In his April 19 editorial, Jim McKiernan asks, “What’s the

question?” with respect to the plight of Elian Gonzales. He adds, “Yes, the

boy should be with his natural, legal parent.”

If the boy were Canadian, Mexican, Japanese, etc., then I would

agree However, at the crux of the whole debate is the question of whether or

not Elian would be going back to Cuba to his father. A Cuban diplomat

this month stated emphatically that Elian was a possession of the God-less

communist Cuban government.

Therefore, the answer to the question is no. Elian should remain in

the land of the free with his Cuban relatives. Think about it. Could you

send back a child to the prison of a totalitarian regime that was the offspring

of a woman who scaled the eastern wall in Berlin with her child, and

tiptoed through the mine field, and then managed to climb to the top of the

western wall with nothing but freedom on the horizon only to be shot in the

back causing her to slump over the wall where she dropped her child into

the West? Would you really send that child back?

You proceed on the notion that Elian’s father, Juan Miguel

Gonzales, wants his child to return to Cuba with him. We have no idea what

Juan Miguel wants. Juan Miguel’s other children are still in Cuba. Castro

is holding a gun to his head. Not unlike the way Jan “The Man” Reno’s

jack-booted thugs on Holy Saturday morning invaded his home and held a

gun to the head of Elian and the fisherman that rescued him from the sea.

Brian Fangman

Snoqualmie