A six-year old Cuban boy has become a symbol of what is wrong with this country. In the last two months when the little boy was plucked from the sea, interest groups- Cuban-Americans, politicians and the Cuban government- has exploited the situation to their selfish gains. In the whirlwind of international publicity, an innocent boy has been turned into a bone of contention. It is not a complicated issue and does not require the Wisdom of Solomon for its solution.

The US immigration laws are simple enough. The surviving parent, in this case the father, has the right to the boy’s custody. But Cuban-American lobby, opportunistic politicians and the right wing anti communists have made it complicated.

The Cuban-Americans, 700,000 strong, have a profound hatred of Cuba’s long time ruler Fidel Castro. They seldom miss an opportunity to humiliate him. Now they are doing it on the back of an innocent boy. Ever since the failed attempt to invade Cuba in the early 60’s, the Cuban-Americans have dictated our public policy towards Cuba. We are the only country without diplomatic relations with Cuba. Any efforts to normalize relations with Cuba have been sabotaged by this powerful lobby. Through federal legislation enacted in the sixties the Cuban refugees enjoy a preferential treatment for residency and citizenship in this country. Hopelessly stuck in the murky waters of the Bay of Pigs, Cuban-Americans continue to dictate our policy towards Cuba.

Adding fuel to the fire are our opportunistic politicians particularly the Republicans. Rudolph Giuliani, George W. Bush, John McCain and the old ideologue Senator Jesse Helms have thrown their weight with the Cuban-Americans. The Congress, in an unprecedented move, is planning to pass legislation to grant US citizenship to the boy. Never mind the boy is a minor, can not speak for himself and the only person who can- his father- has been totally ignored. It says more about the selfish motives of our politicians than the psychological well being of a little boy. So much for their traditional stand on family values.

It is amazing that the legislatures, who wish to grant citizenship to Elian, conveniently ignore the plight of other refugees who make the perilous journey to our shores. Recently 437 Haitians were deported to Haiti without any fanfare. Refugees from other countries are routinely sent back into the clutches of the regimes they had fled from in the first place. In this new era we return the ‘wretched refuse of your teeming shore’ of Emma Lazarus’s The New Colossus and keep a Cuban poster boy for our selfish political propaganda against Castro. Why Elian should stay in this country? The proponents say that the boy will have a bright future in this country. They also invoke the ultimate sacrifice his mother gave in rescuing her son from Castro’s Cuba.

Powerful stuff but blatantly untrue. The boy’s mother left Cuba, not for the future of her son, but to follow her lover who had planned the boat trip and perished at sea with others.

It must be deja vu For Fidel Castro. While imprisoned in the early fifties by the Batista regime for his revolutionary ideas. Castro’s divorced wife took their six-year old son Fidelito to Florida. Castro wrote powerful letters from the prison demanding his return to Cuba. A few years later when Castro was in exile in Mexico the boy did come to see him on a temporary visit. Fearing that Castro would keep the boy with him, the boy was kidnapped and returned to his mother in Florida.

It was not until 1959 when Castro came into power that the boy returned to Cuba to live with his father. A geophycist by profession, Fidelito Castro still lives in his father’s Cuba.

When and if Elian will be reunited with his father is hard to tell. But one thing is very clear. We must engage Castro and normalize our relations with Cuba. All the posturing and rhetoric of the Cuban-American lobby aside, the path to diplomatic recognition does not have to pass through Miami’s Little Havana. The sooner we recognize Cuba the better for this country and for the people of that poor island.