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Jewish World Review April 17, 2000 / 12 Nissan, 5760
Chris Matthews
It has also revealed the strength of passions on the other
side.
Rep. Barbara Lee, a Democrat who represents Berkeley
and Oakland, wants an end to the 40-year U.S. embargo
against Castro's Cuba. After a trip to the island nation in
1999, she said that American policy "continues to serve
as an impediment to understanding and dialogue" between
the two countries.
Lee is also among the many Americans who have called
for Elian Gonzalez to be returned to his Cuban father,
Juan Miguel Gonzalez. She was on a very short list of
Americans who were allowed to visit with Elian's father
this week. That list was highlighted by such strong
opponents of U.S. Cuban policy as Rep. Maxine Waters,
D-Los Angeles; Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., and Joan
Brown Campbell of the National Council of Churches.
For Lee and Waters, it was not their first such meeting.
The two were part of a delegation that visited Cuba in
February, when they were allowed to meet with Juan
Miguel Gonzalez. It was a rare event in the months-long
standoff over Elian's custody. For much of the time the
father was, for all practical purposes, invisible.
Lee holds a master's degree from UC-Berkeley. And despite the East Bay
city's reputation for having its own foreign policy — it's been called the
People's Republic of Berkeley by its conservative critics — she resists any
effort to tie the issue of Elian to the question of U.S.-Cuban relations.
While it has been clear long before this week that Fidel Castro sees the issues
as closely intertwined, Lee insists that from her perspective, the international
politics and the human concerns are totally separate from Gonzalez's desire to
regain his son.
"I talked with him. I'm a trained social worker. He loved his son and he wanted
him back, and he was very genuine. He was apparently very upset that he did
not have him.
"He's an ordinary man, a working man. It is wrong to politicize this. It's really
an issue of parental custody. It's very simple. That has nothing to do with a
child being returned to his or her parent.
"No parent needs to be coerced into wanting his or her child with him."
Though there is nothing "simple" about this case, from the perspective of both
those who see Castro as a gutsy opponent to imperialism and those who see
him as the last Communist tyrant, Lee's last point is
04/14/00: Clinton and the Castro curse
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