The Internet Travel Guide "Getting to Know Cuba"

Current issue dated

Elián Gonzalez

Fidel Castro once fought bitterly to get his son back
Why Cuba's Head of State vehemently demanded the return of Elián, the refugee child

Elián Gonazalez is the boy who survived the perilous trip from Cuba to Florida during which his mother and stepfather drowned. Following his ordeal at sea, the boy stayed for some time with his great-uncle in Miami while his natural father fought for him to return to Cuba.

It is possible that Fidel Castro's passionate insistence that Elián be returned to Cuba is due to personal reasons. More than 40 years ago, Castro experienced a situation similar to that of Elián's father, when he also fought for the custody of his first-born son. In both cases, the struggle for a child illustrates the political and social conflicts that can arise between exiled Cubans and their relatives living in their home country.

Billboard: Elian Gonzalez

Recently, Castro held what he called the "extremist and terrorist Mafia of South Florida" responsible for the fact that Elián is held in the United States against his father's wishes. According to Castro, the Cuban community in South Florida hindered the return of Elián to his "legitimate family and home country."

According to Castro's biographer Tad Szulc, when the young revolutionary was imprisoned for having assaulted a military barracks in Santiago in the mid 1950s, his first wife, Mirta Diaz-Balart filed a petition for divorce and moved, together with five-year-old Fidelito (little Fidel), to the US. Although she had been awarded custody of the child, Castro insisted that his son return to Cuba. At that time Castro, the father of eight children, wrote in a letter to his older half-sister Lidia: "Whoever wants to take this child from me, will have to kill me first."

Elian Gonzalez, with his cousin Marisleysis, left, and great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez, right

After being released from prison, Castro went to Mexico to prepare for a guerilla struggle against the Batista regime in Cuba. At that time, he persuaded Mirta Díaz-Balart to send the boy on a two-week visit to Mexico. According to Robert E. Quirk's biography of Fidel, the boy arrived and Castro would not allow him to return.

Shortly thereafter, Fidelito was kidnapped by three armed men on a trip to Mexico City. His mother then rushed to Mexico to get her child back. After the revolution in 1959, however, Fidelito returned to Cuba to live with this father.

Fidelito studied nuclear physics in the Soviet Union. He is now in his fifties and lives with his family in Havana, while his mother is believed to be living in Spain. Her nephew Lincoln Díaz-Balart is a Republican living in Florida. In the recent struggle for Elián, he fought for the boy to be able to stay in the USA.