Elian Gonzalez made headlines in 1999 when the boy was found floating on an inner tube near Florida beaches and became the center of an international custody battle between the United States and Cuba.
Gonzalez, now 29, is set to become a lawmaker in the Latin American country after Sunday’s elections.
And one of the first things he wants to do is bring United States and Cuba to the negotiating table for a better relationship,” USA Today reports.
More than 20 years after Gonzalez was discovered after a violent storm killed his mother and most of the group fled the island, he is a married industrial engineer with a two-year-old daughter.
Elian Gonzalez will visit the Miami relatives if they admit they made a mistake
Cuban shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez speaks to the press as he arrives to pay tribute to late Cuban President Fidel Castro at the Jose Martí Memorial in Revolution Square in Havana November 29, 2016. He was recently elected as a legislator in Cuba. (Reuters / Carlos Garcia Rollins)
However, before the turn of the century, González’s father in Cuba wanted him Returned from relatives in Miami.
After the economic crisis in Cuba in the 1990s known as the Special Period, Castro needed a cause that would revive the old ideological battles and rekindle his grip on the population. Seizing the opportunity, he quickly made Elían’s return a national priority topic and the beginning of a years-long propaganda campaign that would be known as the Battle of Ideas. “.
Miami politicians They fought to resist Castro and supported the boy’s relatives in the United States to keep him here. The case sparked a media frenzy in both countries, making Gonzalez the center of a diplomatic crisis and legal dispute that made headlines around the world.
The great uncle who sought to keep Elian Gonzalez in the United States has died at the age of 79
Cuban shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez gestures after a speech by Cuban President Raul Castro at the National Assembly in Havana, December 20, 2014. The deal that ended decades of open hostility with the United States. (Reuters/Stringer)
At the time, one of the most notable coverages was the image of the boy’s frightened face when a federal agent pointed a gun in his direction. After seven months in the United States, Gonzalez was returned to his father in Cuba after Miami relatives exhausted all legal avenues to get him to stay.
Apparently, Gonzalez will represent the municipality of Cárdenas in Matanzas, where he lives and works as assistant director of AT Comercial Varadero, a food import company run by the Cuban Armed Forces Ministry.
Elian Gonzalez, the young Cuban rafters who was at the center of a bitter custody battle in 2000 between his relatives in Miami and his father in Cuba. (AP Newsroom)
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“All these years my family has been very important to me, trying to keep that simplicity, having the humility to always stay in the right place where I need to be, and not believing that I’m different from everyone else or that I deserve something better,” Gonzalez said. In an interview with Cuban television station TvYumuri after he was nominated.