Elian Gonzalez Joins Communist Youth Group
 

Elian Gonzalez joins Cuba's Young Communists

HAVANA (AP) — The Cuban boy at the center of an international custody battle eight years ago has joined Cuba's Young Communist Union.
Communist youth newspaper Juventud Rebelde quotes Elian Gonzalez as saying he will never let down ex-President Fidel Castro and his brother Raul Castro, who succeeded Fidel earlier this year.
Now 14, Elian was 6 when Miami relatives lost their fight to keep him in the United States and he was returned to Cuba in mid-2000 with his father.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/16/wo...s/16elian.html


Good thing he was returned to Cuba in mid-2000. :)

Is this "news?" Is it surprising?

I think the media plans to follow the kid until he becomes Castro's replacement

Is this being used as some illegal immigrant message or a lesson to the U.S.?

I thought all Cuban kids at a certain age had to join the Communist Party...why is this newsworthy, NYTimes? Why?

Why newsworthy...
 

This is newsworthy because this is the child who spent time in Miami with relatives and there was a HUGE custody battle between stateside family members and estranged father who remained in Cuba. (Mother died during the boatride between Cuba & Miami.) The whole thing blew up in the national media when Janet Reno, et al, stormed the relatives' home and took him away to deport him.
The prime reason was, supposedly, to keep him with his biological father, though estranged. We as a nation were basically assured by the father that he wouldn't be 'damaged' because of a return to Cuba.
Seeing this child, who would have thrived in the US under the love and care of relatives who had worked hard to make a life away from communism and the lack of infrastructure in Cuba, officially become a part of the communist party stings really hard. And, in most US citizens' opinion I would imagine, is certainly not what we envisioned for this child who was supposed to be brought up the way his mother would have wanted.

Yeah, anyone who wasn't drunk back in 2000 knows the story of Elian Gonzalez. Most of us also know that this was bound to happen--that he would be become one of the Cuban propaganda machine's biggest "success stories." Did anyone think that he WOULDN'T become a part of the Party? I mean, really?

...Propaganda mill. I wonder what he actually believes though.

If these are his real thoughts and feelings, then it would be quite surprising.

We're the paternal rights severed at any point before the mother took Elian off to the US? I don't think so. The father has a right to raise his child as he sees fit...even if he becomes a communist.

are any of their thoughts and opinions their own? They are raised with propaganda and then forced to join. (i think)

NY Times is just one of the many news sources I could've pulled this article from.

My thought exactly. He's a child and even many adults in Cuba don't know what thoughts are "their own" or aren't free to express their own thoughts.

Yeah exactly.

I'm part Cuban and I have relatives that visit every few years. It's crazy, they don't even feel comfortable expressing a negative opinion about Castro in this country. As in, if anyone says anything negative about him and the Communist party they remain quiet and are hesitant to express their opinions.

Whatever though. I've never visited, nor do I want to, so I can't say what it's like to live over there.