Elena Pérez: Her Life As a Mother and a Mistress (Or Chasing Cod in Cabaiguan)

There's an explanation for everything in life, and, of course, there is one for Elena Pérez's sudden desire to see her daughter's custody awarded to her biological father and penultimate boyfriend Rafael Izquierdo. It is not for love of the girl, that much is obvious. It is not because Izquierdo is a good man, nor because she particularly wishes to have him and his wife raise her. No mistress would ever want her lover's wife to raise her child, under ordinary circumstances. As for Rafael, Elena may still have illusions about him, though his neighbors in Cabaiguan have none. There neighbors remember, even if she does not, the many times that he beat her, the stories which she related of her abuse and the bruises that confirmed it. The same stories, incidentally, which his neighbors in Cárdenas told of Juan González's abuse of his wife, Elián's mother. That evidence was never aired in a courtroom because Clinton and Reno preëmpted the legal process. It will be otherwise at the Cubas-Izquierdo custody trial. And it is powerful and self-corroborating evidence: for why would Izquierdo's neighbors (or González's, for that matter) take a position contrary to that of the Castro regime in the question of Rafael Izquierdo's character and reputation when they know the consequences that might attend their defiance, why, indeed, unless they were telling the truth?

It was, in fact, Izquierdo's physical abuse, coupled with her own schizophrenia, which earned her a reputation as the town "crazie," that caused her to abuse her own infant daughter. Why, then, does she desire that this man be entrusted with her daughter's custody now? Because he has purchased her acquiescense. We do not know everything that passed between them at their recent "reunion" in the States; but we at least know one thing, because Rafael publicly admitted it. Elena has received assurances from her onetime flame that she will be allowed to be a part of the child's life (and hence his) in Cuba: "I am not going to be so strict," he said. "I am never going to keep her from her mother." That is, he is going to repeat his role as catalyst and enabler of her daughter's abuse at the hands of her mother. To return the child to Cuba, then, is tantamount to returning her to the tender mercies of not only Castro but also her abusive, psychologically-unbalanced and suicidal mother.

It is interesting that Ms. Pérez had no objection to Joe Cubas' adoption of her 13-year old son, who was her personal favorite (she never beat him). Of course, her son is now the legal heir to the Cubas fortune and she doesn't need two heirs to that fortune when one will suffice. It may prove useful to her to have a millionaire son sometime down the road. In any case, a man of Joe Cubas' proven humanity and fellow-feeling for the oppressed Cuban people, surely would never turn his back on his son's birth mother, no matter how execrable her sins or the wrongs that she has committed against her own children or Cubas himself. She is no doubt counting on that as some kind of personal insurance for the future.

Her plans for the immediate future, however, are to return to Cabaiguan to dethrone whoever has replaced her as town "crazie" and taken her place on left side of Izquierdo's bed. Oh, yeah, and to reunite with her daughter, the same daughter, incidentally, whom she tried repeatedly to give away to strangers before signing her over to the state. She has promised, however, that "I won't leave Miami until my daughter does." Of course not. Can't let her only tangible tie to her old flame escape through her clutching fingers. In other words, we can reduce her "parental concern" to one thing and she'll be chasing it and her daughter down to Cuba.