After their soap-opera performance, in the Elian saga, I doubt they will be capable to gather any important support for their case.
This writer agrees with you about the opera aspect of the Elian Gonzalez show. A sympathetic point of view story.
In defense of the Miami relatives
Understanding the opera that is Elian
The tragi-comic opera that is the Elian saga featured such broadly drawn characters as Donato Dalrymple, (left) who rescued the child; paterfamilias Lazaro Gonzalez, (center) and his madonna-like daughter, Marisleysis. But do we really understand them?
By Aly Colon
SPECIAL TO MSNBC
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., June 23 ? As the Miami relatives of Eli n Gonz lez suffer another legal setback and prepare to take their case to the Supreme Court, it?s time to take a closer look at the public perceptions that have been created of this troubled family ? and, by extension, Cubans and Cuban Americans.
IN SOME INSTANCES, the news coverage of the Gonz lez family and the community that supports them read more like the libretto of an opera than it did news.
Too often, the reporting of this story created a tragi-comic opera that had the passion of ?Carmen? and the character contrasts of ?The Barber of Seville.?
This opera, with its Cuban beat and heat, offered us characters writ large: the stubborn, brooding Don Laz ro; the saintly, then sickly Madonna Marisleysis; the Eli n Christ-child; and the noisy, bellicose band of secondary characters that filled the stage.
But this was not opera. It was reality. Albeit a confusing, complicated, cacophonous one.
REALITY CHECK
Why would a family from a culture that prides itself on its strong family ties, and is often even labeled patriarchal, fight so hard to keep a son separated from his father?
To understand the complexity of this story, it might help to recast it a different way.
Imagine this. A young boy survives a harrowing sea journey. An uncle takes him in. A crowd forms around the uncle?s home, filled with people who?ve come from where that boy has come; a place they consider so oppressive, so controlling, so painful they would do anything to escape it - and even more to keep the child from going back.
Now imagine this: The boy and the crowd are from China. Or Afghanistan. Or ethnic Albanians from Serbia.
How would they look to you then: As rabid, right-wing, rabble-rousing flouters of the law? As ungrateful immigrants thumbing their noses at the American dream? As a fanatical mob determined to have its own way?
In some news reports, and especially in a number of online, newspaper and magazine commentaries, the Gonz lez family in Miami, and their Cuban American supporters came off that way.
In some cases, they found themselves, and their ethnic group, labeled as fanatical extremists, mob-like, anti-family, volatile, anti-law, if not downright un-American.
How strange. A group that at one time stood as the example of a ?model minority? now has become the ?monster minority.?
What happened?
Obviously, some of the actions taken by the Gonz lez family, and those who advised them, helped create the unfavorable view that many others have. But I think it?s more complicated than that.
Maybe that?s the point. It was, is, a complex story.
It has many layers. It is an escape story, a sea journey-turned-tragedy story, a miraculous rescue story, a political story, a legal story, a custody story, a religious story (in its mystical symbolism), an exile community story, a child/mother/father/relatives story and a extended-family story.
And those are just the most obvious ones. The news media picked up on many of them. But it seemed, for the most part, to do them individually, almost in isolation from one another.
A QUESTION OF MOTIVE
Too often the fuller perspective of why the Gonz lez family felt the way it did, acted the way it did, and was supported the way it was, was left out, or was incomplete.
We lacked the context to appreciate the passion brought by the Gonz lez family and their supporters to what on the surface seemed a simple story of a boy who loses his mother and should now be with his father.
Some questions must have arisen in the minds of news consumers and news providers regarding this community.
Why would a family from a culture that prides itself on its strong family ties, and is often even labeled patriarchal, fight so hard to keep a son separated from his father?
Why would an immigrant community become so passionate about not wanting one of their own to return to its country of origin?
What law specifically was the Gonz lez family breaking?
Why were their actions considered disrespectful of the law rather than civil disobedience?
Why would a community of people, whom the U.S. has supported in their antagonism toward Fidel Castro for about 40 years be expected to suddenly shift ideological gears and send a child back to a place they sought so hard to escape?
Why does this particular group of people hate Cuba?s head of state and its current political environment so much?
What has happened in their lives, or their families? lives, to make the idea of sending Eli n back there so repulsive?
LACK OF INSIGHT
These questions make me wonder why more journalists didn?t seek more opportunities to answer them and include such helpful nuggets in their stories.
I wondered why the public didn?t hold the news media more accountable in their handling of the context, background, perspective, knowledge, and insight that addressed the nuances and complexity of this story.
Place yourself in the shoes of the Gonz lez family.
What if you had a nephew, or niece, and you were someone:
Who escaped a government you knew had imprisoned your father, brother, mother, sister;
Who left behind family members who had been persecuted politically;
Who had seen his family?s opportunities for a better life restricted;
Who still had members the family living in conditions you would consider harsh and severe economically.
Would you so easily turn that child over without a fight?
I?m not suggesting journalists, or the public, needs to agree with the Gonz lez family decisions or actions.
What I am saying is that the news media needs to provide more context, and the public needs to read more perspectives, so that both can learn more and grapple with the complexity that such issues create.
SOME GOT THE STORY RIGHT
They could have learned more by reading ?Love in the Time of Castro? by Tim Golden in the April 23rd issue of The New York Times Magazine, which offered insight into an extended family?s unity and separation. They might have read Ann Louise Bardach?s piece in the May issue of George magazine where she recreates the ill-fated boat trip from Cuba to Miami.
They could have read Roberto C‚spedes New York Times April 4 op-ed piece that explained the mystical/religious role that Eli n played both here and in Cuba.
When you don?t know anything about opera, the story that unfolds on the stage seems incomplete, disjointed, almost ridiculous. All these people talking one moment, singing at the top of their lungs the next, dancing about the stage, wearing strange costumes and speaking/singing in a language (even English) that?s unintelligible.
But if you actually read about the particular opera you plan to attend ahead of time, you learn the story line, who the characters are, why they are the way they are.
And then you realize that opera?s beauty, power and ability to resonate with you stems from your ability to understand and relish all of its components.
So should it be with the news operas of our lives. |
