Elian Gonzalez: 'I Think About The United States'

MIAMI, FL — Miami's Cuban-American community ached for Elian Gonzalez when U.S. marshals wielding submachine guns forced the 6-year-old boy out of the arms of fisherman Donato Dalrymple in April 2000. But by then, the Miamians found themselves hopelessly outmatched not only by the Communist government of Fidel Castro but also by the Clinton administration. Now 23, Gonzalez acknowledged that he still thinks about life in the United States but has no regrets living his life on the island nation that his mother once sacrificed everything to leave.

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"Both my feet are very much in Cuba," he told CNN's Patrick Oppman in Spanish ahead of the network's documentary on the international custody dispute that aired Thursday night. Gonzalez's mother died after their boat sank trying to cross the Straits of Florida in November 1999. (Sign up for our free Daily Newsletters and Breaking News Alerts for the Miami Patch.)

"My two feet, my body, my mind are in Cuba. But there are times when I think about the United States," said Gonzalez, who was rescued off the coast of Fort Lauderdale by Dalrymple and placed temporarily in the home of his father's relatives in Miami. "I wouldn’t be who I am had I not been in the United States."

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Gonzalez survived the perilous journey and was brought to Miami to live out his mother's dream. But the early-morning raid to pluck him out of the Miami home was orchestrated by then Attorney General and Miami native Janet Reno, who passed away late last year.

See also Janet Reno Remembered by President Clinton, Attorney General Lynch

Gonzalez's mother died trying to give her child a better life, and one way or another he seems to have found, it even if it's not in the United States as his mother planned.

By all accounts, his international celebrity earned him a special place in the hearts of the Cuban people, and one in particular.

"I think the best way to show they didn’t brainwash me — and no one influences my decisions — is Fidel," Gonzalez insisted, referring to the late Cuban President Fidel Castro, who took a personal interest in reuniting Gonzalez with his father.

"Fidel put many things in my hands," said Gonzalez. "Fidel told me if I wanted to be an athlete, he supported that, if I wanted to be a swimmer, he supported that, if I wanted to be an artist, he supported that, and he did."

Gonzalez brushed aside the notion that he had been brainwashed since his return to Cuba.

"If they had brainwashed me, I would say they hadn’t brainwashed me, because I would have been brainwashed," he reasoned. "It didn’t happen. That’s not something my father would have allowed to happen."

In the documentary, his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, said that he was given the opportunity by Castro to join his son in the United States but refused. An American attorney who assisted Gonzalez in gaining custody of the boy also said that Gonzalez was given an opportunity to claim asylum when he met privately with Reno.

"Fidel said, 'Look if you decide to go there’s no problem.' We will open all the doors. We’ll arrange it. You go with your family and join the boy," the elder Gonzalez recalled in the documentary. "I told him 'No, I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to bring my son back here.' He said, 'If that’s what you decide, our whole country will take to the streets to demand your son’s return.'"

Had he been allowed to remain in the United States, Gonzalez said that his life might have been more comfortable, but it would have been at the loss of his immediate family and probably very different from the tranquility of Cuba.

"I think I would have become the poster boy for that group of Cubans in Miami that tries to destroy the revolution, that try to make Cuba look bad," he explained. "Maybe I would have become an actor on TV or maybe I would have more money than I have here with more comforts, but I wouldn’t have my family."

Cuban President Fidel Castro visits the Marcelo Salado School during the ninth birthday celebration for Elian Gonzalez (Photo by Jorge Rey/Getty Images)