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Episode: Freedom, Autonomy and the Elián González Story
Author: NPR
Duration: 00:34:32
Episode Shownotes
Twenty-five years ago, a boy named Eliaán Gonzaález appeared — remarkably alive — in the waters off the coast of Miami. Immediately, his fate became the subject of an international debate: Should he stay in the U.S.? Or should he be returned to Cuba, to live with his father? From
our play cousins at Futuro Studios, this is part of their series Chess Piece: The Elián González Story.We want to hear from you! Please tell us what you think about Code Switch by taking our short survey. Thank you!Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Full Transcript
00:00:00 Speaker_10
Hi, I'm Ramtin Adablouie from ThruLine.
00:00:16 Speaker_08
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00:00:25 Speaker_08
Before we get into the episode, I wanted to take a minute to ask for your help.
00:00:35 Speaker_12
We want to hear from our listeners about what you like about Codeswitch and how we could do better. You can tell us what you think by taking our survey at npr.org slash Codeswitch survey. Thank you. What's good? You're listening to Codeswitch. I'm Gene Demby. So 25 years ago, a miracle happened.
00:00:54 Speaker_12
It was Thanksgiving Day, 1999, and a little boy appeared off the coast of Miami, his small body bobbing up and down in the ocean. Two fishermen found him there and helped him get to the shore. He was all alone.
00:01:08 Speaker_12
He was dazed, but he was remarkably alive. That little boy, his name was Elian Gonzalez, and he was almost six years old when he showed up on the shores of Florida. He and his mother had been traveling from Cuba on their way to the United States on a boat made out of aluminum.
00:01:24 Speaker_12
Elion's mom and 10 others, they died during that journey. The boat's engine turned out to be faulty. But somehow, Elion survived.
00:01:39 Speaker_12
But if that harrowing journey were not traumatic or dramatic enough, little Elion was immediately thrust into the spotlight. His fate became the subject of this big international debate.
00:01:45 Speaker_12
Should he stay in the U.S. and live with his relatives in Miami? Or should he go back to Cuba to live with his father, who very much wanted him back?
00:01:58 Speaker_12
How people answered that question at the time, it tended to reflect a lot about their wider beliefs, about the benefits of democracy, about the importance of family, about America, about Cuba, about Fidel Castro, about immigration writ large.
00:02:12 Speaker_12
Penny Lee Ramirez, she was 12 years old, living in her home country of Cuba when this story started to unfold, and her journey to make sense of what was going on with Elian's story, it began then, and it would last for the next two decades.
00:02:25 Speaker_12
Her fascination has become the subject of a new podcast from Futuro Studios and Latino USA called Chess Piece, The Elian Gonzalez Story. It's a fascinating, messy, tense story with no real easy, straight answers.
00:02:41 Speaker_15
We're going to share the second episode of Chess Piece with you, but you can find the whole 10-part series wherever it is you get your podcasts. Until then, here's Peneley Ramirez.
00:02:54 Speaker_20
When Elian made it to Miami, I was 12 years old, living in Cuba. My younger brother, Juan Carlos, who we called Juanky, was eight.
00:03:02 Speaker_15
Juanky, like me, remembers Elian's face was everywhere. Yeah, of course, and they made shirts and posters and all over the school. It was the flavor of the month, you know? Elian's story was more than just the flavor of the month, actually. It was a national cause.
00:03:23 Speaker_15
Before Elian was even rescued, his family in Cuba had contacted the Communist Party in his hometown, seeking help. That's how Fidel Castro found out about Elian.
00:03:38 Speaker_15
The Cuban government sent a message to the U.S. the day after Elian was found.
00:03:43 Speaker_25
Regresen al niño a su papá en Cuba.
00:04:07 Speaker_15
Return the boy to his father in Cuba. In the days that followed, Castro met with Elian's father and became increasingly angry. He said the U.S. has kidnapped Elian Gonzalez. It sounded a little like a threat.
00:04:24 Speaker_20
But the ominous tone in Castro's voice escaped my kid brother.
00:04:31 Speaker_15
He was more concerned that he could not watch his regular cartoons because of the constant news about Elian. They were giving a whole spiel of Bring Back Elian. At that time, I'm a kid that really didn't care about it. I did not care about cartoons.
