Elian Gonzalez, 1999 News

5, became the poster boy for an anti-Castro campaign after he was rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard in Nov. in waters off Miami. The boy, his mother, her boyfriend, and 14 other Cubans had attempted to flee Cuba in a small aluminum motorboat. Gonzalez, who floated on an inner tube for two days before he was found, was one of three survivors. Relatives in Miami took in the boy and pleaded with the government to allow him to remain in the U.S. His father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, claimed the boy's mother kidnapped him and asked that he be returned to Cuba.


1999 People in the News