‏Elián González‏

Elian's mother, Elizabet Brotons, was a hotel housekeeper who had married Elian's father, Juan Miguel González, when she was 18. After seven miscarriages, they finally had a child, and decided on a unique name for him: Elián, composed of the first three letters of Elizabet and the last two letters of Juan. They called him El Niño Milagro, "the miracle child." The couple divorced, however, and on November 22, 1999, Elizabet kidnapped 6-year-old Elian from school and left with him for Miami, with 12 other people, in a tiny aluminum boat with no roof, no seats, a decrepit motor, and only three life preservers. The passengers injected themselves with Gravinol to prevent seasickness. At sea, the motor failed, and the boat flipped and sank. In the darkness and inferno of panic, the adults, who did not know how to swim and were drowsy from the Gravinol, drowned. Elian's tiny body appeared in an inner tube in the water off Fort Lauderdale, unconscious and badly sunburned, where he was rescued by fishermen.

In the following months, an international custody standoff ensued over what to do with Elian. Elian's Miami relatives took him in, and their vocal, anti-Castro supporters vehemently opposed Elian's return to Cuba, daring the government to take Elian by force. Finally it came to that: a predawn raid by FBI agents on April 1, 2000, where Elian was rescued at gunpoint and delivered back to his father in Cuba.