00:04:48 Speaker_15
I was just a regular nerdy preteen dividing my time between poetry and the Spice Girls. The year before, my father had fled Cuba for Miami. He was trying to escape the poverty and instability of our country. I didn't know when I will see him again. Much of this time in my life is blurry, but there is one sharp memory.
00:05:06 Speaker_15
I'm in front of the U.S. headquarters in Cuba, at a government-mandated protest that I was required to attend. Screaming, loudly, Regresen a Elian! Bring back Elian! To Cuba! Cuba si! Yanqui no!
00:05:25 Speaker_15
This memory surprises me now, because frankly, I don't remember what I actually thought of Elian. Like, I don't remember actually having an opinion. And yet, here I was at this protest, screaming from the bottom of my heart.
00:05:40 Speaker_15
I have come to realize I was not screaming for Elian.
00:05:56 Speaker_15
I was screaming for my dad, screaming in frustration that, like Elian, the same strip of ocean separated me from my father. I did not understand or really care about the political forces that had caused our separation.
00:06:07 Speaker_20
I only knew that I missed him, that I needed him, that I was angry that I could not be with him. And so I screamed.
00:06:15 Speaker_15
No family should have to go through what we went, just because they're looking for a better future. My brother told me this recently. I agree, but we are Cuban, and to be Cuban is so often to be separated from your family.
00:06:47 Speaker_02
I'm Penny Lei Ramirez, and this is Chess Piece, the Elian Gonzalez story. A production of Futuro Studios in partnership with iHeart's My Cultura podcast network.
00:07:04 Speaker_02
All this year, NPR traveled the country, hearing from voters not just about the issues, but about their hopes for the country's future. We should be able to disagree with each other without bullying each other into submission.
00:07:11 Speaker_06
And what it means to be a part of a democracy. Invest in coverage that moves us forward together by giving today at donate.npr.org.
00:07:24 Speaker_06
Hi, I'm Catherine Marr, CEO of NPR, where we're guided by a bold mission to create a more informed public. Join us today by giving at donate.npr.org.
00:07:35 Speaker_13
Donald Trump promised to change Washington, D.C., a place where there's an old saying that personnel is policy.
00:07:54 Speaker_15
That's why we have created a new podcast called Trump's Terms, where you can follow NPR's coverage of the incoming Trump administration, from his cabinet secretaries to political advisors and top military leaders, to understand who they are, what they believe, and how they'll govern. Listen to Trump's Terms from NPR.
00:08:05 Speaker_15
On December 6, 1999, Elian González celebrated his sixth birthday in Miami. It was just a week and a half after he had been rescued from the sea.
00:08:22 Speaker_15
He had been staying with distant relatives on his dad's side, his great uncle, Lázaro González, and Lázaro's 21-year-old daughter, María Iglesias. How did he survive by himself when he's only five? And the only thing I could probably say that it's just a miracle. People said she became like a mother figure for Elian.
00:08:35 Speaker_15
She cared for him, making him chocolate milk, something that was a luxury in Cuba and that Elian had quickly come to love.
00:08:47 Speaker_15
One journalist reported that Mariglesis would say to Elian, Mira Eliancito, your grandmothers cannot make you this in Cuba. I just want him to be wherever he wants to be, comfortable. Marigles quickly became the family spokesperson.
00:09:02 Speaker_31
Unlike her father, she spoke English well because she had been raised in the U.S. She was young, passionate about Lillian, and comfortable in front of the cameras.
00:09:09 Speaker_15
I asked him, do you want to go back? You mean, you know, or you want to stay here? And he said, I don't want to go back. She and her father, Lazaro, believed Elian's mother died trying to give him safety and freedom in the U.S., and they were not alone.
00:09:27 Speaker_15
Cuban-Americans would show up at their house demanding the U.S. government let Elian stay in the U.S. People would say it would be a shame to send the boy back to communism and hunger in Cuba.
00:09:50 Speaker_15
At his birthday at a local park, Elian was given many gifts and a huge birthday cake. But that wasn't Elian's only birthday party. In Cuba, his school organized a celebration in his absence.
00:10:04 Speaker_15
With a special guest, Fidel Castro himself stopped by. He wore his typical olive green military uniform. Elian's father, Juan Miguel, spoke to his son by phone that day to wish him a happy birthday. And they spoke as if Elian will be back in Cuba soon.
