It takes unimaginable cruelty to sentence a six-year-old child to life under the heel of a Marxist tyranny — a life of compulsory labor service for public school students, relentless indoctrination in socialist dogma, constant scrutiny by the political police, and possible conscription to fight abroad on behalf of the glorious, worldwide “democratic” revolution. Yet this is what the Clinton administration has in mind for Elián González — and for all other children residing in the United States, were the Clintonistas to succeed in imposing their entire agenda upon our nation. Fortunately for Elián and the rest of us, what Castro and his henchmen have wrought in Cuba remains, for now, a largely unconsummated ambition on the part of their American soul mates. But for Elián, that nightmare would resume if the administration succeeds in dispatching him back to the Caribbean Gulag State.

“Elián will have no life in Cuba, no parents,” asserts Cuban expatriate Juan Ramon Garcia. “The government takes control of the children, what they eat and read. There’s hard labor at age 10. There are no rights. When they allow you to live they consider it a favor. They own you. Everything is for the revolution. The red scarf on the children says you belong to the state.” The red scarf is the insignia of the “Pioneers Union,” Castro’s equivalent of Lenin’s Young Pioneers. According to The Child in Cuba, a study published by the Cuban-American National Foundation, (CANF), “around 98% of children in elementary school belong to the Pioneers Union,” and a similar percentage of teenagers belong to the Union of Communist Youth.

In the staged mass demonstrations demanding Elián’s return to Cuba, children adorned with the red scarf have been conspicuously posed bearing signs reading, “Elián, ven a tu patria” — “Elián, come to your fatherland.” Note that well: Come to your “fatherland,” not to your father. For propaganda purposes, the Castro regime and its media allies strive to frame the controversy surrounding Elián as an issue of parental rights. However, to return Elián to Cuba would be to validate the claims of the “fatherland” upon the child, rather than to vindicate the parental rights of his father, since Castro’s regime does not recognize those rights.

Castro’s Kids

“What’s happening here is that [those who wish to return Elián to Cuba] are giving away the child to the government of Cuba, who will take ultimate responsibility for the child,” insists Jose Basulto of “Brothers to the Rescue,” a humanitarian organization that rescues Cubans fleeing from Castro’s island hell. Because the Cuban regime has made Elián an unwilling symbol of the revolution, the regime would use all of the means within its disposal — including psychological torture, if necessary — “to change the mind of that kid into a walking loudspeaker for Castro’s interests” were he to be sent back. This would be a particular tragedy in Elián’s case, since he has experienced freedom. However, the life of the typical Cuban child is a tragic one.

The proprietary claim of the Cuban central government over the hapless children who live in that nation is specifically affirmed in Castro’s socialist constitution. “The education of children and youths in the communist spirit is the duty of society as a whole,” proclaims Section 39 of that document in a Castroite version of Hillary’s maxim, “It Takes a Village to Raise a Child.” Article 3 asserts that “the communist formation of younger generations is a valued aspiration of the State, the family, educators, and political, social and mass organizations that act to create the principles of communism in youths.” According to Article 8, “Society and the State work for the efficient protection of youths against all influences contrary to their communist formation.” “All influences” includes family members opposed to Communism, as well as religious instruction or worship that has not been corrupted into an instrument of the state.

State control of the Cuban child begins shortly after birth, when parents are required to enroll the newborn in the identity register of the Ministry of Interior (MININT), Cuba’s political police. The MININT assigns the infant a child’s version of the national identification card, which must be carried at all times under penalty of arrest. At 16 years of age, the Cuban subject is assigned an adult version of the national ID, which contains a list of all the addresses at which he has lived, the schools he has attended, and notations describing his political attitudes and conduct. “Education” in Cuba is “a coordinated effort between the school … and the political police,” notes the CANF study The Child in Communist Cuba.

