Where They Shoot You if You Try to Leave

By David Rafner 4/21/00

In America, we have places where if someone tries to get away, we can shoot at them. Those places are called penitentiaries – and the people who live in them are called inmates. And they deserve to be there because of what each one of them did.

In the Caribbean there is another place where they will try to kill you if you attempt to leave, including women and children – and that place is called Cuba. And most of the people have done nothing to deserve being interned for life on that island prison.

The typical refrain at this point is: "Well, I've been to Cuba and saw happy children playing." That completely misses the point; penitentiary inmates often get to watch TV or play baseball. But at the end of the day they are still walled in.

When the tug boat de Marzo with 72 Cuban men, women, and children attempted to flee on July 13, 1994, Cuban government ships sprayed the screaming passengers with fire hoses, forcing many back into the engine room. They then intentionally rammed it, splitting its hull and sending it to the bottom. 41 people drowned, including ten children. These ships did not attempt to rescue the survivors, which was eventually done by a Cuban Coast Guard ship. Ten children were murdered. Ten children like Elian.

If Elian goes back to Cuba, he will be treated like a prince – and a state prisoner (or more accurately a zoo animal). The door will be closed behind him. No one charged with protecting a child's rights, not even a father, should be allowed to take a child to a place where he will never have any rights, where he will quite literally be a prisoner – even if the whole island is the prison camp.

Around the world there are many impoverished countries. But only a handful – including Cuba – deny their citizens their right to control their own life – fundamentally the right to vote with their feet and leave.

What many American’s who grew up during the cold war once understood but have now forgotten, is the fact that a premise of Communism is that individuals have no rights. Under Communism, people are literally assets of the state. They stop you from leaving because trying to liberate yourself is literally interpreted as an attempt to steal yourself – your productive labor – away from the state.

How can I get you, the reader, to fully grasp what this means?

The best analogy for this situation is pre-Civil War slavery.

Slaves were considered property of the slave holders. And plantation owners often deflected criticism by boasting how well cared for their slaves were – "See: food, shelter, clothing." Families grew, happy children were raised. And slaves probably derived some pride from a day’s job well done.

Castro says, "Look, all my citizens get free school, free healthcare! We are better than Capitalism! What he doesn’t mention is that the price is servitude for life. Of course, if you mind your own business, work hard, and don’t express any political opinions – except loyalty to the revolution, you get left alone. But open your mouth or try to get away and you end up at some government labor farm.

Well, why don’t all Cubans try to get away? Well, why didn’t all slaves try to get away? Because for a long time the vast majority were brainwashed into thinking that there was no hope, that slavery was their fate, and the natural order of things. Many bought the notion that they were actually better off with someone taking care of them – making the most fundamental decisions for them.

Of course, many slaves did escape, often with their children. Thousands crossed the Ohio River to freedom. Many drowned in the attempt. An American Air Force officer derided Elian’s dead mother’s efforts as tantamount to child abuse for having risked her child’s life at sea. Would oh-so politically correct Americans dare to say the same thing about slave families fleeing across the Ohio River?

What we have today is a house-slave who has come north with a team of taskmasters to retrieve his fugitive son. "Son, I love you! You need to be with me!" the father wails glancing back over his shoulder and thinking of his own mother held in a government compound back in Cuba. "I sincerely want you back." Of course he does.

Perhaps some slaves really did think they were better off back at the plantation house. Perhaps Elian’s father really does wnat to live under Communism. But we will never really know because the whole premise is love communism or else. Is it even possible that a father would prefer to have his son live in America rather than with him in Cuba? Do we forget that as Castro came to power, Cuban parents sent 14,000 of their children away to be smuggled to the U.S., most never to see their parents again?

Are we really so blind? The father – surrounded by government security agents -- didn’t even try to come to America for months. Finally the grandmothers came. The nun who hosted the meetings and was at first in favor of sending Elian back smelled something fishy and has changed her mind. Then Cuba said they wanted to send the father, step-mother, all Elian’s classmates, his teachers, and his neighbors to come get him – but not his grandparents this time. Are we missing something here? Is this where the phrase "clueless" fits?

Years ago I had a close friendship with a Chinese college student. During her first month in America, she sported a Mao Jacket, spouted off Marxist slogans and derided America for every manner of injustice to the workers of the world. From every angle she looked like a true believer. By the next month she got it. She figured it out. No one was watching her any more. There were no bugs or informants or neighborhood committees. She was actually free. By the end of the semester she was all too happy to provide a litany of abuses and terrors that had gone on and were still happening back in China.

Living in Cuba under Communism as with living in the South as a slave is not some matter of parlor politics where two reasonable people can agree to disagree over what is best. Among rational people, whether slavery or freedom is best for human life is not a debatable subject. The crux of the matter is that American’s simply can’t open their eyes and admit that Communism treats humans fundamentally the way Slavery did: as property, as chattel.

Americans have deep and admirable convictions to the notion of family values – in this case empathy for a father who wants to be with his child. But would we allow an enslaved father to take his son back to the Plantation – to a life of enslavement?

We proclaim that we support the rights of the father. But when he returns to Cuba he will have no rights. We want the father to have custody because he is the closest living relative. But if he returns to Cuba, the father will actually not have custody. Here you have to give the Cuban government credit for one thing – on the topic of custody they were completely direct. But apparently few Americans were listening, which is a fact Communist leaders have always counted on. Louise Fernandez, a representative of the Cuban Government clearly said: "The Cuban Government will take custody" and that Elian will be "A possession of the Cuban Government." At moments like this one almost feels compelled to start handing out Q-tips or offering free hearing aids. Do Americans know that starting at age eleven, Cuban boys are typically taken away from their parents for 45-60 days each year for indoctrination and training? Do we think this is some type of YMCA summer camp?

How many different ways are there to say it? Elian’s father will not have parental control of his son – unless he doesn't return to Cuba.

American’s are patriotic and passionate about the rule of law. That’s why American’s should be appalled that the INS actually ignored the law and its own procedures when it refused to accept Elian’s original application for asylum. Americans are appalled at the circus going on in Miami intended to fend off the rule of law but what the uncle is doing is actually in response to the US government treating Elian as a sacrificial lamb on the alter of political expediency. It was the U.S. government that first showed it wasn’t going to "play by the rules."

Elian’s uncle doesn’t fear going to jail. What he fears most is that someday Elian will stand on a Cuban beach looking north and wonder why his uncle didn’t do more to keep him free.

David Rafner - VA.

Support Elian’s right to stay free: www.capitalism.ORG www.capitalismmagazine.com