INS Commission Doris Meissner said therefore "Elian should be reunited with his father."

Washington's decision comes some 40 days after the six-year-old boy was rescued at sea. Since then he has been a political hostage of the Clinton administration, used as one more avenue of aggression and slander against the Cuban revolution.

Elián was plucked from the ocean November 25 off the coast of Florida. He had been clinging to an inner tube for more than 24 hours. Elián was taken from Cuba by his mother who joined thirteen others in a doomed attempt to reach Florida. She was among the eleven people who drowned when the boat sank.

Although Elián's father, who, even according to the INS "had a close and continuos personal relationship with his son," and both sets of grandparents live in Cuba, Washington spurned Gonzalez's request that Elián be returned. Instead, they turned over the boy to distant relatives in Miami, sparking weeks of anti-Cuba propaganda by capitalist politicians and the media.

Gonzalez appealed to the Cuba government for assistance. Through Havana's diplomatic stance and the daily mass mobilizations in Cuba, it was clear to Washington that the Cuban people would not back down in face of the provocation.

Militant reader Al Cappe reported in a letter to this paper that while visiting Cuba he witnessed "daily mobilizations of up to 300,000 people in Havana which grew to one of 2 million in 17 cities on December 10." The New York Times reported on a student-led march of tens of thousands January 3 in Santa Clara demanding Elian's return.

Washington has not swayed public opinion on the case, as polls indicate a majority in the United States thought the boy should be returned to his father and immediate family in Cuba. Opponents of the U.S. embargo of Cuba also organized a number of small demonstrations opposing the U.S. government stance. The U.S. National Council of Churches also sent a delegation to Cuba. After meeting with Gonzalez council leader Joan Campbell said, "We are convinced more than we ever were that this boy belongs with his family in Cuba."

The Conference of Catholic Bishops of Cuba issued a statement stating that "the case can be resolved in accordance with the most strict right universally accepted, in which the boy's custody belongs to his parents and in the absence of one of them, to the surviving parent."

New York Newsday said State Department spokesperson James Rubin encouraged Gonzalez to travel to Miami to pick up his son, hinting that the Cuban government might not issue an exit visa.

Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's National Assembly, said Gonzalez "should do whatever he wants. And we will help him. But if I were him I would ask, for what reason: to finally return the boy or to delay and delay?"

Newsday also reported an unidentified U.S. government official said one reason they would like to see Gonzalez come to Miami is to "ease the concerns among Cuban-Americans that he currently is not fee to speak his mind because of Cuba's tight controls over its citizenry," furthering a slander that the father is not free to speak his mind in Cuba.

Throughout the entire episode, Washington continued to perpetrate the lie that Cubans live in a totalitarian state and are not free to leave the country. But it is U.S. government policies that limit legal immigration from Cuba and encourage illegal and hazardous trips across the Florida Straights.  
 

'Free men and women'

In a speech on May 1, 1980, Cuban President Fidel Castro told a rally of 1.5 million people in Havana during the wave of emigration from the city of Mariel, that by allowing free passage out of Cuba "we were rigorously, strictly complying with our watchword that anyone who wanted to go to any other country that would accept them could do so and that the building of socialism, the work of the revolution, was a task for free men and women. Don't forget this principle," he said. "Don't forget this principle which has tremendous moral value."

In 1994 Washington signed an immigration accord to "ensure that migration between the two countries is safe, legal, and orderly." The U.S. government said that "migrants rescued at sea attempting to enter the United States will not be permitted to enter the United States," and that it had "discontinued its practice of granting parole to all Cuban migrants who reach U.S. territory in irregular ways."

Washington also agreed to allow a minimum of 20,000 Cubans to emigrate to the United States each year, not including immediate relatives of United States citizens.

The Cuban Adjustment Act was adopted by Congress in 1966. The measure encourages Cubans to take risky boat trips by because those who reach U.S. shores are allowed to apply for residency, changing their status from "wet-foot" to "dry-foot" status in the racist terminology of the INS.

This week the political character of Washington's immigration policies and how they are used as a weapon against Cuba was demonstrated when the INS immediately moved to deport 400 Haitians, Dominicans, and Chinese people who were shipwrecked while attempting to reach U.S. shores (see article page 4).

The Cuban government also had to scramble two MiG fighter jets this week when Ly Tong, a right wing Vietnamese-born U.S. citizen, piloted an unauthorized flight from Florida to Cuba and over Havana, dumping thousands of anti-Cuban leaflets on the city.

Tong fought in Washington's war against the people of Vietnam as a pilot in the South Vietnamese airforce. He became a U.S. citizen in 1988 and four years later hijacked a Vietnam Airlines flight from Bangkok to Ho Chi Minh City. He was released from jail in 1998 and returned to the United States.

A Customs Service radar center tracked Tong's flight after leaving U.S. airspace. He was released without charge after returning to the United States.

A Cuban government statement pointed out that the pilot could have intended to drop "explosives on us, flammable material, or viruses or bacteria." It added the "provocation took place as always in Havana, the capital of Cuba, the little revolutionary neighbor which for four decades has been the target of blockade, pirate attacks, and political, economic, and military aggression."  
 
 
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