Socialist Action /April 2000
EDITORIAL: The Elian Gonzalez Gase
As we go to press, it appears that the U.S. government is finally preparing
to turn Elian Gonzalez over to his father, after more than four months of
delays and anti-Communist drum-beating. U.S. capitalist politicians and
the media in general have exploited the case of this six-year-old child
to try to make propaganda points against the Cuban revolution.
In her press conference announcing the decision to restore Elian to his
father, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno took a gratuitous swipe at the
Cuban government: "Cuba is repressive society governed by a dictator
from whom thousands have fled."
But ultimately, the United States could not fail to return Elian without
paying an excessive price. It is not simply that holding Elian would be
a clear violation of the law and even the "family values" professed
by all the bourgeois conservatives.
The fact is that the anti-Communist propaganda did not work. The great
majority of Americans were unmoved by it. And the more the politicians and
the Cuban counterrevolutionaries pounded on this theme, the more they risked
getting an allergic reaction.
They were coming to be seen as the political fanatics blind to basic
human rights, not the Cuban revolutionary government. So, political exploitation
of this case was becoming a losing game for them, and the more intelligent
of them seem to have decided to get out of it.
Nonetheless, genuine supporters of human rights and human values need
to continue to raise a hue and cry about the U.S. officials' exploitation
of this case and against any further stalling in the return of Elian to
his father. It is also important that the lessons be drawn about the ruthlessness
and hypocrisy of the U.S. ruling class and its politicians and mass media
stooges to forestall further abuses of this type.
Socialist Action /April 2000 |