stupid Cuban Kid thing

[Gil Bang 25898]

It was quite the lively thread back in the hornfans days. Nutjob right-wingers, who normally would preach "parental rights" at every opportunity, suddenly decided "freeing" a child from communism was more important than returning him to his only living parent. 

 

Fast forward nearly a quarter century, and here we are. 

 

 

 

 

HAVANA — Elián González has the same big, expressive eyes he did 23 years ago when an international custody battle transformed him into the face of the long-strained relations between Cuba and the United States.

Now 29, González is stepping into Cuban politics. He recently entered his country’s congress with hopes of helping his people at a time of record emigration and heightened tension between the two seaside neighbors.

 

“From Cuba, we can do a lot so that we have a more solid country, and I owe it to Cubans,” he said during an exclusive interview with The Associated Press. “That is what I’m going to try to do from my position, from this place in Congress — to contribute to making Cuba a better country.”

González has given only a handful of interviews since he was unwittingly thrust into the geopolitical spotlight as a boy. In 1999, at just 5 years old, he and his mother were aboard a boat of Cuban migrants headed toward Florida when the boat capsized in the Florida Straits. His mother and 10 others died while González, tied to an inner tube, drifted in open water until his rescue.

Granted asylum under U.S. refugee rules at the time, González went to live with his great uncle, a member of the Cuban exile community in Miami that is often a center of fierce criticism of Cuba’s government. In Cuba, his father begged then-President Fidel Castro for help. Castro led protests with hundreds of thousands of people demanding little Elián’s return. Anti-Castro groups in Miami pressed for him to stay in the U.S.

The tug-of-war quickly gained the world’s attention and became emblematic of the testy feelings between the two neighboring nations. Then-U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno ruled the boy should be returned to his father, but González’s relatives refused. AP photojournalist Alan Diaz captured the moment when armed immigration agents seized González in a Miami home, and the photo later won a Pulitzer Prize.

“Not having my mom has been difficult, it has been a burden, but it has not been an obstacle when I have had a father who has stood up for me and been by my side,” González told AP.

He is a father himself now, of a 2-year-old daughter. He works for a state company that facilitates tourism to the island nation his mother left, underscoring the alternate track his life has followed since his homecoming.

 

Government officials search for Elián González in Miami, on April 22, 2000.Alan Diaz / AP file

What’s more, he recently became a lawmaker.

In April, González was sworn in as a member of Cuba’s National Assembly of People’s Power, effectively Cuba’s congress. He represents Cárdenas, a town in Matanzas province about 80 miles (about 130 kilometers) east of Havana where he lived until his mother took him to sea. He still lives in the province.

Dressed in black pants and T-shirt, with a discreet braided bracelet on his right hand and his wedding ring on his left, González was interviewed in Havana’s Capitol, the renovated seat of congress.

“I think the most important thing is that I have grown up like other young people. I have grown up in Cuba,” he said.

 

 

Edited July 6, 2023 by Gil Bang

[tx 3 putt 76402]

He’s a jfk Jr clone