Cuban boy tells father in video he wants to stay
By Reuters, 04/13/00
WASHINGTON -- Wagging his finger at the camera, 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez told his father in a home video released by his Miami relatives Thursday that he did not want to return to Cuba with his surviving parent.
"Papa, I don't want to go to Cuba. I want to stay here," the child at the heart of an international custody dispute said in Spanish on a grainy video aired on ABC's "Good Morning America" program.
ABC said it was unclear whether the boy, shown sitting cross-legged on a bed and chewing gum, had been coaxed by the relatives about what to say on the video, which was first shown on the Spanish language Univision network.
Elian has lived with his Miami relatives since he was rescued floating on an inner tube last November off the Florida coast. The child survived a shipwreck that killed his mother and 10 others only to be thrown into a custody war between his Cuban father and the Miami relatives, who want to keep him in the United States where they say he would have a better life.
The relatives have been strongly criticized by the boy's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, for parading the child in front of television cameras in a bid to win over public opinion not to return him to communist Cuba.
In a series of interviews with ABC television last month, Elian drew a picture of the traumatic shipwreck in which his mother died and told the network's anchor, Diane Sawyer, that he wanted to stay in Miami.
Sawyer came under fire for interviewing the boy, who is seen by many as a pawn in the war between Miami-based Cuban exiles and the government of Cuban President Fidel Castro.
Late Wednesday Attorney General Janet Reno ordered the Miami family to hand the child over at an airport near Miami at 2 p.m. Thursday so that he could be reunited with his father, who is waiting in Washington, D.C., for his oldest son.
The relatives have said they will not take the child to the airport.
Elian Gonzalez waves to well wishers, accompanied by his cousin Marisleysis, as they arrive at their home in Little Havana yesterday. (AP Photo)
