Havana – Cuba remembers this Sunday that twenty years have passed since the return to the country of Elián González, known as the “Raft boy” who was the protagonist of a fierce family, legal and political dispute that confronted a large part of the Cubans on the island and the exiles in Florida.
Now 26-year-old Elián González is an industrial engineer and will soon be the father of a girl named Eliz, the first four letters of Elizabeth, the name of the mother of the young Cuban, who died in the tragic shipwreck of a migrant ship illegals heading to the United States.
Two decades after that episode that mobilized millions of people almost daily in the marches that from the island demanded their return to the country where they were born, the protagonist of that human drama replicated by media from around the world lives in his hometown, Cárdenas. , about 150 kilometers east of Havana.
From there, his grandparents’ house stands out especially, “where I grew up with my father. It is the place where I go weekly, where I feel calm, where I clear, where my greatest memories are, where I feel serene, free, ”he declares in an interview published by the state newspaper Juventud Rebelde.
“Luckily for me in many places they don’t recognize me, even though I haven’t changed much. The vast majority of people stayed with the image of that child and do not associate that I am already a man. It is good for me because it gives me the possibility to walk, to frequent any place and not be recognized, but as soon as they identify me they give me a lot of affection, ”he declared.
Elián González acknowledges that the physical resemblance to his mother is “immense”, which he has been able to verify by photos of her preserved by his family, but he also points out that he has features of his father, Juan Miguel González, although he says that the two agree that “they were trigueños (dark-skinned), short; they looked like brothers ”.
The shipwreck drama
On November 25, 1999, Elián González survived the dramatic shipwreck of the small boat in which he was traveling with his mother, Elizabeth Brotons, who died along with other people in the attempt to reach the coasts of Florida and avail herself of the Cuban Adjustment Act -in force since 1966- which allowed illegal emigrants from the island to opt for permanent residence in the United States.
The six-year-old boy was rescued from the sea by two American fishermen and handed over in Miami to distant paternal relatives in temporary custody, who later refused to return him to his father who was claiming him from the island, sparking a complicated legal fight, politics and an unprecedented family drama.
Cuban leader and former president Fidel Castro led and was an active promoter of the campaign in favor of the return of the shipwrecked boy with numerous protests and open tribunes then called on the island to demand that he be returned to his father who is resident in Cuba.
The case of Elián González gave rise to the “battle of ideas”, as the strategy of massive mobilizations promoted by the Cuban Government during the seven months that the “balserito” remained in the United States was called.
Elián returned to Cuba on June 28, 2000 after the then-United States Attorney General, Janet Reno, ordered the call to be made. “Operation Meeting”.
Through this operation, federal bailiffs from the US Immigration and Naturalization Service forcibly removed Elián González from the home of his relatives in Miami, who was handed over that same day to his father and soon after returned to Cuba.
The Cuban government considered the return of Elián a political victory against the most radical sector of the anti-Castro exile resident in the state of Florida.
Without reproaches, but with longings
“I do not reproach him, although I think that if he had not made that decision he would be alive with me. I thank you, as (Gabriel) García Márquez wrote, and so it was, that in all that torment, not knowing how to swim, he bet on saving my life: he knew how to hold me to the raft, cover me with a blanket and leave me that bottle of waterRecalls the young man.
Elián values that it was “a heroic mother’s gesture, as I think many would do. This is what mine did, and it is for this reason that I will never betray his memory or let him sink into the sea. ”
He reveals that he is longing for “not having shared these 20 years with her. Some people reproach me because they say that I have been unfaithful to my mother’s ideas and her memory for being next to my father, but this is not the case. I know I would have wanted to because I knew my father, I knew the love he has for me, and I would be proud that we are together. ”
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