From Lucia Newman. CNN Havana Bureau Chief. CNN. July 19, 2000. Web posted at: 12:22 a.m. EDT (0422 GMT)
HAVANA (CNN) -- Three weeks after his return to Cuba, Elian Gonzalez the 6-year-old boy may be out of sight, but Elian Gonzalez the political symbol is still on center stage.
Authorities have kept their promise of sheltering Elian from the mass media attention he drew during his seven months in the United States. Only one cameraman, who usually is reserved for Cuban President Fidel Castro, has been allowed to record some of his activities, such as a visit last week
with family and classmates to Havana's botanical gardens.
But the subject of Elian -- as a symbol of Cuba's ideological battle against the United States -- continues to dominate the state-run media.
'This grand victory ...'
On Monday and Tuesday, Cuban state television broadcast a detailed account of the efforts made by Elian's teachers to help him catch up on his lost schoolwork, first in Washington and then back in Cuba.
These were the first pictures of Elian with Castro, who visited the Gonzalez family on the boy's graduation day. Castro autographed and gave Elian a copy of "The Golden Age," by Jose Marti, Cuba's nationalist hero.
Elian's graduation from first grade is portrayed not so much as a personal success as it is a triumph of Cuba's socialist system.
"This grand victory which is shared by all our people is the victory of our education system and also of our revolution," said Miriam Janet, president of Cuba's Pioneers organization.
Just a normal citizen
A government issued statement says Elian will be just a normal citizen. But, it adds, his teachers should turn him into a model child, a symbol, an example and a glory for all other Cuban children.
Elian was at the center of a legal tug of war between his father and his Miami relatives after he was found clinging to an inner tube off the coast of Florida on Thanksgiving Day. His mother and 10 other people died trying to reach the United States in a poorly made boat.
U.S. officials ruled that custody of Elian belonged with his Cuban father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. The father came to the United States to wait out court appeals by the Miami relatives seeking to keep Elian in the United States.
Elian was returned to Cuba on June 28 after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a request by the Miami relatives for a political asylum hearing on the boy's behalf and refused to extend an injunction requiring him to stay in the United States.
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