Thanks to markl02 for bringing this to my attention. 

Elian Gonzalez is now a seventh-grader in Cuba who calls President Fidel Castro a friend and "father."

Elian shares his story in his own words, and talks about his life today, in an interview in Cuba with correspondent Bob Simon on 60 Minutes this Sunday, Oct. 2.

At the age of 11, Elian Gonzalez is a hero in Cuba after what happened to him when he was just 5 years old: His mother died at sea and he was rescued two miles off Florida. He was repatriated to Cuba only after a months-long tug of war between his Miami relatives and his father and the Cuban government.

In what Miami Cuban exiles would say is propaganda, Castro attended the boy’s elementary school graduation and declared he was proud to have Gonzalez as his friend.

The feeling is mutual. "It's also very moving to me and I also believe I am his friend," Gonzalez tells Simon. "Not only (do I think of Castro) as a friend, but also as a father." The boy says that he could call the Cuban president on the phone if he wanted to.

Gonzalez gave a patriotic speech in front of Castro and cameras on the fifth anniversary of the day U.S. law enforcement officers raided his Miami relatives’ house and removed him at gunpoint to be repatriated.

It’s all part of Castro's propagandist plans, says Ramon Sanchez, a Cuban-American who led demonstrations in Miami in support of keeping the boy in America five years ago.

"(Gonzalez) is being brainwashed by the Cuban regime. When you see a child talking in the same exact way that the dictator has talked for 46 years, you know he has been indoctrinated," says Sanchez.

The boy says his Miami relatives, with whom he spent five months, tried to persuade him to stay in America. "They were telling me bad things about (my father) … They were also telling me to tell (my father) that I did not want to go back to Cuba and I always told them that I wanted to," he tells Simon.

Gonzalez says he missed his father, school and his friends back in Cuba.

The worst parts of his Miami experience were the nights he found difficult to sleep through. "I would have nightmares and my uncles would talk to me about my mother … It was better not to remind me of that because that tormented me … I was very little," he recalls.

One of those great uncles who cared for him during that time, Delfin Gonzalez, denies that Elian was unhappy and says he doesn't believe anything he says in Cuba because the boy is a prisoner there.

Does Elian ever want to see those relatives again? "Yes," he tells Simon. “Despite everything they did, the way they did it — it was wrong — they are (still) my family … my uncles.”

How sad that he is still being treated as a political chess piece. But it's good that he seems to be happy now.

Actually, they mentioned that Elian is the president of his class already. 

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It may sound funny now, but don't be surprised at all if it actually happens.  With everything that Generale Castro calculates as far as propaganda goes, Elian is the best shot he really has at putting some sort of positive spin on Cuba's regime.  Who better to get than someone who has been, since near birth, shielded from all the negativr aspects of it and instead neem made a real beneficiary?


MJ