Pictures Then, Now Show a Happy Elian

Dueling Elians.

How significant--though not surprising in this panoramic video age--that the Elian Gonzalez case has been defined almost totally by pictures and the images they project.

It was only Friday that newscasts everywhere were showing a smiling Elian being pushed around in a toy car outside the Little Havana house of his great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, just hours before Saturday’s predawn raid that spirited the little boy away to be reunited in Maryland with his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez.

The months leading to this dramatic event in fact, had become a media album of Elian.

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There he was tumbling on the floor with Diane Sawyer being softened up for that ill-advised interview with her on ABC.

Smiling.

There he was on his great-uncle’s shoulders flashing the V for victory sign.

Smiling.

There he was, again and again, playing with the toys and other possessions that had been lavished on him by Miami relatives.

Smiling.

In fact, about the only time he was shown not smiling was in that video, shot and distributed by his Miami relatives, showing him wagging his finger and telling his father he did not want to return with him to Cuba.

The only time, that is, until Saturday’s morning raid, which the Fox News Channel was subjectively calling “The taking of Elian,” by the way, as if that title could not have applied also to the period during which his Miami relatives had kept him from his father.

That operation was followed almost immediately on television by footage of Elian crying in the arms of a female agent rushing him from his great-uncle’s house to a waiting van.

Then came that signature Associated Press photo of an agent with his weapon aimed in the vicinity of a terrified Elian who was in the arms of one of the fishermen who had plucked him from the sea five months ago. They had been hiding in a closet.

Run again and again and again, the photo is destined to go down as the definitive visual image for this tragic affair, one inevitably taken out of context, omitting why the federal government felt compelled to take the action it did.

Then came the other pictures, which Atty. Gen. Janet Reno’s Justice Department began releasing early Saturday afternoon. Pictures of the other Elian. Elian behind his infant half-brother.

Smiling.

Elian in the arms of his father.

Smiling.

Elian in a newly shot family portrait, with his half-brother, his father and his father’s second wife.

Smiling.

See how happy little Elian is, his Miami relatives had proclaimed through television when he was in their possession.

See how happy little Elian is, the Justice Department is saying, again through television, now that he is with his father.

We may not know for years, if ever, the psychological damage inflicted on this child by the death of his mother at sea, followed by the political and media circuses in Miami where his relatives and other Cuban Americans appeared to regard him less as a child to be protected than as a dagger aimed at the heart of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

But clearly--and magically--this is a child who smiles easily with anyone who treats him with sweetness, regardless of the psychological baggage he carries in his head.

That makes him a perfect candidate for the new photo ops he will be getting as his father and the United States await the outcome of a legal process that will decide where, and with whom, Elian will live permanently.

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What has Elian been during his tenure, in fact, other than a living visual aid, and the only 6-year-old in the hemisphere with an entourage. An eclectic one, given that when the federal agents burst into the Little Havana house in search of Elian, they found him not with one of his relatives, but in the arms of a virtual stranger.

One hopes that this entourage will no longer include the hordes of media already moving north, as best they can, to encircle Elian in Maryland as they did in Miami.

If there is healing to be done, it should happen beyond the range of cameras and reporters with notebooks chronicling every moment in this little boy’s life. But fat chance.

As for all those toys co-starring with Elian in months of television pictures? Back to the prop shop.