Word: sonly
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Though he and Elian's mother Elisabeth were divorced, they remained close as they shared custody of their son; Elian typically spent four to five days a week at his father's house. Elian enjoyed that rarest of Cuban luxuries: his own air-conditioned bedroom. And before Juan Miguel sold it to pay, he says, for calls to Elian in Miami, the boy's father even had a car, a 1956 Nash Rambler, in which Elian rode through town like a prince, while many people relied on horse-drawn carts. "I'm not ashamed of the life Elian has here...
...wife evidently felt otherwise, strongly enough to pile her son into a makeshift boat piloted by her hustler boyfriend and set out to sea--a fatal choice, as it turned out. The last decision she made was perhaps the one that saved her son's life, when she dressed him for the journey in the bright orange jeans and sweat shirt that fishermen say they found him in, colors that often keep sharks away...
When Juan Miguel learned that Elian had survived the shipwreck and was safely in the hands of the Miami branch of the family, Lazaro and other family members immediately began quietly working out how father and son would be reunited. But that was before Castro began making his public demands that the Miami family return the boy, and before the leaders of the exile community swooped down on Lazaro's small house in Little Havana and drew the family deep into the local political swamps. Robinson Crusoe did not have the misfortune of washing ashore in a swing state...
...weeks that followed Elian's rescue, Juan Miguel watched from a distance as his son was ushered into the American Dream. Congressmen like Dan Burton flew to Miami to meet him and report to the waiting media circus that they had discussed every Yankee virtue from the Federalist papers to 401(k)s. Elian went to Disney World, hugged Barney, celebrated his sixth birthday with the gift of a toy gun. He fell in love with chocolate milk; a Florida cousin who visits regularly told TIME that whenever Elian's cousin Marisleysis poured him a glass, she made a point...
...Cardenas, meanwhile, Juan Miguel was growing more distraught about his son's predicament. "His hair has been falling out, and he's had stomach problems since this whole thing started," says Fidel Ramirez, 32, Juan Miguel's best friend since school days. "He was extremely gregarious, but now he has turned bitter and quiet. When it dawned on him that his Miami relatives were keeping Elian up there, he came to me and said, 'Hermano, they took my son--they're hitting me where it hurts most.' He cried for three days...