World

Elian's Dad Ever So Grateful To Fidel

November 28, 2000 / 11:26 AM EST / AP

A year after Elian Gonzalez was rescued in the Florida Straits, his Cuban father thanked Fidel Castro and the Cuban people for their help in getting the boy back and indicated the 6-year-old is doing well.

"My family and I went through very difficult days because of the uncertainly of what was going to happen to our little Elian," Gonzalez wrote in a letter published Tuesday in the Communist Party daily Granma.

Today, "I feel like an average Cuban who can watch his son laugh, play and learn freely," Gonzalez wrote in the letter dated Monday. Elian "as all other Cuban children, enjoys the security and immense well-being of living in this Socialist Revolution," the letter said.

Elian's father wrote that when the battle for the child's repatriation first began in December 1999, he and his family "couldn't even imagine then how much more we were going to suffer and how hard it was going to be to achieve his return."

"After 12 months, seven of them a rough battle, we never felt alone, our people made the demand for Elian's return theirs and that gave us the strength and human warmth we so needed," Gonzalez continued.

He expressed his "eternal gratitude" to the Cuban people and Castro in particular for their support during the international custody battle for Elian that divided Cubans living on both sides of the straits.

The fight began a year ago this week when a rickety boat carrying Elian to the United States sank off the Florida coast, killing his mother and 10 others and casting him adrift on an innertube.

One of only three survivors of the illegal crossing, Elian was rescued by two men on a fishing trip and taken to a Florida hospital.

American authorities granted temporary custody to Elian's distant relatives in Miami who fought to keep him in the United States. Gonzalez, backed by Castro himself, fought to have the boy returned to Cuba.

Gonzalez ultimately went to the United States to get his son back. Father and son were reunited after an armed federal raid on the Miami relatives' home to retrieve the boy.

The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court before Gonzalez was able to return with his child to Cuba.

"The suffering we have lived through is not easy to forget," Gonzalez wrote. "But I am sure that it cultivates in each Cuban a feeling of patriotism that makes us more worthy and unconquerable in the face of new battles."