faith is a parent's secret weapon. Why? Because I said so.
Now that I'm a parent of a 13-year-old, I know what I have figured out, and it's not much. Parenting is trial and error. A little of this, a little of that. If parenting were a sport, it'd be golf. Specifically, putting. It's all feel.
You'd like to think the wisdom of years would work its magic, and the answers would emerge, clear and true. The way they did when you were 6 and believed in your parents. They don't.
Adults have the power to screw up a kid's life, while perfuming their actions in the name of good. We're only doing what's best for you.
Little Elian's Miami relatives would argue that a life here is better than a life in Cuba. Who's to say? Richer, yes. Financially, anyway. More free, sure. But more loving? More spiritually satisfying?
I waited tables at a country club for seven years. These were wealthy people. They spent $50,000 to join and $10,000 a year to belong. That was before they paid for golf equipment and martinis. They were some of the unhappiest people I've ever known.
Who's to say what's better for Elian? Was he unhappy in Cuba? No. Did he say he wanted to leave? A 6-year-old doesn't have those kinds of notions. His mother took him. She knew what was best for him, yes. She was an adult. She was his parent. Only, being here is not what's best for him.
His Miami relatives don't love him as much as they love what they want for him. They don't love him as much as they hate the other guys.
They want Elian to be free. He doesn't look free to me. He's in his own peculiar prison in Little Havana, “protected” by a human chain outside his door. Every time he leaves the house, the cameras descend like a heat wave.
It's no better in Cuba, where they have elevated him to revolutionary hero status. Imagine that, a 6-year-old hero of the revolution. But at least in Cuba, he has a foundation, a home, a place. A dad.
If this were a routine custody case in this country, Elian would have been reunited with his father months ago. But it's not. The adults have seen to that. It's about politics and established hatreds. It's about self interest. All in the name of what's best for Elian, of course.
The kid deserved better.
Paul Daugherty is an Enquirer columnist
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