Not-so-speedy Gonzalez

 

This article first appeared in FNF's McKenzie newsletter #44 in February 2000

In December 1999 two million people took to the streets of Havana to protest against the failure of US authorities to return a child to his Cuban father.

6-year-old Elian Gonzalez was found clinging to an inner tube by US fishermen on 25 November after his mother had drowned in the Straits of Florida. Under agreed procedures he should have been returned to the island but was handed over to his great-uncle Lazaro, a US resident who intends to keep him.

Juan Gonzalez, the father, sought his return (naturally) and President Clinton told reporters that "I think all fathers would be sympathetic to Elian's dad". Attorney General Janet Reno said of Elian that "He has a father, and there's a bond between father and son that the law recognises. We see no reason why that bond should not be honoured".

The Immigration and Naturalisation Service ruled on 5 January that the child should be returned within nine days - commissioner Doris Meissner said "This little boy, who has been through so much, belongs with his father" - and church leaders echoed the call. But a Florida judge, Rosa Rodriguez - whose 1998 election campaign had involved great-uncle Lazaro's supporters - ruled that this would cause Elian "imminent and irreparable harm".

As we go to press there has still been no father and child reunion.

Why not? Elian's father was in fact his primary carer, having physical custody for five days each week (the mother had staying contact at weekends). The answer seems to lie in the willingness of family courts in western democracies to ignore the father-child bond, coupled with political opportunism - the child has been made a tool of anti-communist cold warriors bent on continuing the oppression of a tiny Caribbean state that does not share US 'values'.

Under a 1994 Joint Communique on Cuba-US Migration and a 1995 Companion Agreement the US agreed to return all those who were intercepted at sea - the 'wet feet you go back, dry feet you stay' policy - and adopted a UN resolution on 'alien smuggling'. The US (though not Cuba) is also a signatory to the Hague Convention on International Child Abduction, and the father's custody rights are recognized by the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act which says in section 61.13(b)1:

"It is the public policy of this state to assure that each minor child has frequent and continuing contact with both parents after the parents separate or the marriage of the parties is dissolved and to encourage parents to share the rights and responsibilities, and joys, of child-rearing."

One can't help feeling that this form of words should be adopted by the British government and read out to the denizens of the Family Division every day or emblazoned in gold leaf on the wall at the back of the court. The Act continues:

"After considering all relevant facts, the father of the child shall be given the same consideration as the mother in determining the primary residence of a child irrespective of the age or sex of the child."

No mention here of great-uncle Lazaro. In any case, a much closer relative would be the boy's paternal grandmother Mariela Quintana, who used to pick him up from school in Cuba. Together with maternal grandmother Raquel Rodriguez she flew to the US to seek Elian's return. But all the women got was a brief meeting with him.

Elian's father says he has been offered millions of dollars by wealthy Americans to move to the US. But all he wants is for his son to come home. Thanks to a family court judge, he may have a long wait.

 

Richard Gregory
February 2000