Increasingly Visible, Cuba’s Elián González Champions Island’s Government

Increasingly Visible, Cuba’s Elián González Champions Island’s Government
By Ernesto Londoño
July 9, 2015 4:31 pm



Elián González in 2010.Credit Prensa Latina/Ismael Francisco,
via Associated Press


His rescue by fishermen off the coast of Fort Lauderdale nearly 16 years ago touched off a custody battle that ensnarled the Clinton White House in the intense acrimony between Cuban exiles and the island’s Communist leaders.

For years after Elián González returned to Cuba with his father in June 2000, he remained largely out of sight and gave only a handful of interviews. In recent months, though, as the island’s government starts to close an era of enmity with the United States, Mr. González has assumed an increasingly public profile, weighing in on substantive political issues.

Last month, in an interview with the Communist Party’s newspaper, Granma, Mr. González argued that young Cubans must preserve the island’s socialist values and resist the allure of capitalism.

“It’s clear that if Cuba stopped being socialist, it wouldn’t be like the United States, it would be a colony, it would be Haiti, a poor country, poorer than it already is, and it would lose everything it’s achieved,” he said.

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