• News
• Sport
• Comment
• Culture
• Business
• Money
• Life & style
• Travel
• Environment
• Blogs
• Video
• Jobs
• A-Z

Boys should be boys, not political pawns

The pictures of armed officers seizing the six-year old Cuban castaway Elian Gonzalez from the house of the relatives who were sheltering him in Miami's Little Havana will rightly shock the world. Most detached observers who have watched the unfolding of America's own farcical version of The Caucasian Chalk Circle will agree with President Clinton and the US Attorney-General Janet Reno that Elian should be reunited with his father while the courts decide whether his surviving parent can take him back to Cuba. The uniqueness of this tragic case - a child pulled from the Straits of Florida where he had spent two days clinging to an inner tube after his mother had drowned - does not alter the principles involved. He is better with a loving parent than with the relatives who have cynically used him as a pawn in their struggle with Fidel Castro.

But the fact that the authorities had justice on their side in wishing to unite Elian with his father does not justify the way in which the US Immigration Services and police carried out their military-style raid. The only consolation is that it did not end in tragedy. And if the pre-dawn raid ordered by President Clinton seemed inevitable, it was only because, in allowing Elian to remain so long in a potentially abusive situation, the authorities had redoubled the risk of violence.

What seems so extraordinary is that the world's most powerful democracy has handled the case of Elian so badly, allowing the welfare of an orphaned child to be trampled over by those more interested in political point-scoring over the redundant issue of US-Cuban relations. For the truth of the case of Elian Gonzalez is that it has become an unpleasant metaphor for America's relations with its Caribbean neighbour, still economically blockaded, after four decades, for having the temerity to pursue an alternative political vision. That is not to approve of the human-rights abuses of Castro's regime, but America enjoys constructive relationships with many countries with similar records.

In truth, the US policy of exclusion, including the Helms-Burton Act which seeks to fine foreign countries that trade with Cuba, is driven by the same minority which grasped the fragile figure of Elian as a weapon in its continuing war with Cuba. If there is any lesson to be learned from the spectacle of the dogfight over Elian, it is that it is long overdue for the US to accept Cuba's right to autonomy and to renegotiate its relationship with a noisy, but insignificant, minority that has for too long dominated American foreign policy on the issue.

119 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER Telephone: 020 7278 2332, Fax: 020 7713 4250/4286 e-mail: editor@observer.co.uk