Nine years ago today, little Elian Gonzalez was rescued from the ocean. Shortly thereafter, we took the Pilgrim Virgin Statue of Our Lady of Fatima to visit him at his uncle's home in Miami.
When he saw the statue, he said: "I saw her before. She was with me on the ocean. But she didn't have that thing on her head..."
How sad it was that Elian was sent to back to Communist Cuba.
Here are some considerations on the topic, and let us take advantage of today, Thanksgiving, to thank God for the blessings we still have in the USA...how much longer will we have them?
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Where Is Elian’s Journey Leading Us?
The steady stream of photos of a smiling Elian Gonzalez reunited with his father could well foster the impression of a happy ending to the sad story of this young Cuban refugee. Were one naive enough to believe this, one might well conclude that the entire matter was a tempest in a Miami teapot. Moreover, one would think that Bernard Cardinal Law of Boston was quite right when he said the whole thing was nothing but a circus with a simple solution: returning the boy to his father.1
With possession regarded as nine points of the law, Elian’s is a closed case for many Americans. All too soon, this family affair will be yesterday’s news. Father knows best, and Fidel – who in a candid moment described himself as the true father of all Cubans – will have won more than meets the eye for his “new look.” Cuba’s baseball team has already come to the United States to play the Orioles, and American tourists, in turn, are visiting the prison island in growing numbers. All’s well that ends well.
In this prevalent – if perverse – mindset, the valiant fight for Elian’s freedom is reduced to three elements: a nonsensical case of parental rights, an emotional group of aging anticommunist Cubans, and a government that overreacted by using armed force to solve the problem.
Is that its real meaning? Is that how we will see it when we look back years from now? Does the fact that Elian appears to be happy with his father and stepmother end the story? We’re not so sure. Before the final chapter is written and the camera lights go out, we have a few words to say.
What is the real issue? Returning a child
to his father, or dealing with Cuba’s stark reality?
Of course, if the Elian case really concerned only the father’s rights, there would have been no case – and no story to consume so much printer’s ink and radio and television airtime.
Behind the question of the father looms the larger problem of the fatherland, or rather, the unrepentant communist dictatorship. That decrepit despotism lies at the heart of the matter – and everyone knows it.
A courageous group of priests on the island recently declared that Castro’s regime shows “diabolical efficacy” in its domination of the Cuban people.2 Even the United Nations Human Rights Commission has again condemned Cuba for its human rights violations.3
There is no freedom in that island prison, where the most basic civil liberties – the freedom to practice one’s faith, to own property, to associate with friends of one’s choosing, to express one’s opinions openly, to travel in safety – are routinely denied.
Elian’s return to Cuba – forced or voluntary – cannot alter that fundamental reality. By holding on to him, the Cuban-American community was fighting to defend him from a police state whose constitution decrees that “the formation of the communist personality of youths and children” belongs, not to the parents, but to the government.4
Let justice be restored in Cuba and we will restore friendly ties
If, like Cuban-Americans, all Americans had a family member languishing in a Cuban prison (well out of sight of free-spending tourists), we would soon join the anti-Castro chorus of our Cuban-American brothers and sisters. And instead of inviting Castro’s baseball team to come and play in our cities, we would demand that Castro liberate our kinfolk before any improvement in relations. We would settle for nothing less.
If, like Cuban-Americans, all Americans had relatives subjected to the stifling oppression in Cuba, earning a pittance for their hard labors, eating whatever rations are distributed, while being forced to proclaim their allegiance to Marxist doctrine and policies, would we tolerate any cozying up to Castro?
Of course not. Rather, the American people would rise up as one to demand that the regime branded by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger as the “shame of our time”5 be overthrown, and that freedom, private property, free enterprise, and family life be restored.
If every American family had a relative in such demeaning and unnatural conditions, would anyone dare raise the question of loosening – much less lifting – the embargo against so cruel a regime? Obviously, no. The only acceptable option would be the total restoration of a free society under the rule of law.
We must steer clear of this “psy-war” maneuver!
