Free Republic

Gonzalez, who became the center of an international custody battle at 5 years old, was nominated Sunday to Cuba's National Assembly. Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban national whose precarious boyhood arrival in the U.S. in 1999 prompted a fierce international custody battle, is set to become a lawmaker. Gonzalez was nominated by his local municipal assembly on Sunday to serve in Cuba's National Assembly... Gonzlaez was en route to Florida with his mother when their boat capsized on Thanksgiving 1999 and she and other migrants drowned. The boy's fate thereafter became a flashpoint in U.S.-Cuba relations. His father, a waiter named...

In his new book "Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant," Fontova describes what he calls a staged interview Dan Rather held with Juan Miguel, father of Elian Gonzalez, the youthful lone survivor of a capsized Cuban boat which sank on its way to the U.S. The custody battle culminated in a dramatic, pre-dawn raid by machine-gun-toting federal agents to snatch the 6-year-old from his Miami relatives during Easter weekend and send him back to Castro's tyranny. Fontova also tells a heart-wrenching story of Cuba's execution of American businessman Howard Anderson. Anderson owned a chain of service stations and a Jeep dealership and...