Nonsense, but Miami couldn't have bought worse publicity with a zillion-dollar budget. I don't blame the media or Anglo prejudice. In their frenzy for the story, the media sometimes distort and oversimplify. Some Anglos in this community still can't get over the fact that Cubans are an assertive people who don't take kindly to the notion that the natural order of things is for natives to be dominant and immigrants to be subservient. Yet there is a fine line between affirming one's rights aggressively and trampling over other people's rights.
Many people feel that line was crossed with a vengeance in the Elian affair, and they are right.
I blame our own politicians. And an exile leadership so eager to pick any possible fight with Castro that it picked one that pits our community against parental rights, family values, international and U.S. law, public opinion, the attorney general, the Cuban Catholic bishops, most of the island's population, leading dissidents and common sense. They wanted to shoot at Castro and organized a firing squad lined up in circular formation. It's a script in which the Miami exiles play the role of the frenzied mob, and Castro gets to be the hero in Havana. Castro never made as much trouble for the U.S. government in its own territory as his fiercest opponents in Miami now.