A crafty maneuver of revolutionary psychological warfare is under way, seeking to exploit the good-hearted sentiments for which Americans are renowned and blind our eyes to a rabid wolf in sheep’s clothing. We are expected to accept as a legitimate ruler a blood-stained despot – the unelected “President” Castro – while closing our eyes to steps designed to normalize relations with his police state. In short, we are being asked to endorse the Neville Chamberlains of our day—or at least to look the other way at their betrayal.
Would we have agreed to cozy up to Hitler in 1944? Unthinkable!
We must not forget that to uphold the principles of freedom, America waged wars against Nazism and its evil twin, communism, sacrificing legions of her sons.
Are we not the same America? Why should we renounce our principles and convictions now? The very principles that made America great?
The American TFP does not believe our nation will so dishonor itself. Rather, we cherish an abiding hope, nurtured in faith, that we will defeat these psy-war intrigues and work to restore the sound principles of our nation’s glorious past that have made America known across the globe as the “land of the free and the home of the brave.”
Our future – and the future of the world – depends to a great degree on our faithfulness to that heritage.
We turn our thoughts and prayers to God Almighty and to Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre, who watches over Cuba as its patron saint. Divine Providence saved Elian from the shark-infested waters of the Florida Straits. May Our Lady and Her Divine Son intervene soon to liberate the millions of “Elians” still groaning under the communist yoke and, above all, to keep America faithful to its noble ideals.
The American TFP
April 26, 2000
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Read more about what we did to defend Elian:
The American TFP returns to the streets to denounce Communism
Washington, D.C.
"Tradition! Family! Property!"the young men assembled beneath the towering red standard with the gold lion proclaim, their chorus rising above the din of the hustle and bustle of the downtown square. The team then disperses, each man heading to his post on a different corner. A passing businessman momentarily slows his steady pace to glance up from his newspaper at the banner billowing aloft in the breeze. A lady enjoying an ice cream cone pauses to inquire, “What is this all about?” A fair enough question — what are these young men doing anyway? For the past month, they have traveled from city to city taking part in the American TFP’s campaign to keep the plight of Elian Gonzalez before the public and to remind our fellow Americans that Communism is anything but dead in his homeland, Cuba. Such TFP caravans have visited over 60 cities to date, distributing the TFP’s statement addressing Elian’s crisis and the questions it raises.
A somewhat different message
First published in The Washington Times, The Wanderer and later in the Diario de Las Americas, “Where is Elian’s Journey Leading Us?” reminds its readers that Cuba is still ruled by a Communist dictator whose regime decrees the “formation of the communist personality of youths and children.” The statement reminds us that Communism continues to oppress millions of other “Elians” in Cuba.
Washington, D.C.
Comprised of six young TFP members, the first team set out on May 3 to spread this message — reprinted as leaflets — across the nation. Their first stop was Pittsburgh.
They unfurled their scarlet standard at noon, just in time for the lunch-hour rush. One young man held the standard, while his confreres spread out to distribute fliers. Soon, the same arguments that would be raised in other cities were heard.
“Send him back to Cuba. We’re already spending too much money on foreigners!” one angry man spat out.
“A boy belongs with his dad”
Some arguments, of course, were more kindly motivated than others. “A boy belongs with his dad, after all,” one young mother reasoned. Calmly and gently, the young man explained that, unfortunately, Elian wouldn’t be with his father in Cuba.
In accordance with the Communist constitution imposed on that island prison and Cuba’s Code on Childhood and Youth, the Red regime will remove Elian from his home when he turns seven. Elian, like all Cuban children, will be sent away for mandatory military training. During this preschool boot camp, he will be allowed to see his father only twice a week. At 12, Elian will graduate to Communist slave labor camps, where he will be lucky to see his father twice a month. Could this be why Elian’s mom — the forgotten parent — sacrificed her life in a desperate bid to free her son from Castro’s family-destroying grasp? Little wonder that one in five of her countrymen have also tried to escape Fidel’s prison state.