00:10:31 Speaker_15
There were protests in Havana marking the week of Elian's birthday. Cubans chanted, down with imperialism, socialism or death. But the protests in Cuba did not change Elian's status in the U.S.
00:10:57 Speaker_15
His future was still in limbo. His Miami relatives had begun the process to file for asylum for Elian.
00:11:07 Speaker_27
At the time, Cubans were guaranteed entry to the U.S. if they made it to the U.S. soil. But Elian didn't technically meet these requirements.
00:11:17 Speaker_15
Because he was rescued at sea and never made it to the shoreline, he was a wetfoot Cuban national. This is Bernie Perlmutter, professor of law at the University of Miami.
00:11:35 Speaker_15
He's referring to an unusual American policy at the time known as pies secos, pies mojados, or wet foot, dry foot. It allowed any Cuban to legally stay in the U.S.
00:11:46 Speaker_15
as long as they made it to the American shore after crossing the ocean from Cuba, literally stepping on dry land. That's the dry foot.
00:11:56 Speaker_27
But Cubans who were captured or rescued at sea by the Coast Guard, they were not permitted entry to the United States. That's the wet foot. The federal government had taken legal custody of Elian.
00:12:08 Speaker_15
As I said, he didn't reach the shore, so he did not have the benefit of dry feet landing on the beaches of Florida. So Elian's status under immigration law was not certain.
00:12:21 Speaker_15
And another immigration policy in the U.S. at that time said that only a parent could apply for asylum for their child.
00:12:31 Speaker_28
So to immigration officials, Elian's Miami relatives didn't have the authority to decide the boy's fate.
00:12:36 Speaker_15
I'm not sure I understand what their rights are. These were distant relatives.
00:12:44 Speaker_15
This is Jim Goldman, former special agent with U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services, or INS.
00:12:57 Speaker_15
We shall say, in unusual circumstances, the law does allow the government to assign a guardian to an unaccompanied child, even if they are distant relatives or not relatives.
00:13:05 Speaker_28
But in this case, the government was insistent that there was no need to, since Elian's father wanted him back.
00:13:17 Speaker_28
I think the biological father has more right to make decisions for his child, who at the time was, you know, five and six years old, more so than anybody.
00:13:28 Speaker_23
Jim thinks this case should have been open and shut, but... It became a hot topic because I think the system allowed for it to become a hot topic. He's right.
00:13:41 Speaker_33
Tensions between the United States and Cuba get hotter every day six-year-old Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez remains in this country. The American media system jumped on Elian's story.
00:13:54 Speaker_15
Cuban men, women and children protested on the streets of Havana by the thousands last night. It was the largest turnout so far and the third night of protest orchestrated by Fidel Castro.
00:14:02 Speaker_29
It became the biggest story in the country at a time when networks competed for wall-to-wall news coverage.
00:14:16 Speaker_15
It happens at the same time that we have the modern media machine being created, the 24-hour news cycle, the dying of network news, the expansion of cable news, the need for content.
00:14:29 Speaker_15
Go back and look at some of the news archives, and it does start to feel at times like Elian was treated like content.
00:14:35 Speaker_36
There were cameras always stalking Elian outside the Miami home. Reporters trying to catch a look of him playing ball, being a little boy.
00:14:43 Speaker_15
Relatives of Elian Gonzalez say they saw a different side of the six-year-old, a boy simply filled with joy and happiness.
00:15:01 Speaker_36
Reporters tried to capture every detail of Elian's introduction to American culture, like when he went to Disney World for the first time, where he got a personal hug and a baseball hat autographed por nada más y nada menos que Mickey Mouse himself.
00:15:10 Speaker_15
But Elian showed some lingering signs of his Thanksgiving ordeal and rescue at sea when he went on the It's a Small World water ride.
00:15:19 Speaker_28
And the interview requests kept coming. Diane Sawyer had a playdate with Lillian on camera.
00:15:25 Speaker_14
It was probably the biggest media item in the United States, if not the world, at the time.
00:15:36 Speaker_15
You would go to a party, you would go to a restaurant, you would see your family. The talk, the main subject was Lillian. You know, what's going to happen to that boy?
00:15:51 Speaker_14
Alina Mayo-Ace is a television news pro, a seasoned news anchor who covered Miami's biggest stories for decades. She says nothing at the time could compare to the appeal of Elian's story. It was unprecedented. It was our headline story practically every day. It was before Elian and after Elian.
