When Politics Overtakes the Child

The Elian Gonzalez case of 2000 might be familiar.  U.S. agents retrieved by force a six year old Cuban boy  from a great uncle in Miami and returned him to his father, a Cuban national.  Father and son, after other court actions, returned to their private lives in Cuba.

Elian’s parents had broken their relationship–each had new companions–when Elian’s mother, Elizabeth Brotons, with him in tow embarked  surreptitiously for Florida on what turned out to be a defective craft.  The boat sank and  the child was one of three survivors of the thirteen or fourteen who began the voyage. His mother was among those lost. U.S. authorities placed him with a paternal great uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez who, supported by an  agency of the exile anti-Castro Cuban community of the USA, refused consistently over the months following (from November 1999 to April 22, 2000) to return the boy to his father

The family dynamics of the situation was hardly discussed in the press but on the face it was confusing.  If there had been acrimony between Elian’s parents and his mother’s flight was intended to somehow punish his father the split would have usually extended to both sides–the in-laws, the Gonzalez versus the Brotons. But in the event both grandmothers sided with the surviving father and the uncle of the father, who by all logic of family sentiment and loyalty should have agreed, was the only hold out.

Obviously a case of political commitment trumping kin relationship.  Either Lazaro had some very strong family centered disagreement with his brother and nephew or he and they were hopelessly split by ideological difference.  In any case the larger agencies of state and the anti-Castro community took up the argument and used the pretext to assault each other.

Control of a child’s options is control of his socialization, the kind of education and indoctrination he will receive. This may have some effect on  his political and ideological life as an adult.  Starkly stated, will Elian become a capitalist or communist? A religious believer, perhaps a fundamentalist, or an open minded secular? On one side is the natural and legal rights of parent and child to be together, on the other is the more general, public, political issue of his education.

But the person when he reaches adult status  always has the option of thinking through his choices for himself and whole communities under changing circumstances  can change their conceptual understandings as situations change. Indoctrination, no matter how dense and oppressive, can be superficial as well as efficient and overpowering.  There is no guarantee that a presented system of concepts will take and hold.  The outcome is problematic.  Socialization, like a pencil, leaves a mark but it might not be indelible. But the process sets a bar that has to be passed. James Joyce’s “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” (1916) recounts the difficulty a youth has in squaring his sexual nature with the early religious teaching he received. In any case none of us want our children trained by those whose philosophy is abhorrent to us.

The possibility of conversion of a group is more likely  if applied through the children especially where the parents are restrained by threat of punishment if they offer their own alternative way. The children can even be  physically removed from any parental influence.

In the U.S and Australia some of the children of the original native peoples were transported to distant residential schools and trained to the new Euro way without commensurate acceptance in the larger Euro community. As adults the children faced alienation from both sides.

In the opposite direction is the tradition of the Euro captives of the American Indian groups starting in the colonial period in the U.S.  Those who remained alive were acculturated toward the people they lived among and became part of the group that had been their enemies in the frontier wars and raids.  These stories form their own literary category. A famous late example from the movies (fictional) is “The Searchers” (1956) starring John Wayne, directed by John Ford.  A young frontier girl is abducted by an Comanche band.  Her uncle tracks the group determined to kill the girl rather than bring her back transformed. Her cousin, who it is suggested  represents the opposite process–a part-Indian raised and socialized by the Euros–is the uncle’s associate who will try to protect her. In the end the uncle’s bio-social love proves stronger than his cultural aversion. The awful showdown doesn’t take place.

In the 1970s-1980s era of the disappeared in Argentina, a number of infants of couples who were  murdered in captivity by ultra conservative military squads were adopted  secretly by families associated with the killers.  The reunion of some of these children with their real relatives only happened  under a new democratic  political regime. The switch of families  meant a parallel  turning for the children back toward the ideology and sentiments of their real parents. But many still have not returned. Some remained loyal to their adopted kin or were spirited out of the country to avoid the confrontation. A movie from Argentina, “Cautiva” (2003), written and directed by Gaston Biraben treats this subject fictionally.

The form is consistently the same.  A conflict relationship between groups finds expression in the attempt by various means to convert the children of the other group.  Paradoxically the act of stealing the child is at the same time an expression of love and hate.

In the struggle over the children the groups  tend to recognize an equivalence of status.  They recognize the other as human like themselves.  The hate is a matter of ideology. In situations where the groups are stratified as in the famous caste system and where a  biological theory is used to bolster the social order the supposedly superior group refuses to contest for the children of the other side, even those who actually belong to them.  It is a refusal of the bio-social self  in favor of maintaining a particular  socio-economic order. The school example above has this hierarchical quality at half-staff.  They convert and deny the children at the same time.

Sentimentally I feel strongly for the solidarity of the family-kin group. The children remaining with their natural parents or close natural kin makes more sense to me than the  socio-cultural demands and machinations of the larger society. But we must take care for there is always a point when the ideologies and actions of the parents are so disagreeable to the outsider that the weight of opinion shifts and we want to liberate the child from them. The courts reflect public opinion when they separate children from physically abusive and sadistic parents or other adult care-givers. At the ideological level a similar abuse may occur.  For me sending a child to be raised by a loving fascist couple is very close to the line.  Forced to choose I would still opt for the intact loving family, but I admit that there is a dilemma here and that we only make the choice because it is forced.

The case of the Goebbles family caps the confusion of politics and child care. The propaganda minister in the Nazi regime in World War II, in his Berlin bunker with wife and six children, his evil cause  defeated, chose death for the entire group,  But why the children, I have always thought, why deprive them of their still unformed lives?  Perhaps he was merely applying the extreme take-no-prisoners philosophy  he had  used against others. Some think it was his crazy reaching for  a dramatic effect. In the event, the lives of the children were treated as less valuable than the father’s ideology.

The contradiction of love and hate.  The felon from an intact family is sent to jail. His punishment is deeply shared by his innocent family members including the children. The head of a crime syndicate is jailed for life and his son is deprived of his guidance in the family’s criminal tradition. The spy couple are executed and their two sons are denied the loving relationship with natural parents.

We must even include the war and terror attacks that envelop the children bystanders  along with everyone else. Politics trumping as usual what most of us would agree are the rights of the child.

This social insanity of politics over the child is the result of an insoluble dilemma of organized social life–the constant emergence of disagreement and conflict among social groups. One ideological group against another or  the state imposing its rule against the individual. The kids like Elian caught in the middle

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