From One Unfeeling Sea Into Another

Christmas has come and gone, but Elian Gonzalez remains in this country. Remember him? He’s the Cuban boy who was found clinging for his life to an inner tube off the Florida coast on Thanksgiving Day. His mother died at sea, drowned with her boyfriend and nine others in a reckless reach for the American Dream.

Tragedy has bestowed on this child a brief but grotesque celebrity. He’s become an icon for ideologues on both sides of that unbridgeable strait between Cuba and the United States--between material excess and scarcity, between irreconcilable concepts of good and evil.

But what does a boy care about free markets or the workers’ paradise when he doesn’t have a mother? Can trips to Disney World distract him from his loss? Can demonstrations in Havana fill his void?

No, the only saving grace is that Elian still has a responsible father who remarried but still wants him. And lucky boy, much luckier than mine, he still has two sets of grandparents, also in Cuba, alive and anxious to embrace him.

So why on Earth is he still not with them? Because Elian has become a pawn in a colossal struggle which, when I was a boy, brought the world to the edge of nuclear destruction during the Cuban missile crisis. Today’s conflict swirls around one child caught in the mother of all custody cases. Which side will blink this time?

Will he be sent back to Cuba as international law and human decency require? Or will he be allowed to remain with more distant relatives in Miami because, as they claim, he’ll have a better life here?

This case has troubled me on many levels. As a father who has tried to stay close to my own son despite divorce. As a Mexican who sympathizes with millions of other families dying to come here for better living conditions. And especially as an immigrant who has a pending application to become a citizen of the United States.

There are those who seem willing to gamble with Elian’s future to make a political point long ago made moot by the course of history. Communism has been all but buried. Will the cause of democracy be served any further by turning this child into a de facto orphan?

It would be a shame if we as a nation were willing to compound Elian’s loss to reassert, needlessly, the superiority of our system. For in doing so, we would also be saying that our concept of freedom is more important than the universal concept of fatherhood. That capitalism is worth more than the love of a caring grandmother. That property rights mean more than parental rights.

Conservative Republicans are rushing to grant citizenship to Elian, a move that would require a special bill in Congress and would turn this revered privilege into a cheap trump card against Fidel Castro. It’s galling to think that this country would give away for political gain what other immigrants have waited years to earn.

I don’t begrudge the boy the benefit. But let’s put his case in terms Californians can easily comprehend.

Elian is an illegal alien.

Make no mistake about this: If Elian were Mexican he’d have been shipped back across the border long ago. No high-powered lobby to stir up a national outcry. No hypocritical politicians to offer him a sham citizenship. No television crews to record the outcome.

On this frontier, there are thousands of anonymous Elians.

In one recent year, an estimated 80,000 Mexican children tried to enter the U.S. unsuccessfully, says a UNICEF study. Most are boys from impoverished, dysfunctional or abusive families. Many travel alone, face exploitation by smugglers and even sexual abuse.

Most are quickly deported. Some get caught in legal limbo, invisible children in the custody of the INS. Human Rights Watch reported in 1997 that “many remain in detention for months on end, bewildered and frightened, denied meaningful access to attorneys and to their relatives.”

Where is the outrage for these children?

Five days before Elian was found floating at sea, the world celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a UN Magna Carta for minors. The treaty aims to improve the living conditions and treatment of an estimated 2 billion souls under the age of 18.

Only two countries have failed to ratify the convention--Somalia and the United States, which likes to preach to the rest of the globe about human rights and family values. Spearheading U.S. resistance to the children’s treaty is Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), Cuba’s most ferocious critic. He calls it “incompatible with the God-given right and responsibility of parents to raise their children.”

Unless, apparently, the parents happen to live in Cuba.

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Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com