Cuba’s Elián González: then and now

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/06/2023 (328 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Some Democratic Party insiders once postulated that five-year-old Cuban, Elián González, cost then-U.S. Vice-President Al Gore the 2000 presidential election. González became a central figure in U.S. domestic politics when he was rescued by a Florida fishing vessel — after his mother (and her boyfriend) died trying to leave Cuba in search of a better life in the fall of 1999.

Democratic strategists maintained that angry Cuban-Americans, mostly in South Florida, voted overwhelmingly in favour of Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush. After all the legal wrangling over “hanging chads,” Gore lost the battleground state of Florida by roughly 540 votes.

After Elián was turned over to his mother’s family in Miami’s “Little Havana” neighbourhood, he was immediately flooded with gifts and anti-Castro thoughts. His birth father, Juan Miguel, in Cárdenas, Cuba — who was not aware that Elián had been taken on the treacherous voyage to Miami — wanted his son returned to him. But his relatives in Little Havana thought otherwise.

As it turned out, Elián got caught up in the controversy around U.S. immigration policy — and Cuba’s special place within that thorny issue area. Because he was found off the coast of Florida, and therefore did not reach the U.S. shoreline, he ran afoul of then-U.S. President Bill Clinton’s so-called “wet feet, dry feet” policy for Cuban migrants. In short, because he was picked up at sea (with wet feet), Elián was not eligible for U.S. residency status, and thus should have been promptly sent back to Cuba.

The ensuing custody battle became a major political headache for Clinton, though the American people (and the U.S. court system) strongly supported returning Elián to his father in Cuba. After a lengthy period of back and forth with Elián’s relatives in South Florida, then-U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno ordered U.S. law enforcement agents in April 2000 to remove Elián from his now fortified home in Miami.

In a contentious and anguished pre-dawn raid of Elián’s home, he was spirited away and eventually brought back to Cuba alongside his father in a U.S.-supplied aircraft. Not surprisingly, the iconic photo of a heavily-armed Border Patrol agent pulling Elián away from one of his family members in a closet was subsequently splashed around the world. He instantly became a serious political problem for the Gore campaign in Florida.

Elián, however, was welcomed back to Cuba with a great deal of fanfare in June of 2000 — symbolizing a major victory for the Cuban government. On several occasions, Cuban Leader Fidel Castro visited his hometown of Cárdenas to check in on him (though scrupulously did not use Elián for propaganda purposes).

Throughout the entire saga, Elián’s fellow classmates kept his seat unoccupied, in the same spot, and exactly as he had left it in November of 1999. The only distinguishing feature when he returned to class in September of 2000 was a sign on his desk that had demanded his return to Cuba.

In a 2017 interview with CNN, Elián made it clear that he had no regrets about being returned to Cuba in 2000. “Fidel put many things in my hand. Fidel told me if I wanted to be an athlete, he supported that; if I wanted to be a swimmer, he supported that. If I wanted to be an artist, he supported that — and he did,” he said emphatically.

Recently, 29-year-old Elián González chose a noticeably different career of sorts (after earning an industrial engineering degree) — namely, by winning a seat representing Cárdenas in Cuba’s National Assembly. While he has been involved in Cuban revolutionary politics for almost two decades, he has now reached the echelons of an elected lawmaker for the Cuban Communist Party.

Interestingly, one of the things that Elián has pledged to address as a legislator is the dysfunctional nature of U.S.-Cuba relations. Over the years, he has been critical of a U.S. policy of mostly punishment, score-settling and disengagement, and would prefer to see Washington turn the page on the old Cold War approach to Cuba.

While participating in a youth rally in Ecuador in 2013, Elián didn’t mince words when he blamed the U.S. for the death of his mother and many others who “have died attempting to go to the United States.” He went on to add: “Their (the U.S.) unjust embargo provokes an internal and critical economic situation in Cuba.”

Still, Elián recently told an interviewer from CNN the following: “I am someone the American people know and I can help bring the American and Cuban people together and not just the people.” Accordingly, he said that he would like to see “our governments reach an understanding and remove all the barriers between us. Our country doesn’t have any sanctions on the United States.”

On a more optimistic note, Elián even stated that he wants to reconcile with his relatives in Florida. In that same CNN interview, he also indicated his support for Cubans presently residing in the U.S. to someday return to their homeland. “What we want one day is Cuban exiles are no longer exiled, that they come home,” he said. Not in the short term, I’m afraid.

Peter McKenna is professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown.