Elizabet Broton,
Elian Gonzalez's mother, was so determined to ensure her seven-year old
son live in freedom that at four a.m. the fraught woman ushered her
child toward a rickety boat to join a dozen people for a trek across
dark, choppy waters from Cuba to the US.
Elizabet and ten
others lost their lives at sea. Before dying Broton desperately
attempted to assure Elian's safety by placing the boy into a black
inner tube to keep him from drowning. Elian was later found sleeping,
fished from shark-infested waters and turned over to the U.S. Coast
Guard.
Elian became the center of a child custody struggle
defined by paternal rights versus a Cuban-American family who escaped
Castro's tyrannical regime that believed the child should be granted
asylum. Elian's cousin
Marisleysis Gonzalez became the public spokesperson for the child's right to independence in a nation his mother died trying to reach.
After a lengthy, media driven custody battle Attorney General for the
Clinton Administration, Janet Reno ordered armed federal authorities to
enter the home of Elian's extended family and intercept the child,
returning him to his father Juan Miguel Gonzalez Quintana.
As Elian was placed into the elder Gonzalez's arms Elizabet's death was
officially for naught. Hope for Elian growing up liberated disappeared
beneath the cold, murky waters between Cuba and the U.S. like a mother
failing to find safe haven for an only child.
Fast-forward ten years and take a
glimpse into Elian's life as a teenager. Instead of a Miami Dolphins Jersey, "
Cuba released photos of one-time exile cause celeb Elian
Gonzalez
wearing an olive-green military school uniform." Elian Gonzalez is what
youthful subjugation looks like when a boy, a heartbeat from freedom,
is deprived the liberty Little Havana fought to hard, but failed to
deliver.
In Cuba,
Elian is a hero.
Yearly, Fidel approved celebrations marking Gonzalez's birthday because
Elian epitomizes the height of Cuban triumph over America. Lest we
forget America willingly acquiesced in the battle to grant a
defenseless child freedom, choosing instead to don riot gear and send a
terrified child back under Castro inflicted bondage.
If Elian
had been granted asylum, today he would be a teenager preparing to go
to college with every opportunity for success ahead of him. Instead,
on the cusp of adulthood, Elian poses for propaganda photos sandwiched
between Cuban army soldiers attending the Union of Young Communists
congress in Havana.
Wonder if on the night Elian was placed in that doomed rowboat, Elizabeth envisioned, "Gonzalez
formally join[ing] the Young Communist Union?"
To this day, Elian and parliament member father Juan Miguel are both
closely monitored by state authorities who restrict the duo's contact
with the international press-unless of course it serves Cuban cant to
put forward the image of Elian as a contented, committed Communist.
The youthful Gonzalez should have been wrapped in the America flag.
Instead a boy who once represented the quest for the God given right to
be free, waves a Cuban flag symbolizing poverty, oppression,
authoritarianism and misinformation.
As Barack Obama emulates Fidel Castro's
health care system and ferries a reluctant nation toward socialism, the scenario is reminiscent of a frightened Elian Gonzalez being
wrested from the arms of liberty by an out of control federal government dictated to by a liberal American president.
Free people should take a good, long look at Elian Gonzalez and observe
what our nation has the potential to become ten years down the line if,
instead of moving in the opposite direction, America's row boat
continues to inch closer to Cuba's shores.
Authors content: www.jeannie-ology.com
