Better The Devil Cubans Know

The fact that Elian's father has resisted such entreaties is often explained away as evidence of his being controlled or boxed in by the Cuban government. Bur Gonzalez's steadfast desire to return to Cuba has little to do with complicated questions of ideology, and can be better understood in much simpler terms: if there's one thing that average Cubans dislike more than Fidel Castro, it is El Jefe's most virulent Miami-based opponents.

In the past four decades several hundred thousand Cubans have chosen to come to the U.S. (A similar percentage of Mexicans, Colombians or Haitians would have surely done so as well if they could have expected the same cushy treatment the U.S. government has offered Cuban exiles.) But many millions of other Cubans have no relocation plans. Over the past years I have traveled to Cuba a dozen times and met countless Cubans, who, like Juan Miguel Gonzalez, are loyal Communist Party members and who express no itch to flee their homeland. They are not brainwashed, or robots. Sure, a few are zealous true believers. Others are careerist cynics who have a direct and privileged stake in the government bureaucracy.

But the overwhelming majority of Cubans?Communists and Catholics alike?whom I have spoken to are neither blind nor stupid. Once they know you even superficially, they will tell you without hesitation that they are tired of the material deprivations that constitute daily life in Cuba. They are disgusted with salaries that buy almost nothing in an economy increasingly tilted toward tourist dollars. They chafe at their inability to travel. And more than you might expect, they will go on to tell you that after 40 years of his rule, they have had quite enough of Castro.

Once those denunciations have been made, however, they usually rush to add this sort of qualifier: "Don't get me wrong. As bad as things are now, I also know that if those in Miami come back to power, things will be even worse."

In the past few days I have gotten a steady flow of e-mail across the Florida straits from some of these Cuban friends. And once again they make the same point. Yes, Castro has cashed in on the Elian crisis, whipping up a patriotic fervor that distracts the eye and the heart from the grind of everyday life. They point to the hypocrisy of the Cuban government in making Elian's case a cause celebre while hundreds of children in Cuba are being denied family reunification with a parent who has gone to the United States.

But, these friends of mine say, the behavior of "those in Miami" is simply horrifying and once again evokes the nightmare of a post-Castro Cuba governed by the hardline exile groups.

The hardest-line and most potent of these organizations is the extreme right-wing Cuban American National Foundation, which has been stage-managing the Elian Show. Since its creation in the earliest days of the Reagan administration (with direct assistance from the Great Communicator's State Dept.), the foundation has held U.S. policy toward Cuba hostage to its intransigence and vitriol. Succeeding U.S. administrations closed their eyes to the armed extremist groups encouraged by the foundation. They stood impassive as more moderate Cuban-American voices were openly intimidated and threatened into silence. They ignored commonsense pleas for a political and business opening toward Cuba.

The arrangement was simple: the foundation would fork out juicy campaign contributions. And, in return, Democrats and Republicans would compete to pander to an extremist lobby that didn't hesitate to exaggerate and distort reality in its own narrow interests. It's enough to note the marathon foot-dragging by Attorney General Janet Reno in resolving this simple matter. What better display of craven kowtowing to the thugs who manage Cuban exile politics?

Now it isn't just policy, but Elian Gonzalez himself, that is being held hostage by this same foundation, which is brazenly orchestrating the sordid psychodrama unfolding in the streets of Little Havana. And it's not only Juan Miguel Gonzalez who looks on in horror. So do millions of other Cubans.

They see the blatant and embarrassing lying. The willingness to hold Elian from his father while one intellectually insulting myth after another is blared to the media with a straight face: that Elian will be tortured if he returns; that he will be subjected to mind control; that he will be the personal property of Fidel Castro; that his father has to be programmed to ask for his flesh and blood to be returned to him; that attorney Greg Craig, Janet Reno and maybe even Bill Clinton are simple stooges for El Lider Maximo. The rule of law is scoffed at not only by the demonstrators in the streets but by the pro-foundation Mayors of Miami and Miami-Dade County. And, as usual, America's leading political candidates, led by the pathetic Al-pha Gore, shamelessly pander to these outrages.

And while reason, logic, law and family values are snubbed, the most retrograde appeals to religious obscurantism are floated: Elian, we are told, has been sent to Dade County by God Himself. The Holy Virgin has materialized in his bedroom. Elian is no less than the messiah who will free Cuba.

In Havana, ordinary Cubans look at this self-righteous and arrogant claptrap, the disdain for dialogue and decency, the bulldozer instinct to sacrifice anything and anybody to make a political point and they, like Juan Miguel Gonzalez, must say quietly to themselves: Better the devil you know. At least he provides free health care.

Marc Cooper is a Los Angeles-based contributing editor to The Nation.