As is the case in every Communist regime, Cuba’s school system seeks to extirpate the religious beliefs of its inmates. “In 1976,” observes Nina Shea in her recent study In the Lion’s Den, “the Cuban constitution was amended to outlaw religious beliefs opposing the revolution. Two years later, the Cuban Communist Party platform supported the ‘progressive elimination of religious beliefs through scientific-materialistic propaganda.’” According to the volume Cuba: Mito y Realidad (Cuba: Myth and Reality), it is standard practice for teachers in the Communist schools to poll their classes to learn which children believe in God — and then single out those who respond affirmatively for harassment and indoctrination. Students who wear crosses or other religious symbols are accused of engaging in “religious propaganda” and subject to punishment. Such incidents are duly recorded in the Expediente Acumulativo del Escolar (Student Cumulative Dossier), a permanent record assigned to each student upon entering the Communist school system. In that document are recorded the student’s “political, religious, and academic behavior,” as well as “information concerning the parents: religious creed, opinions and political behavior,” notes the CANF study.

Indoctrination of Cuban children begins in nursery schools. Frank Calzon of the Center for a Free Cuba points out that in first grade, Cuban children “learn to read by reciting ‘F’ as in ‘Fidel,’ ‘R’ as in ‘Raul’ [Castro, Fidel’s brother and heir apparent], ‘G’ as in ‘guerrilla’,” and so forth. The cult of the “divine leader,” an inescapable feature of Communist despotisms, remains in force in Cuba. Notes the CANF report, “A lesson often cited by children mentions a teacher saying, ‘God does not exist. Fidel exists, and we shall prove it. Close your eyes and ask God to give you a piece of candy. Now, open your eyes. Did you receive any candy? No, you did not. Now close your eyes and ask Fidel for candy (teacher places candy in child’s outstretched hand). Open your eyes. Did you receive any candy? Yes, you did. See? God does not exist, but Fidel does.”

Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the murderous apostle of revolutionary terror, occupies a similarly exalted position in Cuba’s Communist pantheon. He was “the architect of the militarization of Cuban youth, sacrificing them to the cult of the New Man.” Che spoke candidly of his admiration for the “extremely useful hatred that turns men into effective, violent, merciless, and cold killing machines.” Following Che’s program, Cuban schoolchildren are marinated in hatred for the “enemies of the revolution” as gusanos (worms) and relentlessly programmed to love Fidel, Che, and other exponents of Marxist violence.

Save for a few embattled holdouts, all Cuban elementary schoolchildren are enrolled in the “Pioneers Union,” and eventually enroll in the “Union of Communist Youth.” Like the “Young Pioneers” in Bolshevik Russia and the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) in National Socialist Germany, the Cuban youth organizations indoctrinate youngsters and mobilize them on behalf of the state. The children who wear the red scarf are required to serve as chivatos (informants) against both friends and family, as well as to participate in mass demonstrations such as those organized to demand Elián’s return.

Helping the youthful chivatos to keep potential dissenters in line are the Committees for Defense of the Revolution (CDR), the notorious “block committees” organized in every neighborhood to act as the eyes and ears of the secret police. “Members of the committees attend all CDR meetings and patrol constantly to root out ‘enemy infiltration,’” notes French scholar Pascal Fontaine in The Black Book of Communism. “The surveillance and denunciation system is so rigorous that family intimacy is almost nonexistent.” Among the CDR’s most important tasks is to organize actos de repudio (acts of repudiation), ritualized quasi-lynch parties intended “to encourage reciprocal hatred between inhabitants of the small island.” In the typical acto, the CDR assembles a mob in front of the suspected counter-revolutionary’s home to throw stones, chant slogans, deface the walls with Communist graffiti, and (sometimes) physically attack the victim and his family. The actos “destroy the links between neighbors and damage the fabric of society to bolster the omnipotence of the socialist state,” explains Fontaine. Children conscripted into the “Pioneers Union” are required to participate in such orchestrated frenzies of hatred.

The “acts of repudiation” and the CDR’s constant surveillance make the Cuban child’s life a constant nightmare. Ricardo Fernandez, who left Cuba as a young child, vividly describes the intimidation that was commonplace during his childhood. “When I was five or six, just shortly before we left, I overheard my parents furtively whispering about what they hoped was a ‘passing phase’ in our country,” Fernandez recalled to THE NEW AMERICAN. “That’s when I came to realize that something wasn’t right, and that my parents opposed what was happening in our country, but were frightened to speak out about it. They were very careful to stay away from doors and windows, and took care to watch what they said around the neighbors, because they never knew when a stray comment could get them into trouble.”