00:16:05 Speaker_15
It definitely marked a line in the story and the history of the Cuban exile in the United States, especially in Miami. But in Cuba, the U.S.
00:16:26 Speaker_35
media frenzy seemed to make Fidel Castro even more upset. And soon, Castro will send another stern message. We turned the boy in 72 hours.
00:16:37 Speaker_35
Every weekday, Up First gives you the news you need to start your day. On the Sunday story from Up First, we slow down. We bring you the best reporting from NPR journalists around the world, all in one major story, 30 minutes or less.
00:16:50 Speaker_05
Join me every Sunday on the Up First podcast to sit down with the biggest stories from NPR.
00:17:00 Speaker_05
For every headline, there's also another story about the people living those headlines. On weekdays, Up First brings you the day's biggest news.
00:17:15 Speaker_16
On Sundays, we bring you closer with a single story about the people, places, and moments reshaping our world. Your news made personal. Every Sunday on the Up First podcast from NPR.
00:17:26 Speaker_16
When it came out in 1843, A Christmas Carol was a sensation. And Charles Dickens became a legend. Some people would consider him the originator of Christmas or the inventor of Christmas. The past, present, and future of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.
00:17:40 Speaker_10
Listen to ThruLine wherever you get your podcasts.
00:18:00 Speaker_24
Fidel's message to the U.S. was clear. Return the boy in three days.
00:18:05 Speaker_15
So that the pain, suffering, and trauma of that boy and his family does not go a minute longer, he said. and his words weren't the only ominous move. Castro stationed several dozen Cuban soldiers outside of the U.S. government intersection office in Havana.
00:18:24 Speaker_15
This is the headquarters where I remember attending government-sponsored protests for Elian. I remember the tension in the air, the vague sense that there was something big at stake here, something with a lot of baggage.
00:18:54 Speaker_15
To understand why León's case became such a big deal, you had to understand the complicated relationship between Cuba and the United States. Let's start in the early 50s.
00:19:07 Speaker_15
At this time, Cuba was ruled by Fulgencio Batista, who was once elected, but whose government had become essentially a military dictatorship. Six years of surface prosperity and government corruption, of repression and police brutality, bred explosive discontent.
00:19:18 Speaker_17
Batista was friendly to U.S.
00:19:26 Speaker_15
interests, allowing American companies like Coca-Cola and United Fruit to own a giant amount of Cuban land. Workers struggled to survive on low wages and oppressive conditions. This inequality ripened the country for the ideals of Fidel Castro's revolution.
00:19:41 Speaker_15
Cuba's Fidel Castro emerged triumphant after two years of guerrilla warfare against the Batista regime.
00:19:47 Speaker_18
The revolution that began with Castro a fugitive ended with the flight of dictator Fulgencio Batista and the entry into Havana of rebel forces to be acclaimed by the city.
00:20:07 Speaker_15
He and his fighters, including a young Argentinian doctor named Ernesto Che Guevara, eventually overthrew Batista and his government. Castro and his men were the underdogs. The uprising had begun with just 18 men in the mountains of La Sierra Maestra, and it had spread to the whole island.
00:20:20 Speaker_15
At first, the U.S. was not alarmed. Now, when Fidel Castro's fighting to depose Batista, he's not calling himself communist.
00:20:34 Speaker_32
Many of the people who were in his movement, which was called the 26th of July movement, were young people who were ardently anti-communist. This is Ada Ferrer, the Cuban-American history professor at Princeton you heard from in episode one. But they believed in deposing Batista.
00:20:47 Speaker_15
They believed in acting against government corruption.
00:20:59 Speaker_15
By 1960, the new government approved laws that banned all foreign ownership of Cuban land, banishing American companies from the island and nationalizing their businesses. His government also confiscated the land of Cubans who held more than 1,000 acres.
00:21:12 Speaker_15
Even Castro's own mother was apparently outraged that her son had confiscated their family estate. Castro redistributed this land to workers or state communes. They start enacting social reforms like the urban reform, cutting rents.
00:21:31 Speaker_32
And with all these laws that they're passing, they're getting enormous amounts of support. Some of that support came from my own grandparents, who got the chance to buy for almost nothing the apartment that they were renting before the revolution.
