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Judi Lynn

(160,211 posts)
Sun Jun 28, 2015, 09:58 PM Jun 2015

How The Battle Over Elián González Helped Change U.S. Cuba Policy [View all]

How The Battle Over Elián González Helped Change U.S. Cuba Policy
June 28, 201512:43 PM ET



Sunday marks the 15th anniversary of the end of the Elián González drama — the international custody battle that gave the cable news networks bizarre fodder for seven long months in 1999 and 2000.

Elián was a 5-year-old boy found drifting off the Florida coast after his mother drowned during their attempt to escape communist Cuba. Miami's anti-communist Cuban-American leaders demanded Elián be allowed to live with relatives in Miami. The boy's father wanted him back in Cuba. So did Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

International law was on Cuba's side. Which is why that Easter weekend, U.S. agents had to seize Elián during a controversial raid on the Miami family's home in Little Havana. Two months later, on June 28, all the court appeals ended and Elián returned to Cuba. In his wake, he left a Cuban-American community in disarray — but more poised to update its geopolitical outlook.

"It was a pivotal event," says millionaire Miami businessman Carlos Saladrigas. "It changed the whole dynamic of the Miami community. It changed me." Saladrigas was one of the hardline Cuban-American leaders involved in negotiating Elián's fate with the feds. But when it was all over, he says he and many others began some serious soul-searching.

More:
http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/06/28/417716173/how-the-battle-over-eli-n-gonz-lez-helped-change-u-s-cuba-policy

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