We are indebted to our friend Charlie Bravo for bringing to our attention another Cuban-American blogger who has embraced Elenita's cause, Julio Rey from The Not Silent Blog.
We can do no less than commend and publicize those few Cuban-American bloggers who listen to the call of justice in their hearts when forming their opinions about this case rather than weighing the bile in other people's and endeavoring with their silence to stem the tide of opprobrium which emits from the racists and xenophobes whenever one more Cuban makes it to these shores, even a helpless and long-suffering child.
Every act that a man commits should affirm his humanity. If he fails to do what his conscience tells him he should do because he is afraid to be unpopular or hopes to avoid thereby the unmerited censure of others; if he stands ready to sacrifice the innocent to placate the guilty, or ignores their claims to justice that injustice might prevail because it is personally convenient and in his perceived interest that it should, such a man has placed himself outside the society of honest men and forfeited their good opinion. The words and actions of such a creature should henceforth be judged in light of his perfidy. Even if he reforms (or appears to) his probation must be for life, because base instincts are rarely uprooted even when all else is weeded out in the human character. Those who are deserving of such obloquy will know who they are.
The honesty and compassion of men like Julio Rey, besides serving the cause of justice, also reminds us of the want of same in persons who pretend without reason to the name of patriot. Patriots they would be if status were a country. But nationality is not an exclusive club that allows its members to blackball anyone. If freedom is the right of every Cuban, then freedom is also Elenita's right. That freedom should not be denied to her by Castro's henchmen (chief among them her own father) or by an American judge who does not understand, or, rather, dismisses the difference between freedom and slavery.
There is much to admire in Rey's post, commencing with the title, which presents through a clever play on words the best summary I have seen of the core issue of this case. He also highlights one aspect of this case which has been generally ignored (including by us): its mirror image.
What if a mother in Cuba were deemed insane (and that, of course, could be simply an excuse to detain a political opponent indefinitely) and her minor child removed from her custody, would the father in the U.S. be able to present himself in Cuba and demand not only custody but the right to take his daughter with him to the U.S.? This is by no means a hypothetical scenario; it must have happened hundreds if not thousands of times over the last 48 years. And surely it did not happen in many more cases because all parties were aware that the Cuban regime would never award custody to the father under any circumstances. In Cuba as in the United States, the Castro regime seeks the same thing: to deprive the child of any chance for freedom. It has the power to enslave in Cuba. Should it also be granted by an American court the right to enslave Cubans in U.S. territory as well?
From: The Not Silent Blog
On Cubas’ Case Versus Cuba’s puppet
The Elian Gonzalez fiasco of 1999 may have been the Cuban government’s finest hour since the collapse of the Soviet Union. They were able to orchestrate the deportation of a child that had become the darling of Little Havana under the guise of “returning a child to his father”. They enjoyed the cooperation and servitude of sympathetic “useful idiots” in the World Council of Churches and the Clinton Administration. And they did it in such a way guaranteed to cause an extreme reaction from we the exile community resulting in a grand heaping of scorn and hatred upon our heads from some unlikely quarters (I actually read of African-Americans protesting alongside Confederate Flag-wavers somewhere in the Redland).
Lost in all the commotion and propaganda is the fact that Elian Gonzalez has become exactly what we warned he would become: a trophy for the Cuban government. His father, the waiter that allegedly just wanted his boy back, has become an olive-clad participant onstage whenever his son is paraded for the proles to gawk at.
Fast forward to now and it’s déjà vu all over again. The case that's been in the papers the last few weeks is simply an attempt by the regime to get back at Joe Cubas for poaching their athletes. The bio-father says he wants his daughter back. I do not believe he's speaking for himself. And his attorneys are not working for him, they are working for the Cuban government.
I'd like to see just one custody case in Cuban soil get media coverage here. If a minor in Cuba goes to live with friends because they support the "Revolution" but his father is a dissident, do you really think the authorities there would fight for his father's rights?
In reality, the family means nothing to the Cuban government. Except when there's hay to be made as in 1999 and today.
Posted by Julio Rey, Sunday, September 23, 2007, 11:03 PM
http://juliorey.blogspot.com/2007/09/on-cubas-case-versus-cubas-puppet.html
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4 comments:
Julio is a man of honor, before everything else.
He's also the one who has taken the cause of Gorki and Porno Para Ricardo as his own, and he choose one particular song by the band of which he made an English language cover.
I would never have enough words to thank Julio Rey for his honesty, bonhomie, and mostly for his unconditional support to the lads of Porno Para Ricardo. He is a man of his word, and a man who has no qualms in putting the darkest of the injustices under a very bright light.
It is so true, would the goverment in Cuba allow an American father, or a dissident, the same rights that are awarded here to parents? of course not, for in Cuba parents don't have the right to their children, they belong to the state.
Thank you Julio Rey as a just man you too have taken up this fight, on behalf of a little girl who needs us!
Is the Madhouse empty?
Thanks for the love. I was just speaking my mind.
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