“Fidel Castro has upped the ante by demanding the return of a 5-year-old Cuban boy to his Cuban father. The boy’s mother and stepfather and nine others were drowned when their boat sank after they escaped from Cuba. The U.S. Coast Guard captured the boy as he clung to an inner tube in the ocean, and took him to Miami. Castro declared that the United States is the only one responsible for the tragedies produced by illegal departures. Castro is wrong. Both governments, through their emigration and immigration policies, are responsible for the deaths of Cuban refugees. If people were free to leave Cuba, they would do so by using safe means of transportation. If the U.S. government did not make it a criminal offense to assist Cuban refugees to enter the U.S, Americans citizens would be patrolling the seas to assist people escaping from communist tyranny. What is still unclear is why the U.S. government did not attack the boy on the high seas and forcibly repatriate him to Cuba, as it does with other Cuban refugees.
CAPSULE COMMENTARY: “The Tragedy of Elian”
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