By Luis Grave de Peralta Morell

                  Monday, April 10, 2000; Page A21

                  Elian Gonzalez's father is now in the United States. As we Cubans in the
                  United States demanded from the beginning, he came with his current wife
                  and their small child. We can feel proud to have obligated Fidel Castro to
                  meet our demands.

                  When four months ago the tyrant gave President Clinton 72 hours to return
                  Elian to Cuba, what should always have been a family matter was
                  converted by the repressive regime in Havana into a political conflict. The
                  Cuban American community has had to struggle hard to give the Cuban
                  father the chance to choose what he wants for his son in freedom.

                  We have triumphed. Despite all the money invested in the case by Havana,
                  despite the evident cooperation of the Clinton administration with the
                  Cuban tyranny, we have attained our objective: to prevent anyone other
                  than the father from deciding the future of his son.

                  Now that Elian's father has been placed in conditions to ask freely for
                  political asylum and didn't do so, it is our obligation to respect Juan Miguel
                  Gonzalez's will. From this point on, the Elian case has reverted to a case of
                  a family dispute. We should act according to this reality.

                  I am myself hardly a supporter of the Havana regime. Rather, I have
                  personally suffered the evil of the tyrant. For eight years, since I was jailed
                  in Cuba for the crime of writing a manuscript critical of Castro, I have
                  suffered separation from my family by the express order of Fidel Castro. In
                  1996 I was released with the help of the U.S. government and sent to the
                  United States; Havana promised that my family could follow. My two
                  sons, ages 8 and 13, do have visas to the United States and permission to
                  leave Cuba, but their departure has been effectively blocked by the fact
                  that Castro denies an exit visa to their mother, Maria Bouza Fortes, who
                  also has a U.S. visa. At this moment, my brother in Cuba has been on a
                  hunger strike for more than two weeks demanding that the Cuban tyranny
                  permit the reunification of the Grave de Peralta family.

                  It is precisely because I demand for my family the right to decide for
                  ourselves what is best for us that I recognize that same right for the father
                  of Elian and every other Cuban. Neither Castro, nor Janet Reno nor the
                  Immigration and Naturalization Service--and not even the passionate
                  multitudes--may decide for me what is best for my family. That we decide
                  for ourselves.

                  Our part in the battle for Elian is done. Let us now leave the members of
                  the Gonzalez family to heal the wounds caused by the tyrant's evil.

                  We have much to do. Millions of Cuban children need our help. Let us
                  continue supporting the nascent civil society that has been hit so hard by
                  the tyranny in recent months. Let us fight to do away with the regime in
                  Havana, so that Elian and all Cuban children may enjoy in their own land
                  that freedom that we wished to give Elian here, and so that no more Cuban
                  mothers will drown trying to give their children what they should be able to
                  find on their own marvelous island.

                  The writer, a former Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, now
                  lives in Texas.

                           © Copyright 2000 The Washington Post Company