The journey continues
New York City
The caravan continued west, carrying its message of freedom to such Midwestern cities as Cincinnati and Chicago. Then, heading south through Kentucky and Tennessee, campaigning in several cities en route, the team arrived in Atlanta on May 11, the day a Federal appeals court heard the appeal of Elian’s Miami relatives on the plucky boy’s behalf. A TFP member was present in the courtroom to witness the historic proceeding and show support for Elian’s right to be free.
From Atlanta, the caravan once again turned west, traveling through Alabama and Mississippi, across Louisiana, and into Texas, where the team campaigned in Fort Worth, Dallas, and Houston. Returning to Louisiana and Alabama to conduct campaigns there, the intrepid band continued on to Florida.
A cause for all freedom-loving Americans
Knowing that Miami’s Cuban patriots were making the case for Elian’s freedom there, the caravan had naturally concentrated its complementary efforts elsewhere. But at the urging of old and new friends in Miami’s Cuban-American community, the team arrived in Miami for a three-day campaign with a special message: We are Americans and as Americans, we want to keep Elian free. Trying to save Elian — every Elian, in the United States and in Cuba — is a cause worthy of the support of all freedom-loving Americans, not just those of Cuban birth or heritage.
The Cuban-Americans we had the pleasure of meeting thanked us for our support, and their generous hearts often moved them to tears. “Tell America that we love this country!” one son of Cuba exhorted us, “The media has portraying us as a bunch of hot-headed foreigners who hate America, but that is a lie.” Promising to convey his message, it seemed clear that these anti-Communist, freedom-loving citizens are far more “American” than the liberal media that slanders them while whitewashing Castro and his cronies.
“America! America! America!”
Key West, FL
From Miami, the caravan drove to Key West. There, at the southernmost point of the United States and its closest point to Cuba, the young men prayed three Hail Mary’s for Elian and the Cuban people and shouted their challenge to Castro’s Communist regime “Tradition! Family! Property!” three times, followed by “America! America! America!”
Leaving Key West, the team headed homeward through Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia, raising the standard and distributing thousands of leaflets in numerous cities en route. On June 3, the caravan reached the headquarters of the American TFP in Spring Grove, Pennsylvania. In just 32 days, they had campaigned in 33 cities, passed out more than 50,000 fliers, and traveled over 9,000 miles.
“Viva Castro! Viva Ché!”
The success of the first caravan inspired a second. Its team, comprised of eight young TFP members, set out for the Northeast. In just one week, they carried the debate over the future of Elian, of Cuba, and ultimately of the United States, to eight cities, beginning with Boston, the heart of New England and of the founding colonies of our nation.
As they stood on the steps of Boston’s historic Fauneuil Hall, one gracious lady enthusiastically exclaimed, “I can’t believe men like you still exist in America!” Others seemed less pleased with the prospect. “Viva Castro! Viva Ché!” shouted one ragtag lot of young revolutionaries.
“Live free or die”
From the crowded streets of Boston, the caravan headed north to the smaller cities of rural New Hampshire, home of United States Senator Bob Smith, a stalwart defender of Elian and of freedom. The team campaigned in Concord, the state capital, in Manchester, its largest city, and in coastal Portsmouth. Before departing the Granite state, whose motto is “Live free or die,” the campaigners visited Dartmouth, one of America’s oldest universities. Then on to Albany, where the team braved fierce winds on the streets of New York’s capital before heading home to Spring Grove.
On hearing the encouraging reports of their confreres, TFP members still at the national headquarters did not wish to forgo the privilege of serving on the frontlines in this fight for freedom. Twenty of them raised four large standards in Washington, D.C., where over fifteen thousand fliers were distributed, and then in New York City.
“Justice for Elian!”
Not content with these efforts, another TFP caravan set out on June 11 to take Elian’s case across America to California and the West Coast. Whatever decision is rendered by the courts of law — perhaps even the nation’s highest — which thus far have refused to hear from Elian, we believe the cause of Elian’s freedom, for which his mother paid the highest price love could demand, deserves a fair hearing in the court of American public opinion.
History will render its own judgment, as will the Supreme Judge before Whom all men must one day stand. It is in His service that we demand, “Justice for Elian! Justice for the Cuban people! Justice for all!”
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