IN RE: ELIAN / A LETTER TO THE EDITOR Dear Sir: I would like to refer to Mr. Garry Wills column: “Elian Gonzalez is kidnap victim” that was published in today newspaper, that contains some statements that are not true and some others that are even derogatory to Cuban mothers and grandmothers, that I respectfully beg you to let me answer. There is not any similarity between the 1858 story of the Jewish boy kidnapped by the pope’s police, quoted by Mr. Wills from David Kertzer’s book, and the shipwreck that left Elian alone, tied by his mother and stepfather into an inner tube, and found two days later by two fishermen, that radioed immediately to the U. S. Coast Guard. As a God miracle Elian inner tube was encircled by dolphins, that protected him from been devoured by the sharks!! Elian was taken to a Miami hospital, to care about his poor condition, and, naturally, his relatives in Miami took care of him from the beginning. Can you call that a kidnapping? To say so is an infamy, to say the least. Knowing the terrible conditions under which the people have to live in Cuba, and that there is not any parents right under a communist system, it is understandable that the relatives are trying everything they can, legally, to keep the boy here. Is that kidnapping? Of course not!! That is love for somebody you care!!! Only the malignant mind of the tyrant was the first one to expound that as kidnapping, and that Mr. Garry Wills and others now repeat argument like parrots. When the US legal system decides what is the best for the little boy, everybody here will have to accept the decision, like it or not, even the Gonzalez family of Miami, and all of us who know by experience what is the difference between living in freedom or as slaves in a police state!!! We are waiting for that decision, and hoping it will be to live in freedom for Elian. Trying to gain support for each side, a lot of arguments have been said lately, and as usual, the communists are making a very dirty war of it. Now they are trying to discredit the honorability of the Gonzalez family, because of a DWI conviction of two uncles several years ago, or a robbing act of a third cousin some time ago. The president of the Cuban congress just declared to the international press that the little boy is living surrounded by drunkards. Maybe he was looking around him when he said that (Read the book “Dulces Guerreros”, by Norberto Fuentes, revolution’s official writer, that defected recently, to know about the “honorability” of the Cuban government officers!! The maffia is not in the exile!). To diminish the ill effect of Elian paternal grandmother TV appearance in Cuba, and seen here, over the USA public opinion, when she said she bit his tongue and unzipped his pants to inspect his genitals, Mr. Wills wrote that the Cuban mothers and grandmothers use to tease their little children that way, because that is part of the Cuban culture. That is a big and insane profane lie!! A repulsive insult to Cuban women!! Mr. Wills deserves to be sued for that dirty statement. In the Cuban culture relatives never, never, kissed each other in the lips, and much less played with the little children genitals!! Finally, what is the point of USA citizens, like Mr. Willis and many others, to defend a tyrant whose only ideal is to destroy this country?!! I can’t understand that. Very Truly Yours,
Oscar A. Espinosa
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