00:21:42 Speaker_15
It was the same apartment where I was raised with my mother 30 years after that. Not everyone felt like my grandparents. Obviously, the people whose land is being taken away are not necessarily going to support.
00:21:56 Speaker_15
But Castro was well liked in Cuba, not just by my grandparents, but by many other Cubans. You said that your policies in Cuba, Dr. Castro, are leading to conditions of great economic difficulty. Is this so? Everybody work.
00:22:11 Speaker_21
Everybody happy. In this 1961 BBC interview, Castro is young, smiling, easygoing.
00:22:23 Speaker_15
The journalist wrote that Castro charmed and impressed many reporters. When Castro came to power, he promised democratic elections will come as soon as a new government is stabilized. But by the early 60s, that hadn't happened.
00:22:41 Speaker_15
The Cubans who left for the United States after Castro had taken their land saw Castro not for a revolutionary, but a despot.
00:22:59 Speaker_21
Some people say, some of your Cuban enemies say, people in Miami, Americans, say that you started a revolution to bring in democracy and you have not done so. In this part of the video, when the reporter mentions Cubans in Miami, Castro gives a sonrisita. He smirks a little.
00:23:11 Speaker_15
Do you believe that there is no democracy here? I am sure there is more democracy than in the United States.
00:23:20 Speaker_22
The most free man you can find in all America is the Cuban man.
00:23:37 Speaker_15
Atta says that in a survey from February of 1959, about 91% of the respondents said that the new government was doing everything perfectly well, but Washington didn't feel this way. Here is Atta again. The president and senators and congressmen were saying, what is Cuba doing? It's turning communist. By 1962, the U.S.
00:23:59 Speaker_15
had cut diplomatic ties with Cuba and declared an embargo, forbidding American trade with Cuba, hoping to create shortages and hunger on the island to destabilize Castro's new government. By this time, Castro had been turning to the Soviet Union for help and trade. There is a limit to what the United States in self-respect can endure.
00:24:14 Speaker_15
That limit has now been reached.
00:24:20 Speaker_00
The CIA also secretly trained some 1,400 Cubans who had left for the U.S.
00:24:27 Speaker_15
to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, La Bahia de Cochinos, believing the attack could kickstart an uprising against Castro. But the attempted invasion failed miserably.
00:24:48 Speaker_15
I remember learning in our history classes in Cuba about these early days of Castro's rule, how he created new systems, free health care and free education, improving the quality of life for ordinary Cubans.
00:25:03 Speaker_15
I remember some people in Cuba saying that, yes, their life improved at the beginning, and they supported Castro, pretty convinced that great years were ahead. But what I didn't learn in school was that from the very beginning, the censoring and self-censoring started.
00:25:15 Speaker_15
And Cuba quickly became a place with almost no freedom of expression. Under this new regime, dissidents were often imprisoned. And then things got worse.
00:25:34 Speaker_15
It's a period that follows the fall of the Soviet Union and state socialism in Eastern Europe.
00:25:37 Speaker_32
And the Cuban economy just tanked almost from one day to the next. There was the joke of, you know, Cuba, but it wasn't really a joke. You know, Cuba just has three problems, you know, desayuno, el almuerzo y la comida, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
00:25:58 Speaker_32
And everywhere I went, the constant refrain was, no es fácil, everyone had to resolver y inventar, and it was just this constant struggle to live and to survive. Over the decades, waves of Cubans left the island for the U.S. in flights and boats.
00:26:10 Speaker_15
There were the 14,000 children who were put on planes to Miami in fear that they will be taken away from their families and put in communist indoctrination camps. That never happened, by the way.
00:26:32 Speaker_32
Then the next wave was 1980 and the Mariel Boatlift, in which 125,000 people came in the space of about, you know, five months, even less. The president has literally opened the floodgates, placing no limitations on the number of Cubans entering the United States.
00:26:41 Speaker_09
A decade after Mariel, with the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba entered the years of severe scarcity that I remember from my childhood.
00:26:48 Speaker_15
The Cuban government named it the Special Period, or El Periodo Especial. Then there was the Rafter Crisis in 94, which I think was about 35,000 people in the space of a few months. But in all those years, there were people leaving.
00:27:03 Speaker_32
Most of the time, families could not leave Cuba together.
00:27:13 Speaker_15
They would decide who had a better chance to leave, save, send money, and work hard to help the rest of the family on the island. There are many families like mine and Elian's, where a parent or a child comes without the rest of their family.
