By Charles Lane

                  The Cuban government firmly and sincerely supports the humanitarian
                  value of family reunification. Or so it would seem, judging by the energy
                  and resources Havana has devoted to its international campaign for the
                  return of 6-year-old castaway Elian Gonzalez from his relatives in Miami to
                  his father in Cuba.

                  But consider the Fidel Castro regime's behavior toward Luis Grave de
                  Peralta Morrell and his family.

                  In 1989, Grave de Peralta, a physicist, returned home to Cuba from an
                  academic exchange in Italy. Having been able to read Western news
                  accounts of the changes in Eastern Europe and the uprising in China, he
                  was disgusted to find Cuba's official press attacking perestroika and
                  justifying the massacre at Tiananmen Square. So he resigned from the
                  Cuban Communist Party.

                  Fired from his university, Grave de Peralta spent the next half-year
                  researching and writing a 200-page manuscript in which he documented
                  self-contradictions and lies in Fidel Castro's speeches and writings. State
                  security agents arrested Grave de Peralta and charged him with "rebellion
                  through peaceful means"--that's a crime in Cuba--and, in 1992, sentenced
                  him to 13 years in prison.

                  Declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International and the
                  Committee on Human Rights of the National Academy of Sciences, Grave
                  de Peralta was released in January 1996 after then-Rep. Bill Richardson
                  personally intervened with Castro. As a condition of his release, Grave de
                  Peralta was required to emigrate, but he was told his family could follow.

                  Indeed, his two sons, Gabriel, 13, and Cesar, 8, have been granted U.S.
                  visas and Cuban exit permits. But the Cuban government continues to deny
                  an exit permit to the boys' mother, Maria Bouza Fortes. (She and Grave
                  de Peralta were divorced during the four years they have been obliged to
                  live in different countries.) Grave de Peralta, now 42 and studying for a
                  doctorate in engineering at Texas Tech, showed me some of the letters the
                  family has sent to Cuban officials from Castro on down, only to be ignored
                  or brushed off with vague alusions to "orders from above."

                  This, then, is the choice imposed by the Cuban government on this
                  politically incorrect family. The children can go to America to live in
                  freedom with their father--abandoning their mother in a totalitarian society
                  where she lost her job as an English teacher because of her former
                  husband's dissent. Or they can remain with her, and, in all likelihood, forfeit
                  any hope of seeing their father as long as Fidel Castro remains in power.

                  A Miami-based Cuban exile organization, Cuba-New Generation, says it
                  has documented nine cases similar to that of Grave de Peralta, among them
                  the story of Manuel Amigo Trejo, who was jailed for dissident activities
                  and released to Sweden in 1994. His wife and two daughters have
                  Swedish visas, but the Cuban government won't give them exit permits.

                  Castro's government has always manipulated family relationships to exert
                  control over potentially troublesome subjects. When musicians, athletes
                  and scientists travel abroad, they are often obliged to leave their spouses
                  and children in Cuba, to discourage them from defecting. Paquito
                  D'Rivera, the great jazz musician, bolted anyway in 1978; it took a
                  nine-year campaign to persuade Castro to let his son join him abroad.

                  Then there's the agony of family members separated from loved ones who
                  are jailed without due process for such offenses as "dangerousness" or
                  "contempt." Amnesty International has just documented the case of Victor
                  Arroyo, a dissident journalist, who was caught distributing some 140 toys,
                  purchased with donations from Miami, to poor children in Pinar del Rio
                  province. He has been sentenced to six months in prison for "hoarding."
                  His mother, Marta Carmona, waited for him during a previous 21-month
                  sentence on political charges; now she's waiting for him again.

                  Everywhere it has existed, Communism has generated refugees; Cuba is no
                  exception. Often the price of escape is some years of separation from
                  family. One of the three survivors of Elian's ill-fated boat, Arianne Horta,
                  decided at the last minute to leave her 5-year-old daughter in Cuba rather
                  than take her on the desperate journey that cost Elian's mother her life.
                  This little girl and her mother will now live apart indefinitely.

                  Castro may be reaping a public relations windfall from the tragedy that has
                  befallen the Gonzalez family. He may even have the law on his side in this
                  case. But none of that should obscure the fact that the whole episode
                  probably would never have occurred if the Cuban dictator had long ago
                  instituted the economic and political reforms Cuba's people so plainly
                  need. Fidel Castro, unifier of the Cuban family? The pose is pure
                  hypocrisy.

                  The writer is a former editor of the New Republic.

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