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Cuban Boy at Center of 1999 Custody Battle Elected as Lawmaker [Video]

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What You Need To Know:

  • Elián González, the boy at the center of an international custody battle between the US and Cuba in 1999, has been elected as a legislator in Cuba.
  • González aims to improve the relationship between the US and Cuba and has plans to bring the two countries to the table.
  • After his return to Cuba in 2000, González grew up to become a married industrial engineer with a 2-year-old daughter, and now works as an assistant director of a food import company run by the Cuban Ministry of the Armed Forces.

Elián González, the Cuban boy who was found floating on an inner tube near Florida shores in 1999, has been elected as a legislator in his home country at the age of 29.

After his return to Cuba in 2000, González grew up to become a married industrial engineer with a 2-year-old daughter, and now works as an assistant director of a food import company run by the Cuban Ministry of the Armed Forces. He will be representing the municipality of Cárdenas, in Matanzas, where he lives and works.

González’s case sparked an international custody battle between the US and Cuba. After the violent storm killed his mother and most of the group fleeing the island, his father in Cuba wanted him returned from relatives in Miami.

Miami’s politicians fought to resist Castro and supported the boy’s relatives in the US to keep him there. The case sparked a media frenzy in both countries, making González the center of a diplomatic crisis and legal dispute that made headlines around the world.

According to the Miami Herald, after the economic crisis in Cuba in the 1990s known as the Special Period, Castro needed an issue that could revive old ideological battles and reinvigorate his grip on the population.

He quickly made Elián’s return a subject of national priority and the beginning of a years-long propaganda campaign that would be known as the Battle of Ideas. After seven months in the US, González was returned to his father in Cuba after the Miami relatives exhausted all legal pathways to keep him there.

Source: foxnews.com

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