“The CDR drives wedges between neighbors and between family members as well,” Fernandez continues. “It creates distrust and keeps the people divided against each other. There are powerful social dynamics for conformity in every society, of course, but in Cuba the government organizes the ‘acts of repudiation’ as a way of punishing those who act on their basic right to have and express opinions, or who have indicated a desire to leave Cuba for a freer society, which is a basic right as well.”

A Slave’s Life

According to Reverend Oscar Bolioli, who heads the Latin America and Caribbean office at the National Council of Churches (NCC), Elián should be grateful for the opportunity to return to Cuba. “To those who say that Elián would live better in Miami or elsewhere in the United States, I would reply that he’s actually going to live much better in Cuba,” Bolioli told THE NEW AMERICAN. “In Cuba he wouldn’t need to pay for his health care and for his schooling, like he would here, since they’re free.” Granted, Elián would not be required to pay in cash for the “privilege” of being indoctrinated or waiting in an endless queue for fourth-rate, rationed health care. He would, however, be required to live as a slave in exchange for these “benefits.”

Military service is compulsory for all Cuban males between the ages of 16 and 24. However, Cubans of both sexes are drafted at an even earlier age to serve in what Karl Marx called “industrial armies.” After the age of 11, Cuban children “have to work thirty to forty-five days per school term in the fields — whether it be picking up coffee beans or cutting sugar cane,” explains Ninoska Peréz of the Cuban-American National Foundation.

In her book Blessed by Thunder, Flor Fernandez Barrios, who escaped from Cuba with her family in 1970, describes her experience as a labor conscript. As a young student, Flor was drafted to serve in the “Ernesto Che Guevara brigade,” which was assigned to labor at a state-run tobacco plantation. She and two dozen other young children were penned like cattle in a crude barracks, fed worm-ridden, spoiled food (including carne rusa, canned horse meat thoughtfully provided by the Soviets), and roused every morning at 5:00 a.m. to labor for hours under the pitiless tropical sun. Each day the young girls were sentenced not only to slave labor, but to the relentless indoctrination provided by their slavemasters-cum-schoolteachers, who emphasized that their work brigade was “now the only family you have.”

“Of course, our principal would say: ‘You are getting a free education,’” Flor continues. After just a few days in the work camp, “I knew … that the word ‘communist’ meant lack of freedom. Coming to work in these fields was no act of patriotism.” Following a desperate midnight escape attempt, Flor was made the subject of an acto de repudio: She was stripped naked and forced to run the circumference of the camp ten times, a distance of about two and a half miles, as well as to endure hateful taunts about being a gusana (worm) and a traitor.

At age 14, Cubans who run afoul of the regime can be dispatched into the concentration camp system. According to CANF’s Ninoska Peréz, the Cuban gulag has three notorious juvenile detention camps: Guanajai, La Cabana, and El Castillo. In addition, beginning in the 1960s the regime created a network of UMAP (Units of Military Agricultural Production) farms, in which youth accused of “ideological diversionism,” particularly faithful Catholics, were sentenced to hard labor as a means of “re-education.” “Although by law the government was forbidden to sentence minors to serve in the UMAP farms or detention camps, we have received credible reports of such punishment being given to children 14 years old,” Peréz informed THE NEW AMERICAN. Of course, for Cuban children, the difference between a “free education” and a prison term is a matter of nuance.

“I was jailed by Castro when I was 15,” recounted Juan Ramon Garcia in an interview published in the March issue of Liberty magazine. As punishment for their membership in a Catholic youth group, Ramon and thousands of other youths were imprisoned “in a baseball stadium with guards with machine guns around the top. We had no food, just one hose for water. They tried to humiliate us. They made the boys urinate in front of the nuns. We were taken from there to [be imprisoned in] chicken coops.” In a sense, Ramon was fortunate; he may have been consigned to the prison camp system, perhaps never to return.

Dr. Martha Frayde, a one-time Cuban representative to UNESCO, fell out of favor with the regime and was imprisoned at Havana’s Nuevo Amaecer (New Dawn) prison, the largest in the country. “My cell was six meters by five,” recounts Dr. Frayde. “There were twenty-two of us sleeping there in bunk beds of two or three layers. Sometimes there were as many as forty-two of us. Sanitation was dreadful.... It was impossible to empty the toilets, which filled up and overflowed. A layer of excrement formed, invading our cells.”

