Posted on 08/01/2004 2:57:57 PM PDT by Libloather
4 years after return to Cuba, Elian a normal schoolboy
BY MAKI BECKER
New York Daily News
Posted on Sat, Jul. 31, 2004
NEW YORK - (KRT) - Elian Gonzalez, now 10, hits the books in Cardenas, Cuba, where he lives with his father.
Four years after little Elian Gonzalez was plucked from the seas off Florida's coast and sparked an international custody battle, the young boy is leading a sheltered and almost normal life back in Cuba.
Elian lives with his father in their hometown of Cardenas and he still sports the same impish grin that captivated the world back in 2000.
In an interview with NBC's "Dateline" to air Sunday, Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, says he has generally kept Elian out of the limelight, even moving to a secret location in town to avoid the press.
"The media (in Miami) intimidated him, pressured him most of all," Gonzalez said in his first interview in three years. "It totally overwhelmed him."
As Elian's American relatives fought to keep him in the U.S. and his father sought to take him back to Cuba, hundreds of reporters camped out outside their Miami home, recording every movement of the photogenic little boy.
The custody clash even led to a war of words between Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and the boy's fiercely anti-Castro American relatives.
The stalemate ended dramatically as heavily armed federal officers stormed the house in the middle of the night, snatched the terrified boy and took him into protective custody.
Elian still grieves for his mother who drowned when their boat capsized on its way to Florida, Gonzalez said, but he has adjusted to life well.
"I can truly say that since his return, my son has never had to see a psychologist, or anyone else," Gonzalez told "Dateline NBC."
Elian is learning karate and has two girlfriends, Gonzalez reports.
So, you equate Juan's taking his child back to a country where there are no civil rights, no freedom, and where human rights are violated on a regular basis with protecting him?
You don't even see the huge contradictions in your argument, do you?
I do not intend to engage in any more discussion about this. My original points were distorted long ago.
What about his God given liberty?
Don't read our founding documents much, do you.
With all due respect, I don't believe any of that as fact. I don't believe all those who claim it to be fact. It wouldn't surprise me to find they are spreading propaganda in order to futher their political cause or repeating propaganda they believe to be true.
As for your questions about American courts making a ruling...I, as much as I dislike the politics of his country of origin, cannot hold Elian's father to the standards of a country where he is not a citizen.
All I can do is hope that it works out well for Elian. And again, I believe the boy's only living parent...His father, trumps all in this case.
I think that I'm on safe ground in stating that most Americans-thankfully-have no idea what it's like to live under a totalitarian government, hence the general indifference to the fortunes of children like Elian Gonzalez.
If you want to educate these folks, a good start would be suggesting that they rent either "Bitter Sugar" (Azucar Amarga) or "Before Night Falls."
Unlike ninety percent of the dreck that's produced by Hollywood, these films have the advantage of being completely true and honest depictions of what it's like to live behind the Iron Curtain.
"But forget about the caveat for now. Let's just consider the initial presumption that a father gets custody of his son. The law is indeed clear, at least to this extent: That "law" refers only to legitimate children.
Elian is Juan Miguel Gonzalez's illegitimate son. Elian was neither born nor conceived when Juan Miguel was married to his mother. Nor did the father ever rectify Elian's bastardy. According to The New York Times, Elian's parents were divorced in May 1991; Elian was born on Dec. 6, 1993. The woman with whom Elian has been forcibly reunited is not, as she is called, his "stepmother." She is the woman now married to the man who knocked-up Elian's unwed mother.
Consequently, even if Elian's mother had taken him from, say, Indiana to Florida and died on the way, the father back in Indiana would not necessarily be awarded custody. Indeed, at common law, fathers had absolutely no rights with respect to any children they bore out of wedlock. Of course, we've come a long way since marriage was considered a consequential institution. But still: Even in swinging, post-sexual revolution America, a father's legal rights to an illegitimate child remains a highly contentious, and prodigiously litigated, matter.
The Supreme Court last weighed in on the legal rights of unwed fathers in 1989 when it cut off all of the father's rights to his child, including visitation. The court did so without consideration of the father's fitness as a parent. So first of all, it is not "the law" that the biological father of a child, unmarried to the mother when the child was born, is automatically entitled to so much as visitation rights -- much less custody.
If Elian's case were a simple domestic custody case, Florida courts would decide the matter, and Florida takes an especially dim view of the legal prerogatives of fathers who sire illegitimate children. Just last year, a Florida appellate court described the rights of an unwed father to his biological child as "a mere inchoate right to establish legal fatherhood." Ann Coulter -- The Bastardization of Justice
Own them both, plus "Guantanamera", and "Fresas y Chocolate".
God has a founding document?
Damn! Those athiests are going to be really upset!!
Excellent post,Luis.
You never fail to impress!
I haven't seen the later, but I'd be glad look for it if the film is even half as brilliant as the motion picture starring Javier Bardem, which tells the story of exiled poet Reinaldo Arenas.
Indeed it was. At the end, politics was the determinent factor in this case, and not the safety and wellbeing of a little child.
That's exactly right.
Good thing the Dateline people didn't visit Thereisenstadt during WWII, they would have reported that Hitler was treating the Jews just fine.
I dislike liberals as much as the next guy (And I HATE them as an organized group), but I don't honestly think most of them, not even BJ Clinton and the Wookie, would lie in order to send a little helpless child back to a communist hellhole because they prefer Cuba's style of government over the United State's. I think, or at least hope, they hold the rights of the one living parent above all else and then hope for the best.
Like me.
What if his father came after him in shackles surrounded by armed Cuban police? Would you have supported the father then?
He only HAD one living parent because the other died in trying to GET him, here. But hey, who cares about the sacrifice of Elian's mom and his step-dad? At the end of the day, they only did it to feed the sharks in the Florida Strait. It was never about Elian's freedom.
With all due respect, I don't believe any of that as fact. I don't believe all those who claim it to be fact. It wouldn't surprise me to find they are spreading propaganda in order to futher their political cause or repeating propaganda they believe to be true.
Juan Miguel had been divorced for over a year when Elian was born. Why would custody have been an issue at all if Juan Miguel already had it? Married fathers are custodial parents by definition.
As for your questions about American courts making a ruling...I, as much as I dislike the politics of his country of origin, cannot hold Elian's father to the standards of a country where he is not a citizen.
You wrote in a prior post:
I think it's a God given right to be able to lay claim your child that has only one living parent left. Regardless of what country Elian's father is from.
Do you think men who father children out of wedlock and never try for custody should have to obtain custody via a court if mother dies? Or should the child be automatically turned over to the biological father?
They didn't realize that the tactic of holding close family members, or even distant relatives hostage, is a favored tactic of communist regimes.
I replied before you corrected yourself about your husband being inside the house -- I would definitely see it differently. I see you are taking far more abuse than you deserved, but hang in there. You are doing just fine defending yourself.
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