COMPLETED WORKS

EL NIÑO ELIAN CAUSES FURY IN THE FLORIDA STRAITS--WHY?

by Curtis W. Long

Despite their classification as nouns denoting diminutiveness, both "El Niño" and el niño Elián González have proven to be phenomena of gigantic proportions. Why all the fuss about an otherwise insignificant child?

As the 1900s were ebbing into the sea of time, a little boy is discovered, barely alive, tied to an inner tube, floating in the waters near the Florida peninsula. This niño is about to become the most talked-about child since Jon Benet Ramsey. He will transmogrify into the fragile bone of a most contentious political tug-of-war that began 35 years before he was conceived.

At that time, there was another Cuban dictator, Fulgencio Batista, who (just as Fidel Castro) did everything in his power to make Cuba a tropical paradise for everyone except disenfranchised Cuban citizens. This type of grandiose and misplaced hospitality, of course, affords the host unlimited and, incidentally, unaccounted-for perquisites. He made Havana a mecca for the "propeller-set" of the day.

In Batista's Cuba, the large hotels of Havana (as a prelude to what a then nascent Las Vegas was to become) featured high-rolling gambling casinos, fabulous, low-décolletage nightclubs, fine dining rooms and elegant prostitution. This montage of sensuous lures attracted the idle and not-so-idle rich of the world. Prominent among the American regulars were screen star George Raft and writer Ernest "Papa" Hemingway. Raft was noted for his gangster roles in films-and, it is alleged, he carried over this persona to his reputed financial interests in Cuban gambling. Havana served as an exotic background for many of the Hollywood pictures of the 1930s and 1940s.

There was, however, a dark side (or a lack thereof) to all of this glitter. As may be noted in those same Hollywood representations of Havana, Cuba's well-known melting pot was not permitted to boil over into the flesh pots of the rich and famous. This, undoubtedly, was all tied up in class and other superficial exclusions, but whereas some enterprising and otherwise exclusionary Cubans might have been able to thwart these barriers, formal dress-and certainly not bating attire-would not be disguise enough for others. And, as Havana raged on in its decadent opulence, the poor Guajiros in the mountains and other descamisados became poorer, hungrier and sicker. They were also among the world's most illiterate of the time.

In the meantime, in the Sierra Maestra of Oriente Province, a growing band of rebels headed by one Fidel Castro Ruz bides its time. They have been secretly trained in Mexico, and have as their political guru an Argentinean playboy-cum-Marxist named Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Castro conceals his true intentions and, with considerable assistance from the United States Government, he vows to liberate Cuba from the clutches of Batista and institute democracy in his island homeland.

Castro did, in fact, drive out Batista in 1959. But something happened to him "on the way to the Forum." He rejected democratic government and declared that he always had been a Marxist-Leninist. He also said that history would absolve him for what he was about to do. In fact, if history were fair, it would take note of the fact that, despite Castro's failed experiment in Socialism:

• Cuba's literacy rate was raised to one of the highest in the world.
• Medical treatment was made available to everybody, without cost. (Cuba has so many doctors that they are exported to other, more medically needy countries.)
• All Cubans are encouraged to participate in and appreciate their and other countries' arts and culture.
• Cubans are encouraged-but not required-to free themselves from the yoke of organized religion.
• Discrimination by race or color was eliminated.

Now, back to our bone of contention. In Castro's attempt to accomplish all of this, he had to eliminate the opposition-one way or the other. One way was to sink to the ground at the paredón under the thunder of his firing squads or increase the population of political prisons. The other way was to flee to Miami with your shirt on your back and as much jewelry as your knickers would hold. The smart ones got out while the door was still open and the airlines still left on schedule. Those who tenuously held on, hoping for eventual salvation, were ultimately disabused of all hope after the disastrous Bay of Pigs fiasco.

Over time, southern Florida has been converted into a virtual Cuba-in-exile. Those of the original exodus have maintained the diehard position that their polluted lifestyle was stolen from them and, by God, they want it back! This fervor has been transmitted to succeeding, U.S. -born generations in the form of righteous, patriotic sentiment for a homeland they have never seen.

Over the years, these southern Florida Cubans have utilized their considerable political and financial power to keep the heat turned up on Fidel Castro, in the vain hope that they may outlive him and someday return to Cuba and claim what is rightfully theirs. The U.S. Government has been complicit in all of this by stubbornly maintaining an anachronistic economic blockade against a politically and militarily innocuous Cuba. We do this as we blithely go about plying trade with the much more dangerous Socialist states of North Korea and China.

You wonder why all the fuss about a solitary little boy plucked from the sea? That is why. As for the niño Elián González: Dear little child, one would only hope to shield you from all of this venom and irreconcilable hatred, but the watery fate that you so precariously eluded has merely delivered you to another fate that you are less equipped to handle.