After an informant condemned him for speaking out against the regime, Cuban poet Armando Valladares was arrested by Castro’s political police and imprisoned without trial. Against All Hope, Valladares’ memoir of 22 years in the Cuban gulag, should be required reading for anyone who remains unconvinced that Elián González must be spared a future in Castro’s Cuba. Valladares describes the inmates who greeted him at Isla de los Piños (Island of Pines), Castro’s “model prison,” as “skeletons … their faces … white and waxen from lack of sun.” Prisoners who complained about their treatment, or who were singled out for the sadistic sport of the jailers, were stripped naked and put into solitary confinement. “They would spend months there, and every day the guards would throw pails of freezing water and excrement over them,” recalls Valladares. “Even if a prisoner managed to control his mind, to keep his mental faculties intact, he would still almost always come out tubercular, his lungs destroyed.”

Those who survive the Cuban gulag are paroled into an impoverished, hopeless prison society. “After 40 years of doctrinaire Marxism, [Cuba’s] economy stands in ruins,” writes Boston Herald columnist Don Feder, who has inspected those ruins firsthand. “The average Cuban earns the equivalent of about $20 a month. If he’s really smart and ambitious, and becomes a professional, Elián could make a whole $7 a week as a doctor or engineer — providing he can find employment. Unless he’s one of the elite who’s paid in hard currency (allowing him to shop in special ‘dollar stores’ reserved for tourists and the privileged), he’ll live on a near-starvation diet and experience the chronic shortages of basic necessities that are a way of life in Castro’s Cuba.”

In 1962, Castro’s regime imposed a comprehensive system of rationing of all consumer goods, including food and clothing. La Libreta — the ration booklet assigned to each household — is quite literally a passport to survival. It is also the state’s most valuable leverage over its subjects. Until the age of seven, each Cuban child enjoys a daily ration of one liter of powdered milk, after which the ration is discontinued. Families with newborn infants are given a monthly ration of 14 six-ounce cans, until the child reaches three years of age — provided that the state store to which the family is assigned has baby food in sufficient quantity. “Without this indispensable little book, no one could buy anything,” recalls Flor Fernandez Barrios. “All the stores required customers to present it so that their quota of food or goods such as toothpaste, toilet paper or soap could be marked. There was a quota for everything — bread, milk, sugar.... People spent most of their days walking from store to store and standing in long lines to get whatever was available....”

In classic Communist fashion, Castro and his regime, as administrators of scarcity, use their control over the economy to control their subjects. Even those Cubans who escape the gulag are, in a very real sense, prisoners on their own island.

Yearning for Freedom

“One of the saddest things about Cuba is the fact that what the typical Cuban child wants to be when he grows up is a foreigner,” Ninoska Peréz of the Cuban-American National Foundation told THE NEW AMERICAN. “This isn’t because they don’t love their country, it’s because Castro’s regime makes it impossible to live there as human beings. This is why so many Cubans, including youngsters and children, seize any opportunity they can to leave Cuba, even at great risk, and even if it means leaving family members behind. They’re driven to this by simple desperation.”

“People need to understand that one of Communism’s greatest crimes is the way it tears families apart,” Dr. Miguel Faria, who fled from Cuba with his father as a teenager, explained to THE NEW AMERICAN. “When my father and I left Cuba, we had to leave my mother and sister behind, but there was no question that they wanted us to escape to freedom. During our boat trip to the United States, my father made it clear that if something should happen to him, I should continue and then try to get my mother and sister out as well. With God’s help we both made it and were later able to bring the rest of our family out as well, but there are thousands upon thousands of Cubans who weren’t as fortunate.”

“When my Dad was asked by a reporter in Miami if he had been afraid to make this dangerous voyage with a young son, he replied that we would have been glad to give our lives for freedom,” continues Dr. Faria. “Cubans, like all people, have a God-given love of freedom. I can understand why Elián and his mother were willing to run the risks that they did. What I can’t understand is why so many people think that the humane thing to do would be to send that youngster back to a prison society. His mother and stepfather literally gave their lives to save Elián from a life of slavery. It would be a staggering obscenity to send him back.”

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