Elian’s Father’s Gesture Speaks Volumes

Through all the static and hysteria over Elian Gonzalez--the horn-honking protests, the rattling of barricades, the jabbering of pundits--one fleeting gesture rises silently above the noise.

It came as Elian’s father stepped off the plane from Havana last week, a media moment broadcast nationwide. The arrival of Juan Miguel Gonzalez marked a dramatic turn in the four-month battle for custody of his 6-year-old son, rescued at sea after his mother drowned during a doomed attempt to flee Cuba in a makeshift boat.

The father’s gesture was reflexive and routine, recognizable to any parent who has carried a child while traveling. Accompanied by his second wife, Gonzalez alighted holding their infant son. He gingerly transferred the bundled boy to the waiting arms of his mother.

Then he made a move that is a familiar and universal sign of parental concern. As his wife adjusted her load, Gonzalez reached over and pulled the hood of his son’s coat completely over his head to protect him from the unfamiliar cold in the nation’s capital.

The gesture revealed almost a maternal tenderness in a man who comes off gruff and aggressive at times. Certainly, Gonzalez knew the world was watching. Perhaps he was prepped on what to say and how to act. Hard-liners claim his very thoughts are controlled by communists.

But I doubt that Fidel Castro could ever have conceived of this PR tip, this touching detail to make Gonzalez look like a good father in public. No, this gesture came naturally from a father who, by all accounts, is involved and loving with his children.

This father-son saga is steeped in symbols. Elian stands for freedom to Miami exiles fighting against parental rights and popular opinion to keep him. The entrenched exiles, in turn, stand for capitalist arrogance and corruption to those who want Elian in Cuba.

And to those of us watching on television, it stands for our obsession with soap-opera stories that dominate the news yet add little to our understanding of the world.

Now, we have yet another symbol in the determined, stocky figure of Juan Miguel Gonzalez, with his multiracial features. In coming to claim his child, he stands for responsible and caring fatherhood.

This is the one symbol the world needs. But it is especially important in Latin America where machismo teaches men that to show fatherly tenderness is to show weakness.

Even in this country, research tells us that men have been growing apart from their children in the past four decades, not closer. The male “flight from commitment” has become such a crisis that the government joined academia during the 1990s to study what it means to be a good father and what it means for children to grow up without one.

Conclusion: Absent fathers are bad news. Their children have more trouble in school and in holding jobs. And sadly, their sons are more likely to become absent fathers themselves.

Some researchers are even skeptical about the emergence of “the new father.” True, involved fathers are spending more time with their children, but fewer men are involved fathers.

The good news is that Latino fathers in the United States don’t go AWOL from their families as often as white or black fathers do. At least, not physically.

Emotionally, many Latino men may as well be absent from their children’s lives. Often, they’re not expected to change diapers, get up for midnight feedings or even attend Sunday Mass with the family.

Last year, a Los Angeles Times poll found that a vast majority of Latinos believe it’s much better for the family if the father works outside the home while the mother tends to the children. More Latinos (83%) endorsed this old-fashioned arrangement than either whites (64%) or blacks (63%).

From what we know, Gonzalez, a national parks employee in Cuba, sets a good example for the new Latino father. Despite divorce, Elian lived primarily with his dad, who regularly picked him up from school and took him to get haircuts together. In January, Gonzalez told “Nightline” that his shipwrecked son “dreams he’s sleeping with me, hugging me, [and] he asked me to put a little table in his room to do his homework.”

While Gonzalez fights to get Elian back, Latino groups such as the National Compadres Network struggle to encourage more involvement among Latino fathers. Their anti-macho message: “The first lesson of manhood is respect for women and children.”

The lesson reached one 18-year-old father, quoted in a Times article about an East Los Angeles parenting program called Con Los Padres that started in 1995.

“What is machismo?” a counselor asked.

The teen dad answered: “I guess it’s when a man takes responsibility for his children.”

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