Media uses Elián Saga to slander anti-communists

Twenty-four years ago tomorrow (April 22, 2000), Attorney General Janet Reno ordered armed immigration officials to remove six-year-old Elián Gonzalez from his Miami home in preparation for his return to communist Cuba after a protracted diplomatic dispute.

Five months earlier, Elián was taken by his mother and her boyfriend as they attempted to flee Cuba by sea, hoping for a new life in the United States. Their boat lost power and sank, and Elián’s mother drowned along with most of the other passengers. The US Coast Guard then took him to Florida found floating in an inner tube on November 25, 1999; the youngster was then sent to live with relatives in Miami, just as he would have done if his mother had successfully completed her escape.

From the beginning, liberal journalists insisted that there was nothing better about life in the United States than the communist dictatorship in Cuba. For example, on his December 6, 1999 Upfront program, CNBC’s Geraldo Rivera argued that the only problem was that Castro’s tyranny was “unpopular” with Americans. “You can hate Castro and his government,” Rivera lobbied, but “every time you have.” an unpopular government to which we objectchildren can be torn from that country. It’s just unconscionable. It’s political, it stinks.

During ABC’s 24-hour New Year’s report on December 31, 1999, correspondent Cynthia McFadden in Havana told how, during a visit to a Cuban school, the children “talked about… their fear of the United States… because it was a place where they kidnap children – a direct reference, of course to Elián Gonzalez.” Of course, there was no indication that the children McFadden spoke to were merely repeating the propaganda line fed to them by the government.

By April, it was clear that the Clinton administration would find a way to return Elián to the country where his mother had fled. Journalists claimed that life in Castro’s Cuba might be better than life in America. “Elián could expect a caring life in Cuba, sheltered from the crime and social collapse that would be part of his Miami upbringing,” NewsweekBrook Larmer and John Leland argued in the April 17, 2000 issue of their magazine. ‘The boy does re-establish themselves in a more peaceful society who cherishes his children.”

“Being a poor kid in Cuba can in many cases be better than being a poor kid in Miami, and I’m not going to judge their lifestyle so unnecessarily,” their Newsweek colleague Eleanor Clift spoke on April 8 McLaughlin Group.

Pressed, later Clift doubledwho told FNC’s Bill O’Reilly on May 1: “I can understand why a rational, loving father might believe his child will be protected in a state where he doesn’t have to worry about going to school and getting shot at, where he doesn’t have to worry about going to school and getting shot at. Drugs are not a big problem where he has access to free medical care and where the literacy rate, I believe, is higher than that of this country.”

In an April 20 interview with Vice President Al Gore’s wife Tipper, CNN anchor Larry King echoed the Castro regime’s anti-American talking points: “One of the things Elián Gonzalez’s father said that I I think it’s hard to argue with that His boy is safer at a school in Havana than at a school in Miami. He wouldn’t be shot in a school in Havana. Good point?”

To her credit, Tipper Gore disagreed: “Well, I think that’s a, that’s a bit of a hard point….”

While spreading the idea that life under communism was great, journalists also took vicious swipes at Miami’s anti-communist Cuban community. “Some suggested last weekend that it is wrong to expect Elián Gonzalez to live in a place where this is the case does not tolerate dissent or freedom of political expression. They were talking about Miami… Another writer this weekend called it ‘a banana republic in America gone out of control,'” NBC’s Katie Couric said as she opened the April 3 paper. Today.

“In Miami it is impossible to overestimate what everything is like here colored by a hatred of communism and Fidel Castro,” ABC’s John Quinones reported the next day World news tonight. “It’s a community with very little tolerance for those who may disagree.”

“The ‘banana republic’ label attached to Miami in the final stages of the Elián Gonzalez crisis is a source of hateful humor for most Americans. But many younger Cuban-Americans are getting it I’m tired of the hardline anti-Castro agents who helped create that stereotype,” TimeTim Padgett echoed in the April 17 edition of his magazine.

The New York Times suggested that it was old-fashioned to have a negative opinion of communist dictatorships. “Communism still looms as evil for Cubans in Miamithe newspaper shouted in an April 11 headline.

On CBS The early show (April 14), co-host Bryant Gumbel asked this oblique question to his network’s Cuba expert, Pamela Falk: “Cuban-Americans, Ms. Falk, have been quick to point the finger at Castro for exploiting the little boy. Are their actions less objectionable?”

Then, on the Saturday before Easter, immigration officials raided the home of Elián’s relatives in Miami to begin the process of returning the child to Cuba. CBS presented Dan Liever with live coverage that morning (April 22). praised Janet Reno before ordering the attack: “It worked in the end. The child came out safely.”

Liever also took advantage of the opportunity vouch for the good intentions of the Cuban dictator: “There is no doubt that Castro feels a very deep and abiding bond with the Cubans who are still in Cuba… There is little doubt in my mind that Fidel Castro was sincere when he said, ‘listen, we want this child love’. back here.'”

The heavy-handedness of the raid, typified by the image of a terrified Elián confronted by an armed immigration officer, was even applauded by some in the press. “I must confess, that now famous photo of a US marshal in Miami pointing an automatic weapon at Donato Dalrymple (the man holding Elián in the photo) and ordering him in the name of the US government to extradite Elián Gonzalez warmed my heart,” New York Times columnist Tom Friedman cheered in his April 25 column headlined “Reno for President.”

According to Time‘s Michael Duffy, the only valid criticism of Attorney General Janet Reno is that she waited too long to send soldiers. “I think any attack where no shots are fired and no one is injured is a success,” Duffy confirmed in the April 28 edition of PBS. Looking back on Washington week. “I don’t think Reno’s fault is that she should have talked longer or kept the negotiations going, but that she should have broken them off much sooner… She just should have stopped them sooner.”

Meanwhile, NBC’s Avila continued to reject the idea that Cuba was oppressed by communism. “The one thing I have learned about the Cubans in the many times I have been here over the years is that it is primarily a nationalistic country. not primarily a communist country”, he naively emphasized on MSNBC’s Imus in the morning four days after the raid (April 26).

After living with his father for two months as the lawsuits were concluded, Elian and his father returned to Cuba in late June 2000. The media continued to present the communist indoctrination that awaited him as normal. “The school system in Cuba teaches that communism is the way to succeed in life and that it is the best system. Is that deprogramming or is that true? National heritage?” NBC’s Jim Avila wondered on CNBC Tonight in advance on June 27.

“Elián will almost certainly rejoin the Pioneers, as almost all Cuban kids do. Are very much like the Cub Scoutscamping trips and all that, but with a socialist twist and a revolutionary twist,” exclaimed NBC’s Keith Morrison on June 28. Dateline.

All that “education” certainly had an impact: In March 2023, Elián Gonzalez was “elected” to the Cuban National Assembly – meaning he was selected by the Communist Party to run unopposed in his district. “At the age of 29 he is a show pony for Cuba, just as many exiles feared,” the Miami Herald noted in a March 27 editorial. “The struggle to claim Elián Gonzalez and give him a life in America was the last great struggle between Castro, American ‘imperialism’ and exiles from Miami. And the dictator won.”

With a lot of help from a compliant news media.

For more examples from our flashback series, which we call the NewsBusters Time Machine, visit here.