This photo was taken this week -- the first week of December in 2023, and it shows Elian Gonzalez holding his daughter Eliz in their hometown of Cardenas, which is about an hour's drive southeast of Havana near Varadero Beach. Elian is now 30-years-old and this week all of Cardenas celebrated his birthday. He graduated from the University of Matanzas with an Engineering Degree. He was also recently elected to the Cuban Parliament, which means he now spends a lot of his time in Havana. In the U.S.-Cuba Saga/Tug of War, history will forever list Elian Gonzalez as one of the most important players!!
Back on April 22nd of 2000 when Elian Gonzalez was six-years-old this photo flashed internationally and made him the most famous little boy in the entire world. U. S. Marshalls burst into a Miami home and took Elian out of a clothes closet as the huge rifle just inches from him spawned this frightened expression on his face, an image that remains historically frozen in time. The rescue, as far as Fidel Castro was concerned, was a massive victory for Revolutionary Cuba because it meant that the U. S. decided that Elian could return to Cuba with his father Juan Gonzalez instead of remaining with Counter Revolutionary Cubans in Miami.
Back in Cuba, Elian Gonzalez married his childhood sweetheart Llianet Escano. They are shown here with their baby girl Eliz in a photo taken exactly three years ago on December 8th of 2020.
After returning to Cuba in 2000 as a six-year-old world-famed celebrity, Elian Gonzalez often was seen with Fidel Castro, whom he genuinely loved: "I consider Fidel my second father, and I trust everything he has done for my country."
As he grew up in Cuba starting as the famed six-year-old in 2000 to his 30th birthday in December of 2023, Elian Gonzalez has tried to stay out of the spotlight as much as possible. A rare and excellent interview with the USA's ABC News revealed his innermost thoughts about the United States and about his deep devotion to Cuba, which he said "is my forever home." Remaining as private as possible, he has also steadfastly maintained, "If conditions were normal, I mean better, I would one day love to return to Miami as a friend and I would love for my family to visit other places in the United States. But wishing for such things will not make it happen, and now I admit that I may never experience such things, except in my mind as some of my wishes and hopes."
The amazing and historic saga of Elian Gonzalez has evolved in December of 2023 into a full cycle and circle as he emerges as a key politician in the Cuban Parliament.
Elian welcomed to Cuba's Congress in Havana.
Elian in Cardenas with 3-year-old daughter Eliz.
The baby Eliz exactly three years ago.
A legend as a child during his brief time in Miami, Elian Gonzalez in the first week of December in 2023 turned 30-years-old as an important member of Cuba's Parliament while explaining, "I mostly consider myself a Cuban husband and father. How I got to where I am merely includes a long journey of reacting to a life's nuances, a life that I never intended to be famous, just productive."
Yes, when he was six-years-old in Miami, the world asked "WHERE DOES HE BELONG?" And today, after turning 30-years-old on December 6th of 2023, Elian Gonzalez has answered that question himself. HE BELIEVES THAT HE BELONGS IN CUBA.
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1 comment:
Elian Gonzalez was too young to understand any legal and economic circumstances which brought him to Miami. His mother most probably did not want to flee tyranny, although the Cuban community in Miami did its best to have Elian stay there with his paternal uncle on the grounds that he, like other Cuban schoolkids, was brainwashed into lionizing Fidel Castro as a great leader and beacon of hope for dispossessed mankind. The US justice system declared Gonzalez too young to apply for asylum on the grounds that only his father could do so, and because Elian's father wanted his son to return to Cuba, the feds in Washington let Elian reunite with his father to return to Cuba.
Although the Elian Gonzalez custody battle almost certainly cost Al Gore the 2000 presidential election, it made the Cuban community in Miami realize that it could not directly determine the island's future.
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