Grumpy old men

The aging exile leaders who are trying to keep Elian Gonzalez in the United States have a lot in common with their anti-democratic nemesis, Fidel Castro.

By Max J. Castro

Apr 6, 2000 | All week long the radio news in Miami has blared the same report: "Negotiations between Justice Department officials and the Miami relatives of Elian Gonzalez are set to resume Thursday, April 6," the reporters intone, over and over.

Now, with the arrival of Juan Miguel Gonzalez from Cuba to finally retrieve his son, the impasse of the past four months seems incredible: How has it come to pass that the U.S. Justice Department, the scourge of drug dealers and Bill Gates, has been forced to negotiate with the extended family of Elian Gonzalez, average working-class people who, according to a federal district judge and virtually every immigration and family-law expert in this country, don't have a legal leg on which to stand?

The answer, of course, is the political strength of the Cuban-American community. But who are these people anyway, who make up four-tenths of 1 percent of the U.S. population, and how did they get such clout? Why do George W. Bush and Al Gore dance to their tune even against public opinion?

Why are they so obsessed with Fidel Castro that hatred of him and his system seems to outweigh all other values, even parental rights and, if you believe those who promise violence if Elian is removed from his uncle's Miami home, the rule of law? And why do they use language and tactics, including stifling dissent, that strike Americans as undemocratic and invite comparison with Castro and his regime?

A key fact about the Cuban-American community, one that's been obscured in this battle over a 6-year-old boy, is the fact that it's a gerontocracy. The oldest, most traumatized, most bitter generation is still the largest and most powerful group of Cubans. Americans are used to thinking of the Latino population as young, but in this and many other ways, Cubans are closer to the white American norm than to Latino averages.

While the census found that 20.4 percent of Americans were 55 or older as of March 1999, among Cuban-Americans the figure is almost 31 percent. In contrast, only 9 percent of Americans of Mexican origin are over 55. Conversely, only 22 percent of Cuban-Americans are under 21, compared to 43.9 percent of Mexicans and 30.8 of the American population overall.

In Miami, there are still many tens of thousands who lived through the 1959 revolution and its sequel of dispossession of the wealthy and the middle class, executions and the taking of political prisoners. A social revolution, like a civil war, is a heart-rending, polarizing event that leaves deep scars and has a long afterlife. Americans are still arguing about the Confederate flag and the legacy of the Civil War more than 130 years later.

Not only do these revolution survivors outnumber younger Cubans, they often compel their deference, out of respect, affection, fear, loyalty, convenience or even indifference. And those who disagree usually find themselves at a distinct linguistic disadvantage debating older Cubans on those few Spanish-language radio stations that actually permit debate.

As a Cuban-American who has taken stands unpopular with the hard-line leadership -- favoring the return of Elian to his father, for instance, and an end to the U.S. embargo -- I know firsthand that there is a huge Cuban-American political closet, filled with people who agree with me but will never say so publicly. And I've experienced the bitterness of the generational divide in personal and painful ways. Recently, at a wake for the wife of my uncle, an ultraconservative Cuban-American about 15 years my senior (I am 48), I went to shake his hand. He refused point blank.

Stunned, I walked outside and told my cousin, a 40-year-old moderately conservative attorney. He tried to laugh it off at first, then was apologetic. When the conversation turned to politics, he told me privately that "the embargo doesn't make sense" any more. But he had more important business to deal with and made it clear that he would not be speaking out on the issue any time soon.

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