Blood feuds across the Straits of Florida

A Pioneer’s uniform. That’s all. A measly uniform, worn by Elian right after he was returned to Cuba. I couldn’t stand looking at that photo of him, and neither could thousands of other Cuban exiles in the United States. It spoke to us in a language outsiders couldn’t even begin to understand. It seared our souls, and to many in America our rage seemed so odd, so absurd. Like some primitive tribe bewailing their fallen idols, we seemed to be grieving over nothing substantial, or something other than what met the eye. This behavior baffled millions of people, yet none of them cried out: “Call in the anthropologist!” That is, until now.

In one sense, Ann Louise Bardach’s “Cuba Confidential” bears a resemblance to works such as Claude Levi-Strauss’ “The Savage Mind,” Clifford Geertz’s “The Religion of Java” and Victor Turner’s “Forest of Symbols,” for “Cuba Confidential” is a book that seeks to unveil to civilized eyes the seemingly cryptic meaning hidden deep within the behavior of primitive aliens. In this case it’s not the islanders of some faraway archipelago who are analyzed but Cubans, both in their native habitat and in their diaspora.

Bardach does this by focusing on intrigue and unbridled emotions at many levels of Cuban society: inside Castro’s own family and inner circle, among the players in the Elian epic and within the exile community in Miami. She also seeks to reduce the last half century of Cuban history to a simple formula: The Cuban Revolution should be seen as a family feud. It’s not really a story about five decades of unrelenting totalitarian rule. It’s all about kinfolk. Simply put, Cubans are the Hatfields and McCoys of the Caribbean, and like all such benighted clans, they have created an incestuous brawl in which compromise and mediation become treason.

It’s all about unruly neighbors too. Bardach contends that this tawdry melee has spilled over onto the streets and voting booths of South Florida and the desks of policymakers in Washington, drawing Americans into a fray that debases them and costs them dearly. If you want to understand why Cuba is such a mess and why 10 U.S. presidents have been unable to fix the problem, then, writes Bardach, focus on love and hate, those two unreasonable passions that rule Cuban politics and American policymaking.

As the title suggests, this book seeks to disclose secrets. Few American journalists are better poised to do this than Bardach. For many years she has been covering Cuba on both sides of the Florida Strait. Her work has appeared in the most venerable newspapers and magazines; network television and National Public Radio often call upon her to shed light on all things Cuban. That Bardach knows Miami and Cuba from the inside out is undeniable: Her contacts are wide-ranging in both places, her research is thorough and meticulous, her access to key figures is impressive. She has quizzed Castro and joked with his brother Raul. She has also interviewed scores of high-profile players in recent Cuba affairs, including some of Castro’s and Elian’s relatives, and some of Castro’s most passionate enemies.

So, then, what is it that she has to show us? What we find here is not a cache of secrets but rather a collection of tales about troubled relationships among Cubans of all sorts. For instance, we learn that Fidel Castro was once involved in a bitter custody dispute with his first wife, Mirta Diaz-Balart, and that he kidnapped their son. When this story is juxtaposed with that of Elian Gonzalez, we can recognize the distant echoes of this all-too- familiar drama. We are also reminded that Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) is the nephew of Castro’s first wife and thus also a first cousin to Castro’s oldest son, “Fidelito.” We are led to see why Diaz-Balart carries heavy emotional baggage in all of his attempts to sway Congress to vote for “retrograde legislation” concerning Cuba.

We are taken deep inside the households connected by blood and marriage to Elian Gonzalez, both in Cuba and Florida. We are reminded at every turn of the absence of ideology and of the soap-opera plot lines that led to the boat wreck, the custody war and the media frenzy: We learn that Elian’s mother didn’t flee Cuba in a flimsy skiff because she was seeking freedom but rather because her love life was a mess and that the same passionate disorder extended to everyone else on that ill-fated voyage and to the family members who battled for custody of Elian.

We learn of the many misdeeds and strong-arm tactics of the so-called hard-line leaders who seem to control the Cuban community in South Florida with an iron fist, men who are described by Bardach as “the roughest, toughest crowd this side of the mujahideen.” We are shown that their view of leadership is quite similar to Castro’s and are told that all South Floridians live in a state of fear that is perhaps more profound than that of the people of Cuba. We are constantly reminded of the power wielded by Cubans in Dade County and also of the fact that “the depth and breadth of corruption in Miami is unparalleled in the U.S.”

Before long we come to realize that, sadly, Cubans are incapable of understanding or following the basic principles of democratic government and that it is largely because of them that South Florida has turned into a banana republic. And this last item brings the reader full circle to the beginning, for Bardach traces Castro’s hatred of America to his thirst for vengeance against the United Fruit Co., which not only employed his father-in-law and held parties at which he was snubbed but also competed for banana-growing land with his own very rich father.

That Bardach has been stung by Cuban passion is evident. When it comes to hate, she has felt both the wrath of Castro, whose government shut her out from Cuba for some time, and the ire of the exile “hard-liners” in South Florida, those “mujahideen” who have tried to intimidate her. When it comes to love, it is clear that she has sunk roots into both Cuban communities and that, like all who are embraced by foreigners who are at one another’s throats, her love is hemmed in by question marks and no small measure of suspicion.

