Letter From Cuba's Speaker of The National Assembly
This web site has not been authorized by any government or group. The purpose of this page is to express what I believe to be the truth and facts behind the controversy over Elian Gonzalez Brotons.
Letter forwarded by Dr. Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada,
Speaker of the
National Assembly of People's Power of the Republic of
Cuba, to all
members of Parliament in the world.
Dear Members of Parliament,
Cuba has repeatedly denounced the double standard
policy that the United States government pursues
towards Cuba with regards to immigration.
While the nationals of other countries are quickly
deported when they illegally enter that country, the
Cubans are immediately granted permission of residence
in compliance with the so-called Cuban Adjustment Act
thus undermining the migratory agreements signed
by both countries while encouraging illegal migration.
This has lately given rise to a new phenomenon: the
illegal smuggling of aliens when unscrupulous
individuals wanting to profit from others and
despising human fife have come from the United
States and surreptitiously enter our territory on
speed boats to fetch Cuban citizens that they take to
that country on payments of 8,000 to 10,000 US dollars
per person. Most often, the travelling takes place on
overcrowded boats and not few people, women and
children included, have perished during such
trafficking in humans.
In addition to this, over two thousand weekly
hours of radio stations programming invade our
radio-electronic space as part of a campaign
that repeatedly incites people to ignore the
established procedures for a legal and safe migration
in accordance with the aforementioned agreements
signed by the United States and Cuba. The trafficking
in humans is conducted on rudimentary and unsafe
vessels, either built or stolen In our country by
people who receive money from and act in complicity
with others living in the United States of America.
Last November 22, ancillary troops of our Coast
Guard Forces detected, within our jurisdictional
waters, a vessel carrying a group of people to
Florida. As the efforts to persuade them to abandon
their undertaking failed --and in compliance with
the well-known conduct observed in such cases to avoid
the use of force and intimidation to prevent
accidents- it was decided to escort them up to the
international waters. Additionally, an immediate
communication was forwarded through the established
channels, that is, fax and telex to the U.S. Coast
Guard Service patrolling the sees adjacent to
Cuba about the presence and characteristics of
such vessels navigating towards Florida "with a group
of about 13 People, including children, on the
northern coast of Matanzas province with the intent to
illegally enter the territory of the United States of
America.”
A few days later, on November 25, we learned
that the U.S. Coast Guard Service had rescued, near
the coast of Florida, three survivors of a shipwreck
and that five year-old Elian Gonzalez Brotons was one
of them.
That child was being illegally carried aboard
that vessel by a man named Lazaro Munero Garcia who
had close personal relations with the child's mother
already divorced from the boy's father, Juan Miguel
Gonzgiez Quintana, a resident in the city of Cardenas,
Matanzas province, Cuba. The father had a very close
relationship with his son whom he constantly visited
as he properly discharged his obligations as a parent.
The child's grandparents, on both sides of the
family, had also a very close and loving relationship
with him as they live in the same city. They, too,
have been deprived of the boy's presence.
Neither the father nor any other relative was
consulted about the child's departure. The father's
permission was not requested to take his small son to
the United States of America, least of all to carry
him there illegally and by irresponsible and unsafe
means. The two persons responsible for illegally
taking the child, that is, the mother and her friend,
perished in the shipwreck.
Once again the United States government has
violated the basic principles of law and respect for
human dignity thus insulting the child's father, a
modest Cuban Worker, and his grandparents when it has
used the Immigration and Naturalization Service to
illegally retain the Child in their territory despite
the father's insistent claim to recover his son in
compliance with his full right to custody.
Far from acting with the urgency that the case
demands and returning the child to his father through
the expedite procedures provided for such cases, the
United States government, in connivance with the
Cuban-American extreme right mob in Miami avoids a
fair, legal and human action and chooses to keep him
in their territory thus turning this into a de facto
and de jure act of abduction of the child illegally
snatched from Cuba.
From the moment a person is born until he
becomes of age and is then considered in full capacity
to act on his own, it falls on the parents the right
and the duty to provide care, education and to keep
him under custody and attention. Until becoming of age
and for his benefit, every minor is legally subjected
to the custody exercised by his parents, that is, to
depend from others; he cannot act of his own free
will. Such dependency shows in his capacity to act and
the full exercise of his rights, which in principle
are determined by both parents or by one of them when
the other has died.
Such a transcendental action as it is the
separation from his country, because it uproots the
child from his daily life, his family, his classmates
and friends, his culture and nationality demands the
previous consent of both parents when on of them
intends to leave the national territory.
It is for these reasons that Elian’s father
and his grandparents' right to demand his immediate
return to the home and family from which he was
illegally snatched is not negotiable. This claim is
decidedly supported by all the Cuban people as a
perfectly just defense of the infringed rights of this
child and his father.
The behavior of the government of the United
States of America, which violates Elian's right to
enjoy his father’s love and understanding, to fully
and harmoniously develop his personality and to grow
in the loving family from which he was unfairly
separated and where he has his dearest and deepest
affections is thus denounced by the National Assembly
of People's Power that on behalf of the Cuban people
exposes this vandalistic action and appeals to the
most determined support of all Members of Parliament
in the world.
Sincerely,
Dr. Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada
Speaker of the National Assembly
Of the Republic of Cuba
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