Elián, the Cuban child at the center of a dispute with the US, becomes a parliamentarian

The Cuban Elián González has the same large eyes and penetrating gaze of more than two decades ago, when he was barely six years old and after being shipwrecked with his mother in the Straits of Florida, he became the center of a legal and diplomatic dispute between Cuba and USA.

But now he is a young engineer, he got married, was the father of a girl, works in a tourist company and has just become a deputy.

“I have a commitment, I have a responsibility to this town”González responded during an exclusive interview with The Associated Press when asked why he had accepted the nomination of various social organizations to the National Assembly of Popular Power, the Cuban Parliament.

The Assembly with the new deputies -470 in total- was renewed in April and González occupied a seat representing his native municipality of Cárdenas, in the province of Matanzas and about 130 kilometers east of Havana. The position of parliamentarian is not rented in Cuba, so González will continue to be linked to his work.

“I would be a hypocrite if I turned my back on my people”said González, 29 years old. “I believe that from Cuba we can do a lot so that we have a more solid country and I owe it to the Cubans, to all those who fought for me, those who were with my father and that is what I am going to try to do now from my position”.

Many remember AP photographer Alan Díaz’s dramatic April 2000 snapshot – for which he won a Pulitzer Prize – of the little boy clinging to an adult with a terrified expression as a uniformed Immigration and Naturalization Service agent The United States pointed its gun at them. The objective was to rescue the child to deliver it to his father.

That scene in a Miami home marked the end of months of trilateral tensions between Cuba, the United States and anti-Castro exile groups from Florida.

It was November 1999 when his mother, Elizabeth Brotons, put five-year-old Elián on a boat without his father’s authorization to take him illegally to the United States. In the shipwreck, 10 people died, including her and her partner.

The boy, tied to a tire tube, was rescued after several days adrift at sea and by virtue of the laws in force at the time -which granted political asylum to Cubans who reached the United States by any means- he was handed over. to a great uncle.

In Cuba, his father Juan Miguel González, a humble tourism worker, went to Fidel Castro himself to help him claim for his son.

The case of the little rafter became popular, television cameras surrounded the house in Florida where the little boy was and anti-Castro groups pressured him to stay in the United States, alleging that his mother had given her life to take him to a country with civic freedom. and material prosperity.

Meanwhile, in Cuba, hundreds of thousands led by Castro demonstrated in the streets in solidarity with the father.

“Not having my mother has been difficult, it has been a burden, but it has not been an obstacle when I have had a father who has known how to stand up (defend me) and be by my side,” González said when taking stock of those events. “I feel like a child, a young person and a happy adult”.

The then Attorney General of the United States, Janet Reno, ruled that the child should return to his father, but due to the refusal of his relatives to return him on April 22, 2000, he was forcibly recovered to hand him over to his father, who had traveled to pick it up. On June 28, the González family landed at the José Martí airport in Havana.

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

Dressed in pants and a black shirt, with a discreet braided bracelet on his right hand and his wedding band on his left, González gave the interview to AP at the Capitol in Havana, the renovated seat of Parliament.

“There was also a great effort from my father because the press at the beginning of my childhood was very far from me”Gonzalez recounted.

For years there was no way to get close to the minor, but sometimes he was seen from afar playing with other children or accompanying his father to political activities. Castro used to visit him, especially on his birthday, December 6.

Over the years his father withdrew from public life and González became a military cadet and later an industrial engineer. He also joined a company of the Gaviota tourism firm -managed by a military corporation- in the province of Matanzas that provides inputs to the sector.

“I trust the Cuban model and what they have tried to build, which is not what we have. We have much to do”said González when rejecting the idea that Cuba adopts capitalism which, given that the island is “a small country with few resources”would be more similar to that of Haiti than that of the United States, he explained.

González assured that he does not live in a capsule and that he suffers and hurts the same things as his compatriots – blackouts, shortages, transportation problems – but asked to consider the context before accusing the government.

“We all have the right to demonstrate and to be dissatisfied with what happens to us, but I think that you always have to keep your head in the right place and think about why things happen before going out to demonstrate”he expressed. “Is it my government’s fault or is it someone else’s fault? Who is making sure that what has to arrive does not arrive in Cuba on time, in the place and at the time?”he asked himself.

González blamed the US sanctions that, he said, deprived the Cuban authorities of resources for development for six decades, but insisted that links can be achieved “of friendship, of fraternity with the North American people and with their government” as long as they are based on respect for political differences.

The parliamentarian is part of a generation of Cubans that is currently leading a record emigration in some points similar to that of the 1990s, when he left the island with his mother.

“I respect everyone who made the decision to leave Cuba. I respect those who do it today as my respect will always be for my mom “he mused. “My message would always be that they (the emigrants) do everything possible so that in Cuba they once again have a status equal to that of any country in the world so… with all that pressure to be able to lift those sanctions and one day be able to return to their families. which, I believe, is ultimately the desire of all Cubans”.

Personally, he considered that living in Cuba was the best option for him and he thanked his father for having fought to bring him back.

“It would have been much easier to leave and live better, perhaps I would have lived better… it would have been easier, but I don’t think it would have been the right thing to do because seeing so many good things that are here to save, I think the best thing was to stay and struggle”he assured.

Source: AP