Little Havana

Your April 14 editorial, “It’s Elian Who Pays for the Circus,” was correct but neglected to point out what a monster is being created in Florida’s Little Havana. Elian’s Americanization is teaching him to be a spoiled brat. He is being rewarded (and coached) to disrespect his father and is enrolled in Mob Rule 101. His distant relatives are showing him that defiance of the laws in America is the way to “have it your way.”

Sure, our hearts go out to him, but the lessons he is learning in Little Havana will not help him in America and will especially not be tolerated if he returns to Cuba. The quote by the Cuban American, Julian Verbeja, in your news story (April 14) sums it up, “If no one had been here they would have taken the boy. They didn’t dare come here.”

LOUIS MANGUAL

Los Angeles

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On April 12, we read “Dying Girl in Minefield Cries for Help” in Sarajevo. A few square inches of page details the horror of mines killing children because of the Bosnian war that ended four years ago. The article ends with the death notice of one of three preteens who died: “In his 12th year and in a children’s game, Goran Biscevic died as a victim of a crazy war of adults.”

In the same section of the paper, about 20 times as much space is devoted to one child’s trauma in Miami because of another “crazy war of adults.”

BYRNECE SCHREINER

Palos Verdes Estates

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These Cuban exiles in Florida have been trying to portray Castro as a combination of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa. He is not. Is he a bad old guy who rules absolutely? Yes. One of the most evil men to walk this Earth? Hardly.

STEVE SMITH

San Gabriel