Many are the stories that have moved the world but the Cuban kidnap kidnapped by the North American mafia counts among the most commented. So with this unfortunate event the Cuban people began a great battle, the battle of ideas, which has lasted and will last as long as there is an empire that craves at all costs to seize Cuba.
This June 28 marks the 18th anniversary of the return of the child Elián González Brotons to Cuba, after his mother illegally removed him from the island and perished in the attempt.
Elián when he was just six years old, in November 1999, was kidnapped by counterrevolutionaries in Miami with the support of distant relatives. The incident occurred after being rescued by American fishermen, completely alone and clinging to an automobile tire, days after the wreck in which his mother and other crew members of the boat perished, those who sought to enter the United States illegally.
Thus began the long and agonizing struggle for seven months, period in which our people claimed their return, to which millions of people all over the world joined. All of Cuba became a sea of people in the open stands to demand the return of the child and unmask the hoaxes of the extreme right of Miami that took advantage of that unfortunate incident to turn it into a political case.
The process was long and agonizing. After the insistent refusal of the United States to return the child, his father had to travel to that country to assert his parental rights. However, both had to remain in the United States until the relatives of Elián exhausted all judicial instances.
On June 1, 2000, the Federal Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled against Elián's asylum request, stating that the child was not old enough to request asylum, and that only his father could speak on his behalf. The Supreme Court of the United States denies the appeal, and finally on June 28 Elián and his father return to their home in Cuba.
As not remember then that afternoon when we could see returning to his homeland the brave Juan Miguel Gonzalez descend the ladder of the plane, full of dignity and courage, with his son in arms, and our people moved and triumphant because the struggle had not in vain, the battle had finally been won.
I still have in my memory the moving encounter of the child with Fidel, the tenderness and love expressed in his visits to the school in Cardenas and the gift of the book La Edad de Oro as one of his most precious treasures. Thus that tragic chapter was closed, but the teaching was clear principles are neither betrayed, nor negotiated.
Today Elián is a young man trained in a military academy, educated with the dignity that his father and the Revolution instilled in him, he lives proud to live in this country and to be part of this people that day by day continues to give lessons to the world of fidelity and heroism .