00:27:26 Speaker_15
Family separation was a part of the story of the Cuban Revolution from the very beginning.
00:27:40 Speaker_15
Family separation has become such a part of the Cuban cultural DNA that it's actually pretty difficult to meet a Cuban who has not been touched by it. And who you blame for that separation depends on what side of the small strip of ocean between Cuba and Florida you are on.
00:28:11 Speaker_07
On the Embedded podcast from NPR, what is it like to live under years of state surveillance? So many people have fear of losing their families. For years, the Chinese government has been detaining hundreds of thousands of ethnic Uyghurs.
00:28:17 Speaker_07
This is the story of one family torn apart. Listen to The Black Gate on the Embedded podcast from NPR. All episodes are available now.
00:28:31 Speaker_07
Elian's story flooded every corner of life in Cuba.
00:28:39 Speaker_15
I remember not just attending, but watching the protests in Havana demanding Elian be brought home. So does Harold Cardenas, Cuban journalist and political analyst. People in Havana had to rally all the time.
00:28:56 Speaker_19
And it's impressive when you look at the images of the malecón in Havana next to the sea, full of probably millions of Cubans. That is an impressive thing. That showed the capacity that the Cuban government had back then to rally people and to bring them together for a cause.
00:29:20 Speaker_19
I am sure that many of them were strongly encouraged in their jobs to join those rallies, but others were going because they really believe in it. I felt this too.
00:29:32 Speaker_15
Sure, there were people there because the protests were mandated, but I also saw people who were truly calling for his return, outraged that the boy was being kept from his father.
00:29:46 Speaker_19
Obviously, at that age, it's hard to distinguish between the real fight of a kid that deserves to be with his father and the propaganda, and how the governments also use people, citizens, for propaganda purposes. So, as a child, it was hard to distinguish the propaganda on both sides.
00:30:09 Speaker_15
In Cuba, I remember hearing a lot about how Elian's father had never agreed that Elian could be taken to the United States, how the U.S. was keeping a boy away from the rightful parent, another example of the evil U.S. empire. But for Cubans in Florida, this case was about freedom and saving a boy from oppression.
00:30:31 Speaker_03
Many of the people, the Cuban Americans in Miami identified with the mother and her motivations for doing what she did and the fact that she lost her life in trying to do this. This is former Assistant Secretary of State Pete Romero.
00:30:42 Speaker_15
But this idea that Elian's mother had died trying to reach freedom for her son is not as black and white. There is some evidence that Elian's mother was going to the United States not for freedom, but to follow her boyfriend.
00:30:54 Speaker_15
They truly were the Cuban Romeo and Juliet.
00:31:02 Speaker_11
While she was reporting the story, journalist Anne-Louise Barda saw a five-page love letter between the couple.
00:31:06 Speaker_15
And she and others are convinced that love was the real motive.
00:31:18 Speaker_11
The reason the mother was on the boat was because of her great love for Rafa Munieron. If Rafa had said, we're going to Iceland or we're going to Colombia, I think she would have gone with him. Regardless of why she got on the boat, what you should know is people either identified with Lilian's mom and the U.S.
00:31:36 Speaker_15
or Lilian's dad and Cuba. Everybody could understand, you know, a child who's a Cuban child taken away from, you know, the bosom of the motherland and all of that stuff.
00:31:46 Speaker_03
And, you know, we want him back. And, you know, I mean, it was it was great for propaganda. I see how Elian was used by both sides to bolster ideology.
00:32:02 Speaker_15
But mostly, when I see Elian, I see us, Cubans, a people who have experienced family separation over seven decades. I see my family. My brother, Juanqui, who now lives in Miami and works as a SWAT, paramedic, and firefighter.
00:32:19 Speaker_15
Some people thought that you looked like Elian yourself. It is true. My brother does look like Elian.
00:32:55 Speaker_15
Maybe that's why it's been easier for me to imagine Elian not as a headline, not as a piece of geopolitics or history, or even as propaganda. No, I see Elian as someone who once was a boy in a new and unknown country without his mom or his dad. And I know the hole that creates in your heart to be separated from a parent.
00:33:16 Speaker_15
Forces greater than you keeping you from them. Countries and their policies. Politicians and their aims. Reporters and their deadlines. That's all in the periphery. At the center, at the heart of Elian's journey, is that he was a boy who longed for his parents.
