Nov 27 (Belly of the Beast) On Thanksgiving Day in 1999, five-year-old Elián González was found alone on an inner tube off the coast of Florida.
He’d left Cuba by boat with his mother, who didn’t survive the journey.
Elián soon became the center of an international custody battle between his relatives in Miami and his father in Cuba — a story that, to many, was emblematic of relations between the two countries.
Elián has given “only a handful of interviews since he was unwittingly thrust into the geopolitical spotlight as a boy,” PBS reported in 2023.
At a time when fear-mongering, hate-spewing rhetoric dominates political discourse in Miami, Elián’s message of forgiveness and hope stands in stark contrast.
“I know the U.S. people,” Elián told Liz. “I know they have a good heart and that it is worthwhile to continue fighting and appealing to them to help lift the sanctions currently imposed on our country.”
Watch the full interview HERE.
