Elián González made headlines in 1999 when the boy was found floating on an inflatable boat off the Florida coast, becoming the center of an international custody battle between the US and Cuba.
González, 29, is set to become an MP in the Latin American country after Sunday’s elections.
“And one of the first things he wants to do is get the US and Cuba around the table for a better relationship,” reports USA Today.
More than 20 years after González was discovered after a violent storm killed his mother and most of the group fleeing the island, he is a married industrial engineer with a 2-year-old daughter.
ELIÁN GONZÁLEZ WOULD VISIT RELATIVES IN MIAMI WHEN THEY ADMIT ‘THEY’VE MADE A MISTAKE’
Cuban shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez speaks to the press as he arrives to pay tribute to Cuba’s late President Fidel Castro at the Jose Marti memorial in Havana’s Revolution Square November 29, 2016. He was recently elected as a legislator in Cuba. (REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins)
But even before the turn of the century, González’s father in Cuba wanted him brought back by relatives in Miami.
“Following the economic crisis in Cuba in the 1990s, known as the Special Period, Castro needed an issue that could revive old ideological struggles and reinvigorate his influence over the populace. And he seized the opportunity and quickly made Elián’s return a matter of national priority and the start of a year-long propaganda campaign that would come to be known as the Battle of Ideas,” the Miami Herald said.
Miami politicians campaigned against Castro and backed the boy’s relatives in the US to keep him here. The case sparked a media frenzy in both countries and placed González at the center of a diplomatic crisis and legal battle that made headlines around the world.
GRAND-UNCLE WHO FIGHTED TO KEEP ELIAN GONZALEZ IN US DIES AT 79
Elian Gonzalez, survivor of the Cuban shipwreck, gestures after a speech by Cuba’s President Raul Castro to the National Assembly in Havana December 20, 2014. Stepping out of his legendary brother’s shadow, President Raul Castro is enjoying a diplomatic triumph and a surge in support for the People reach agreement ending decades of open hostility with United States. (REUTERS/Stringer)
At the time, one of the most notable pieces of coverage was a photo of the boy’s terrified face as a federal agent pointed a gun in his direction. After seven months in the US, González was returned to his father in Cuba after Miami relatives exhausted all legal avenues to persuade him to stay.
González will apparently represent the Cárdenas community in Matanzas, where he lives and works as deputy director of AT Comercial Varadero, a food import company run by Cuba’s military ministry.
Elian Gonzalez, the young Cuban rafter who was at the center of a bitter custody battle between relatives in Miami and his father in Cuba in 2000. (AP Newsroom)
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“Throughout these years my family has been very important and has tried to maintain that simplicity and humility of always staying in the right place where I should be and not believing that I’m different than anyone or that I deserve better “, González said in an interview with the Cuban TV channel TvYumurí after his nomination.
Source : www.foxnews.com