Elian Gonzalez, the pawn in a nasty international custody battle that played out in Miami in 1999-2000, is speaking out about his U.S. relatives in a new video from Cuba during a 10 year anniversary event that was held to mark the occasion.
The sixteen-year-old says he is not angry with the relatives who tried to keep him in the United States and away from his only living parent Juan Miguel Gonzalez Quintana.
In November 1999, the five-year-old boy, his mother, her boyfriend, and eleven other people attempted to cross from Cuba into U.S. waters aboard a small aluminum boat. Their overloaded watercraft encountered a storm and ten people drowned, including Elian’s mother. The boy and two other survivors were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard.
The young boy was placed with his paternal great-uncle temporarily. A federal district court ruling paved the way for the boy to be returned to his father, but not before a public spectacle was broadcast around the world, including a guns-drawn, full commando-style removal of the boy from his belligerent Miami relatives.
Upon his return to Cuba on June 28, 2000, the boy was treated as a hero and befriended and given special treatment by Fidel Castro. In 2005, the boy described his relationship with the former leader as “not only a friend but a father.”
The young man, who joined the Communist Party in 2008, plans a military career and harbors no malice towards his Miami relatives according to a new video: