LETTERS: WOULD ELIAN BE FREE IN MIAMI?

To the editor:

Apparently no one in the flying-monkey wing of the U.S. right is willing to believe that it is possible for a single soul to be happy in Cuba, even a little boy loved by father and grandparents.

The most ridiculous aspect of the Elian Gonzalez affair is that, of all groups in the United States among whom I have lived, none has a more perverted version of freedom than the highly politicized, fascist-minded people who are currently orchestrating the "Keep Elian" movement. If it were to be determined that the only way to impart freedom to young Gonzalez is to keep him here, away from his father and both sets of grandparents, I submit he would still have to be moved far away from the Miami milieu in order for him to be free.

We are talking about a community where people are violently attacked for even so much as hinting that a dialogue with Castro could be useful. Where people who had been tortured by somocistas in Nicaragua were attacked because, in the eyes of the Cuban gusanos, the Nicaraguan dictator and thief Anastasio Somoza Debayle -- being against communism, you see -- could do no wrong. Where a luckless driver who had the audacity to pass a sign -- Honk if you like Reagan! -- without honking was chased down by those people and beaten severely.

Such assaults on freedom in Miami are well-documented and as common as pig tracks. The leaders of the Cuban anti-Castro community there are not even familiar enough with the norms of freedom to know that they should be ashamed of such conduct.

Political opportunists are loudly insisting that the boy's father come to the United States to make the case for retaining custody of his son, the purpose being to rule out the possibility of his being improperly pressured by the Cuban government. As if improper pressure had not been used on Elian Gonzalez. He has been treated better than the most spoiled child in the history of the planet in a transparent attempt to seduce him from his father, and he will have to be the most incorruptible child in history in order to resist these outrageous material bribes.

To anti-communists, need is only bad when suffered under a government which is trying to do something about it. One doesn't have to like Castro's policies in order to admit that he cares more about the Cuban poor than, say, Fujimori does about the Peruvian poor.

DONN S. MILLER

Tamms, Ill.