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Suddenly, a host of people who two weeks ago had never set eyes upon this child, let alone spent any meaningful time with him (none have thus far claimed any relationship other than kinship), now sound very certain about what is best for him: They are best for him.

I do not doubt their capacity to love the child, nor their willingness to lavish him with all they can afford. But I have yet to read of one adult who has become a part of Elian's life saying, "Perhaps we need to consider who this child is, and what he needs." Who does he want to kiss his hurts and tuck him in at night? Who does Elian see as the surviving adult in the center of his life?

Here is a child who has just lost his mother. He may well have witnessed her death; at the very least he was close by when she went under. He also lost his stepfather, who saved his life by wedging him into the inner tube that kept him afloat. Yet somehow we are told that he is happy. Happy? Are these friends and relatives mad or just naive?

Like every child who comes to the attention of the state, this is a child with a past. And this child's past, the little we know of it, rests with a doorman in a tourist hotel in the Cuban town of Varadero. And unless and until he is proven to be an unfit parent, Juan Miguel Gonzalez is the parent of his son, and as such, his son's future.

We have read that although he and Elian's mother were estranged, Gonzalez remained involved in his son's life. Even as they fight for custody of his child, Gonzalez's relatives have made no mention of abuse, neglect nor any other evidence that would imply that Gonzalez is not fit to raise his son -- they have only mentioned his love for Elian.

Juan Miguel Gonzalez has been deemed a questionable parent because he cannot afford to give his son the gifts his relatives have given. But there is something more. He is a questionable parent because he is on the wrong side of a political divide: Castro's people have taken up his cause. Perhaps had he denounced Fidel he might have been flown over and placed in a new condominium in Hialeah.

We are being asked to believe, at turns, that this is a case about a mother's sacrifice of her own life to deliver her child to freedom, or that this is really about a great power's unjust immigration laws, or that it is about a victory over a regime so oppressive that even a 5-year-old child would risk his life to flee.

It is about none of these things. It is not, as Geraldo Rivera attempted to frame it on his CNBC show, about "father's rights." It is about a child whose world has been irreparably broken, and who -- despite being surrounded by new toys and new clothes and people who are kind to him -- is in desperate need of being delivered into the hands of an adult who loves him, who he loves in return.

Let us assume that person is his father. Let them be together.

Unless there is reason to believe that this father is a stranger to this child, or unless it is clear that this father is a physical threat to his son, the father should choose where they will live.

To the people of the Cuban American National Foundation who say they will be "devastated" if Elian goes back to Cuba, be advised that devastation will pale before the pain that Elian will feel if he is deprived of his home for what are so palpably political reasons.

Juan Miguel Gonzalez is Elian's past. He is Elian's parent and must be a part of his future. Not because he has the law on his side. But because until we have evidence to the contrary, I am compelled to believe that is how Elian sees it.
salon.com | Dec. 2, 1999

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