00:33:36 Speaker_15
Like I once did. Next time on Chess Piece, Miami Cubans and Elian's relatives start getting angry. Elian comes. Fidel hasn't gone down. Everybody's not happy about that. And by God, Fidel's not going to get this trophy.
00:34:06 Speaker_37
And the battle for Elian starts breaking up a family.
00:34:16 Speaker_15
Chess Piece, the Elian Gonzalez story, is a production of Futuro Studios in partnership with iHeart's My Cultura podcast network. This show is written and reported by me, Penilei Ramirez, with Maria Garcia, Nicole Rutwell, and Tasha Sandoval.
00:34:34 Speaker_15
Our editor is Maria Garcia. Additional editing by Marlon Bishop. Our senior producer is Nicole Rutwell. Our associate producers are Tasha Sandoval and Elizabeth Lowenthal-Torres.
00:34:50 Speaker_15
Sound Design by Jacob Rossati, and our intern is Evelyn Fajardo-Alvarez. Our Senior Production Manager is Jessica Ellis, with production support from Nancy Trujillo and Francis Poon.
00:35:01 Speaker_15
Mixing by Stephanie LeBeau, Julia Caruso, and JJ Carubin. Fat Checking by Nidia Bautista. Scoring and Musical Creation by Jacob Rossati and Stephanie LeBeau. and credits music from Los Acheros.
00:35:16 Speaker_15
Our executive producers are Marlon Bishop and Maria Garcia. Legal Review by Neil Rossini. This episode was recorded in part at Dinamica Studio in Mexico City. Futuro Media was founded by Maria Hinojosa.
00:35:31 Speaker_15
For more podcasts, listen to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or whatever you listen to your favorite shows. I'm Penelay Ramirez. See you in the next episode.
00:36:04 Speaker_08
Nos vemos en el siguiente episodio. Hey, it's BA Parker. Before we wrap up, The end of another year is coming up and our team is looking back at all the deep reporting and compelling stories and conversations about race that we've been able to bring you in 2024 because of your support. We unpacked tropes and conspiracy theories. We brought you the story of America's oldest drag king.
00:36:22 Speaker_08
And we asked complicated questions like whether bike lanes cause gentrification and how to be a better tourist.
00:36:38 Speaker_08
And it's all because listeners like you step up to support our work, either by giving to your local station or by joining NPR+. NPR Plus has grown a lot this year, and we want to say an extra special thank you to those supporters right now. You know who you are, and we see you.
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If you don't know what I'm talking about, NPR Plus is a sweet way to support the independent public media you rely on from NPR.
00:37:06 Speaker_08
When you sign up for a simple recurring donation, you support our mission of creating a more informed public and get special perks from more than 25 NPR podcasts.
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like sponsor-free listening, bonus episodes, and even exclusive and discounted items from the NPR Shop and the NPR Wine Club. When you donate today, you join a community of supporters that's deeply curious about the world and eager to challenge assumptions.
00:37:27 Speaker_08
Join us on the Plus side today at plus.npr.org. Thanks!
00:37:47 Speaker_13
Oh my goodness, if I could get a reindeer, that would be nice. I'm Jesse Thorne. Celebrate the season with me and certified reindeer lover Jennifer Hudson on the Bullseye Holiday Special.
00:37:57 Speaker_29
Plus, we'll hear from Tower of Power Zach Cherry and Judy Greer on the Bullseye podcast from MaximumFun.org and NPR.
00:38:01 Speaker_13
Since the beginning of women's sports, there's been a struggle to define who qualifies for the women's category.
00:38:12 Speaker_07
Tested, from NPR's Embedded podcast and CBC, takes you inside that struggle. Listen to Tested, the series that was named one of the 10 best podcasts of 2024 by Apple, Vulture, and The New York Times.
00:38:23 Speaker_07
It's season 20 of NPR's Embedded podcast.
00:38:35 Speaker_04
Hey everybody, it's time to join NPR's All Songs Considered as we celebrate a very tolerable Christmas with a mix of seasonal songs and special guests. Yeah, we're in for like the saddest Christmas ever. Stuck with Robin, who is basically a lump of coal in the shape of a man.
00:38:44 Speaker_01
Hear new episodes of All Songs Considered every Tuesday, wherever you get podcasts.