No good can come of this

Myths and harsh realities in the political sludge match over Elian Gonzalez.

By Bruce Shapiro

Apr 8, 2000 | With Juan Miguel Gonzalez now in Washington, the awful spectacle around his shipwrecked son Elian is moving, at last, toward closure. His Miami relatives feel the legal sand beneath their feet shifting further by the hour. The fantasy of a family court hearing is fading, as is the fantasy of uncle Lazaro Gonzalez's custody of the boy, while the Justice Department draws up its plan to return Elian to his father.

This brief moment between Juan Miguel's arrival and the revocation of custody grants some time -- time to consider some of the myths that still permeate media coverage of Elian's saga.

Myth No. 1. This is a fight over "the best interests of the child." I put that question to pioneering child psychiatrist Dr. Albert Solnit. He is founder of the Yale University Child Study Center and architect, along with Anna Freud and Joseph Goldstein, of child-protection standards that shaped laws in many states over the last two generations.

However you look at it, says Solnit, no legal or psychological "best interest" standards are involved here. The best interests of the child, says Solnit, "refers to continuity of affectionate, protective care." That means care over a lifetime, not a few months. There are times, Solnit agrees, when a child's bonds with a foster family outweigh those of his biological parents; but for a 6-year-old, Solnit says, four months in a foster-family's care "is no contest. Especially since by all reports this boy's father was as much if not more involved with his care than his mother."

The role cast for Elian by Miami's Cuban leadership reminds Solnit of the exploitation of children in particularly contentious divorces. "We see this all the time in divorcing parents who use the child as a way to keep fighting. The parents stay tied to one anther through agression -- and the child is just a medium to do this, gets treated like chattel.

But what about the argument advanced by Miami's Cubans, that returning to Cuba is by definition against Elian's best interests? "Look," says Solnit. "I wouldn't like to live in Cuba. But for a young child, the parent is the country."

Myth No. 2. Elian's case belongs in family court. That's the position articulated by Lazaro Gonzalez's family, by Florida's politicos -- and recently by Vice President Al Gore, who in his desperate desire to defeat George W. Bush in Florida infuriated his own party by endorsing the Elian residency bill.

In fact, nothing could be further damaging to Elian than months of dragged-out, overwrought custody hearings. Historian Linda Gordon points out that claims like those made by Elian's Miami relatives -- offering a culturally superior upbringing "in the best interests of the child" -- are common through history. The same argument was used by white Australians who snatched children from their aboriginal parents, on behalf of Inuit children forcibly removed from their families in Canada, as well as Sephardic Jewish children stolen and given to Ashkenazic Jewish families in Israel. As Gordon puts it, all such cultural custody fights are "saturated with politics" and profoundly traumatic for the children involved.

Indeed, federal Judge K. Michael Moore warned weeks ago that Lazaro Gonzalez's lawyers might "bring about unintended harm" with their unsuccessful lawsuit seeking political asylum for the boy. Moore said that harm might grow with "each passing day" Elian is separated from his father.

Myth No. 3: If the case went to family court, Elian's Miami relatives would win. On this one, Attorney General Janet Reno should propose a deal: Let the case go to family court, provided only that Lazaro Gonzalez agrees to a change of venue from Florida to some state where the family judges aren't elected by Cuban contributions and consultants. Reno could make that bet with a clean conscience, because the Lazaro Gonzalez household would give any reasonable judge not on the Miami Cuban payroll pause. Lazaro himself has two DUI convictions. Elian's cousins have robbery convictions. Daughter Marisleysis, touted as Elian's "surrogate mother," is only 22.

And the Miami Cuban leaders who have insinuated themselves into the Gonzalez household and financed Lazaro's legal team make the picture even worse, from a child-custody standpoint. Jorge Mas Santos, head of the Cuban American National Foundation and a key player in the case, was recently identified as the focus of a grand jury investigation involving $58 million in Miami-Dade County paving contracts for work never performed, according to the Miami Herald. These are the kinds of mobbed-up associations any family judge would have to question.

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