Ten years ago this month, the saga of a Cuban boy named Elian Gonzalez captivated the nation and much of the world. Elian, 6, was found floating on an inner tube off the coast of Florida, after his ****** drowned trying to reach America.
The Cuban immigrant community in Florida embraced the boy as a symbol of the struggle of ordinary Cubans to flee the oppression of Fidel Castro's communist regime, and rallied behind the boy's extended ****** in Miami, which sought custody of young Elian.
But U.S. immigration officials insisted that the boy be returned to his ****** in Havana. Agents of the Immigration and Naturalization Service conducted an armed raid on Elian's adoptive Miami home - yielding a powerful image of paramilitary ****** in America menacing a frightened 6-year-old. Florida's Cuban immigrant community brandished that infamous photo as a reminder of what they considered American power effectively doing the bidding of a heartless Castro government.
A decade later, however, there are new photos of a nearly grown-up Elian Gonzalez - and they present a very different kind of propaganda image.
The new pictures show a serious-looking 16-year-old sporting a closely cropped haircut, wearing an olive-green military school uniform with red shoulder patches, as he attends a Young Communist Union meeting. The Cuban government press released the images under the none-too-subtle headline "Young Elian Gonzalez defends his revolution in the youth congress."
Since winning Elian's return to Cuba in 2000, the Castro regime has closely tracked the boy and his ******. (Indeed, Cuban State Security has a monitoring station next to their home.) In his homeland, Elian Gonzalez is hailed as a national hero who embodies the triumph of Cuba over the United States. Every few years, the Cuban government has floated news updates and photographs trumpeting Elian's progress as a model young citizen of the Castro regime.
