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Changing Hawaii

By Diane Yukihiro Chang

Monday, April 24, 2000

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Was Elian kidnapped
or rescued?

AINA Haina psychologist Marvin W. Acklin had it right, back in December, when he predicted the battle over 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez was going to turn into "the mother of all custody cases" (Changing Hawaii, Dec. 10, 1999).

Early Saturday morning in Florida, just as Hawaii residents were shuffling off to bed Friday night, 150 federal agents swarmed the Miami house of Elian's great-uncle, Lazaro, and his sleeping family.

Five minutes later, the most famous little boy in the U.S. -- and certainly one of the most traumatized -- was on his way to reunite with his America-hating father.

Which was more distressing for the tyke: surreptitiously slipping out of Cuba with his mother, their boat sinking and her drowning; his constant stalking by the press and elevation to icon status by the Cuban-American community; or his federally ordered rescue in the stealth of darkness?

As Elian was whisked from his home and hideout for the past five months, the kid cried out in Spanish to no one in particular, to everyone in earshot, "What's happening?"

Plenty, including a myriad of ironies that's got to make interested bystanders merely shake their heads in wonderment and disgust:

Elian's ocean ordeal ended on Thanksgiving Day, much to the relief and delight of his Miami relatives, but he was taken away from them on Easter weekend.

In an eerie coincidence, he was retrieved at gunpoint by federal officers while in the arms of Donato Dalrymple, the very fisherman who had spotted and saved Elian off the Florida coast.

The ever-hovering media -- much maligned and often characterized as being bothersome voyeurs -- were finally redeemed by providing photographic and videotape proof of what Fox News described as "The Taking of Elian."

After weeks of learning how to form and perfect a "human chain" in an effort to block anyone from swooping in and taking the boy, anti-Castro forces milling outside the Gonzalez home were gassed with pepper spray, held at bay by gunpoint or were too stunned to react during the three-minute operation.

So much for the president's vocal campaign against the proliferation of guns and gun usage in this country. Another fine Clintonian example of, "Do as I say, not as I do."

If the snuggly blanket engulfing Elian -- who was carried by a female federal agent into an idling white van -- was meant to lessen the intense physical, emotional and mental disturbance of the raid, it probably didn't work.

ONE of the toys waiting for Elian on the jet taking him to see his father was Play-Doh, the malleable mess recommended by psychologists for relieving stress.

What a coincidence. The young man was a form of play clay in his own right -- molded first by his American relatives and then later by his dad, who released pictures of them smiling blissfully together.

The newly reunited Gonzalez clan from Cuba was being sequestered at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, awaiting court action. Meanwhile, Elian's cousin, 21-year-old Marisleysis, was turned away twice from seeing the boy who has become like a son to her.

Has he lost his "mother" for the second time? Or has he rediscovered his destiny?

What will happen to perhaps the only "hostage" in history who didn't want to be rescued?

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Diane Yukihiro Chang's column runs Monday and Friday.
She can be reached by phone at 525-8607, via e-mail at
dchang@starbulletin.com, or by fax at 523-7863.