[HPN] Fwd: Editorial on Elian by Rudy Acuna

[Coalition on Homelessness, SF]

As long as so many HPN'ers are veering so far off-topic regarding the 
Elian dilemma, I thought I'd supply a more informed perspective that 
was sent to members of the Venceremos Brigade in our office. (one 
reason I get so jammed during the summer months is because so many of 
our staff are in Cuba) They also have a great discussion list on 
Topica, which might prove to be a more appropriate list to direct 
discussions on this topic.

Peace,
chance martin
Coalición de Desamparados



At 4:30 PM -0800 2/11/00, Joel Tena wrote:
>From: Joel Tena <joel@fvpf.org>
>Subject: Editorial on Elian by Rudy Acuna
>Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 16:30:02 -0800
>Reply-To: joel@fvpf.org
>X-Loop: 1300007885
>
>Popi
>
>By
>Rodolfo Acuna
>
>In an 1969 film, Alan Arkin played a Puerto Rican single parent with two
>boys, living in Spanish Harlem. Working three jobs just to survive he felt
>the boys slipping into what he terms a cesspool. Desperate for a solution
>to his plight, he notices that the U.S. gives Cubans who escape the island
>exceptional benefits and treat them royally. He concocts a scheme in which
>he takes his sons to Miami and sends them out to sea, hoping that they will
>get picked up by a friendly boat within a day. His plan is that rich Anglos
>will adopt his sons.
>
>Abraham begins to worry when after a day he hears no word of the boys. He
>haunts the local bars, listening to television news programs. Finally,
>consumed by the guilt that he had forced the boys to go to sea, he tries to
>drown himself, only to hear that the coast guard had rescued them. The
>authorities had taken them to a local hospital, badly dehydrated and in
>critical condition. The Miami Cuban community goes wild, hailing them as
>heroes, and gifts and offers of adoption rolled in. The boys were
>unconscious, and doctors did not know if they would come out of the coma.
>
>Now Abraham, fearing that the boys would die, and afraid that if they
>awoke, they would reveal his plot, he goes through a series of antics to
>get to see the boys at the hospital. When they awake, the younger boy tells
>the greeters that he hates his father, because he had told them that
>drowning at sea was better than dying in the sewer. Believing that the
>father was referring to Cuba and not the sewer of New York, a lady tells
>him that he should love his father because he wanted to save him and that
>he was a great man. In the end, the boys see Abraham and consumed with love
>for their father, they chase him and this gives him away. A Cuban official
>tells him that the boys want him and not the rich life he wants for them,
>and that because of this, his plan would not work. They all return to New
>York.
>
>For those following the circus in Miami surrounding Elian Gonzalez, the
>parallels with Popi should hit close to home. Bonds exist between a father
>and a son that all the rationalization and bribery will not loosen. Despite
>all of the brainwashing evident in the treatment of Elian, ultimately he
>will bare the hurt of the rupturing of those bonds. Once the notoriety
>surrounding him has ceased and he becomes an ordinary young boy, his
>commercial value to relatives who had never met him until his tragic
>experience, his memories of his father will increase. He will no longer be
>showered with gifts, taken to Disney World on demand, and he will be just
>plain Elian.
>
>The irony of Elian's case does not escape many Mexican Americans, other
>Latinos and even Black Americans. Identifying with Abraham is not difficult
>for them, and they recognize the preferential treatment of Cuban entering
>the country without documents. Literally thousands of Haitians, Mexicans
>and other Latinos are unceremoniously deported weekly, many of them
>returned to economic circumstances much worse than those of Elian.
>
>When I visited Cuba this past July, I could not help but see the contrasts
>between it and my ancestral home of Mexico. Cuba is a poor country, kept
>that way by a cruel U.S. policy that panders to political fanatics who
>yearn for yesteryear and dream of returning to the island to mismanage it
>once again. No doubt that the economic boycott has hurt many young boys
>such as Elian, who appears to have been one of the more fortunate there.
>However, the fact is that I did not see the extremes that I saw in Mexico
>where poor native Americans beg and sleep in the streets of Mexico City.
>The truth be told, some Mexicans live in luxury, vacationing frequently in
>Cancun and Acapulco, paying $200 a day for a hotel room, while their
>compatriots earn a minimum wage of $3.50 a day.
>
>I saw first hand that Cuba had a lower infant mortality than the United
>States. Cuba has one medical doctor for every 250 Cubans with universal
>health care. Its literacy rate is higher than the U.S. with students
>graduating from elementary school actually knowing how to read. Although
>poor with its automobiles relics from the 1950s, I could walk the streets
>of Habana at 4 in the morning and not get mugged.
>
>Here in the land of the free we only have one Latino medical doctor for
>every 22,000 Latinos. Getting into medical school has become problematic
>and difficult to be admitted unless one's father is a medical doctor, or
>one has the funds to buy admission into a domestic or foreign medical
>school. The United States boasts of a low level of illiteracy, yet
>educators know that functional illiteracy is much higher. We also see the
>extremes. There is a marked difference between the quality of minority
>schools and those in white neighborhoods. In white schools in some suburban
>areas of Los Angeles 83 percent of the teachers are credentialed while less
>than 50 percent of the teachers in the inner city have credentials.
>Moreover, health care in this compassionate society that takes the
>propaganda of Cuban American expatriates seriously, is by law in
>California, withheld from those without papers.
>
>Other ironies are that, while the Cuban American community laments the fate
>of Elian if he should returned to Cuba, Latino and African American first
>graders in California have a better chance of going to prison than being
>eligible for the University of California system. Even then, if one is a
>woman of any nationality, are you as safe alone in any neighborhood,
>whether rich or poor, as one would be in the streets of Habana? Frankly
>women are not even safe on college campuses in the evening where rapists
>have found a haven.
>
>Most sociologists say that one predictor of future success is the
>relationship between father and son. Even agents of the Immigration and
>Naturalization Service concede that the relationship between Juan, Elian's
>father, and Elian is positive, and that Juan has a stable job and home in
>Cuba. There is no credible evidence that Elian suffered in Cuba. Still, the
>Miami cabal wants to sever Elian from Juan based on their hatred of Fidel
>Castro. They maintain that a paternal great uncle who did not know Elian
>nor his mother before last November has more rights to Elian than his
>father or grandparents. This is not rational, this is not right.
>
>What is so disturbing is that in this circus atmosphere the so-called free
>press has not looked into the background of Elian's Miami family
>(stretching the definition of family). What gives them the right to have a
>superior right to the custody of Elian than the father? Are they so much
>better educated? Do they have the resources to send Elian to college? If
>they loved Elian so much, why would they parade him, wrapped in an American
>flag?
>
>Hopefully, the cable stations will screen the film "Popi," so it can remind
>us of the plight of the Abrahams of this country. Perhaps then more people
>will appreciate the hypocrisy of politicos who weep for family values while
>keeping a child from his father. Meanwhile, the Miami circus will continue.
>
>
>Rodolfo Acuna is a Professor of Chicano Studies at California State
>University at Northridge. He is the author of many seminal books on
>Chicanos. Among these books are: 1. "Occupied America : A History of
>Chicanos", 2. "Sometimes There Is No Other Side : Chicanos and the Myth of
>Equality" and 3. "A Community Under Siege: A Chronicle of Chicanos East of
>the Los Angeles River, 1945-1975."
>
>_______________________
>Joel Arnold Tena
>Venceremos Brigade

Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco
468 Turk St.
San Francisco, CA 94102
vox: (415) 346.3740
Fax: (415) 775.5639
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