Her command of detail is far too intimate, her affection for Cuban slang and for those who use it too transparent. In many ways, this highly engrossing collection of narratives is perhaps as close to an inside view of the Cuban mess as one can hope for from an outsider.

Yet, when all is said and done, this remains an outsider’s view and a very arbitrary one at that. However much “Cuba Confidential” is written with a magisterial voice, it raises serious questions about the ability of any outsider to interpret another people and their history, about objectivity, journalistic license and the line between reporting and editorializing.

Bardach’s approach resembles impressionist art: by reducing everything to the personal and psychological level and by glossing over the ethical and political questions that bedevil all Cubans, she enhances some details at the expense of others and provides a highly stylized view that cannot possibly be shared by the subjects themselves. The ability to create such an impressionistic lens is itself a highly contrived privilege available only to those who have lived their entire lives in a supposedly un-ideological universe in which political rights are guaranteed, including freedom of speech. It’s above all a very American privilege.

No Cuban could have the freedom of movement, the comforts or the access to powerful elites granted within Cuba to an American journalist. No Cuban anywhere could easily conceive of his or her own history the way Bardach does. It would require imagining the impossible and at the same time denying what is most obvious.

All historians and journalists engage in reductionism -- or spin -- to some extent, and reductionism has its virtues: By simplifying complex scenarios, a skilled writer does often hit upon truth. But it is only a partial truth, and the more one simplifies, the more fragmentary the truth becomes. Bardach is correct in viewing the Cuban mess as a family feud or as something governed by passion. She is also correct in identifying streaks of megalomania and intolerance in Miami and Havana. Yes, this is all true enough, and it makes for good reading. But there is also much more at issue than love and hate or the boiling over of hot Latin blood.

At bottom, Bardach’s understanding of Cubans lacks sensitivity to the logic of coercive governments and of those who oppose them. Which brings us back to Elian’s Pioneer garb. When she suggests that the Pioneer uniform worn by schoolchildren in Cuba is not unlike that worn by students in Catholic schools in the United States -- and that it was ridiculous for Cuban exiles to be upset by photos that showed Elian dressed as a Pioneer -- one crucial distinction is ignored: In the United States, wearing a Catholic school uniform is a matter of choice, at least for the parents, but in Cuba the Pioneer uniform is forced upon all children. Moreover, Bardach fails to see that the Pioneer uniform stands for a rigidly doctrinaire and paramilitary educational system in which even the math problems are loaded with ideological content. Comparing Pioneer garb to Nazi Youth uniforms would have been much more appropriate, that is, unless Bardach means to equate Catholic schools with the Third Reich.

Which in a roundabout way brings us to something Bardach barely mentions: Operation Pedro Pan. Few Americans know that 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban children were willingly sent to the States by their parents from 1960 to 1962, in sheer desperation, out of concern for the very questions Bardach dismisses, namely those that have to do with human rights. Enough Elians to fill a whole suburb, unnoticed; grief beyond measure, purposely embraced. Most of these instant orphans had no relatives or friends who could take them in upon arriving in Florida, and everyone involved knew that there was a very good chance of never seeing each other again. Why would any mother or father choose to do this? Of course the answer is bewilderingly complex, but one factor loomed large in the reasoning of these parents: They feared seeing their children turn into Pioneers. This was not an unreasonable choice but a logical one. By law, the new constitution drafted by Castro and his cohorts made the Revolution the ultimate guardian of all Cuban children. This was no mere legal technicality but a real threat to all parents. Many teenagers were already being forcibly sent on Revolutionary errands within Cuba or to some of the satellite states of the Soviet Union; kids from the countryside were being plucked from their families and sent to Pioneer camps in Havana.

Faced with the choice of seeing their children dressed as Pioneers in Cuba and the Soviet bloc or as paupers in the United States, thousands of parents opted for the humbler apparel and the grief that came with it. As many saw it, they had no other choice. Freedom was that important to them. Bardach mentions this episode in Cuban history briefly, in one paragraph about midway through the book, and the spin she puts on it sums up her perspective.

According to her, being subjected to the Pedro Pan exodus counts as a privilege: The airlift was a “perk” that has been not awarded to any other immigrant group -- some sort of economic aid package -- and it serves as proof that Cuban exiles have been coddled, and that their success story in the States has more to do with American largess than with any positive cultural traits they might claim as their own.

Good grief. Never mind what the parents suffered: that should be obvious to anyone who empathized with Elian’s father. Think of the kids. Operation Pedro Pan was no Head Start program. Most of these boys and girls spent years on their own because Castro’s government prevented their parents from leaving Cuba. Many ended up living in squalid, brutal places, including orphanages and halfway houses for delinquents. Some had to drop out of school or put it on the back burner. Many were never reunited with their families. All were scarred for life by the experience, and yet all had to compete for their share of the American pie as Hispanics, an ethnic minority that many Americans continue to view as inferior and quite incapable of rational behavior.

I know this because I was one of those kids. If such an ordeal counts as a perk, or if it really has nothing to do with the pursuit of freedom, please send me to hell; it’s bound to be a much more reasonable place. Besides, in hell no one will blame us Cubans for ruining the neighborhood. Not even the journalists.