• December 25, 2000
• Vol. 54
• No. 27

Elian Gonzalez

Rescued from the Sea, He Became a Child Wanted by Two Families—and Two Nations

All through his terrible ordeal in the rough waters of the Atlantic, Elián González repeated a prayer: "Guardian angel, sweet companion, don't leave my side..." After his rescue he would still need that prayer. On Nov. 22, 1999, the 5-year-old and 13 other Cubans, including his mother, Elísabet, 30, had set off for the U.S. in a 17-ft. motorboat. But within 48 hours of their departure the vessel sank, drowning all except two adults and Elián, whose mother was one of the fatalities. On Thanksgiving Day, a pair of cousins out fishing found the dazed child alone in the ocean, clinging to an inner tube three miles off the coast of Fort Lauderdale. So Elián was lifted from the sea, only to be delivered into the whirlwind.

For seven strange months he was at the center of both the world's angriest custody dispute and an all-consuming media circus. On one side was the man in whose care Elián was temporarily placed: his great-uncle Lázaro González, 50, an auto mechanic and Cuban emigré living in Miami with his daughter Marisleysis, 22, who became the boy's mother figure. On the other was Elián's father, Juan Miguel González, 32, a bartender in Cárdenas, Cuba, who was divorced from his son's mother. Behind them were larger and noisier forces. For the Cuban-Americans of South Florida, the struggle over Elián became another means to shout defiance at their everlasting enemy, Fidel Castro. For Castro it became one more opportunity to mobilize anti-Americanism at home. All the while, the press kept watch relentlessly, so that a smiling Elián's kite flying and his new puppy and his trip to Walt Disney World became headline news.

For a time it all seemed headed toward some terrible climax, a Florida Waco. In January, as Lázaro sought custody in the courts, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service ruled that Elián must be returned to his father. Eventually Lázaro was stalling in negotiations with U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno to turn the boy over, Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas was vowing that his police would not help her, and repeated bouts of exhaustion sent Marisleysis to the hospital. Then, just before dawn on April 22 federal agents burst into Lázaro's house and at gunpoint seized the terrified child in what turned out to be the storm before the calm. They reunited the boy with his father outside Washington, D.C., although it took two more months for the pair to return home.

Now 7, Elián is a second grader back in Cárdenas. Marisleysis, who had left her bank job to care for him, is enrolled at Miami-Dade Community College. Lázaro is shopping for a book deal. He tried calling Elián in Cuba several times. Whoever answered the phone just hung up. Someday, Elián himself will surely ask what it was all about. When he does, what should we tell him?