• Submitted by: admin
• national
• Personalities
• 04 / 07 / 2010

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At the opening Saturday in Havana of the Ninth Congress of the Union of Communist Youths, a vaguely familiar face was photographed by a Cubadebate.com lensman – Elián González Brotons, 16, a student at the Camilo Cienfuegos Military School.

(eli) According to Radio Habana, González told the Congress that "the family and the military schools can contribute much to reinforce [youngsters'] motivations" to take up careers in the military.

In 2000, Elián, who had been rescued off Fort Lauderdale after the boat in which he traveled with his mother capsized, was at the center of an court battle between his father in Cuba and distant relatives in Miami who wanted to keep the boy in the United States.

Immigration agents removed the boy from the relatives' home on April 22. The legal case went to a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which on June 1 ruled that no asylum could be granted to the boy.

Elián was returned to Cuba on June 28, 2000.

Source: miamiherald.typepad.com/cuban_colada/