Elián González announces that he will be a father 2020 0:41
Havana (CNN) --
Elían González, the Cuban boy whose disputed custody led to a Cold War standoff, has been nominated to serve in the island's National Assembly, the communist party newspaper Granma reported Monday.
The newspaper referred to González, now 29, as a "representative of the most dignified of Cuban youth."
Elián González speaks to the press in Havana, Cuba, in November 2016. (Carlos García Rawlins/Reuters)
González's run nearly secures his seat in the 470-seat National Assembly that meets several times a year to discuss bills, which are generally voted unanimously for approval.
This was the international battle for the little rafter Elián González
Under Cuban law, municipal assemblies nominate a single candidate for the National Assembly, which Cubans can then ratify or vote against.
Serving in the National Assembly would be the highest-profile post for González since the agonizing custody battle between his father and relatives in Miami that led to the boy's return to the communist island in 2000.
On Thanksgiving Day 1999, González, then six years old, rose to fame after being rescued in the Florida Straits.
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His mother Elizabeth and nine other people on the clandestine voyage drowned after their dilapidated boat capsized on the high seas while trying to get from Cuba to the United States.
González's survival seemed miraculous, and distant relatives in Miami, supported by the anti-Castro exile community, vowed to keep him in the United States.
In Cuba, Elían's father, Juan Miguel, fought to bring the boy home.
Cold War politics soon dominated the custody fight for him when Cuban leader Fidel Castro led mass demonstrations on the island demanding Elían's return.
The case became a new flash point in the already simmering dispute between supporters and opponents of Castro's revolution.
Elían's relatives in Miami argued that if the boy returned to Cuba, he would become a brainwashed trophy for Castro in his longstanding feud with the United States.
As the two sides fought the high-profile case in court, US immigration officials decided to place Elían in the custody of his father, who had traveled to the United States to press for his son's return.
Elían's relatives in Miami refused to turn him over, and then, in a nighttime raid, armed federal agents broke into his uncle's home and seized the boy.
Riots broke out in Miami as members of the Cuban-American community reacted with anger after federal agents took the boy away.
Elían was reunited with his father and after further legal proceedings, which ended with the United States Supreme Court rejecting the efforts of relatives in Miami to recover him, father and son flew back to Cuba.
A massive 'welcome home'
The Cuban government celebrated Elían's return with a massive demonstration.
For the next few years, he was surrounded by government bodyguards, and he later said that they became some of his best friends during his childhood.
González's father, a waiter who had received invitations to defect while in the United States, was appointed to the island's National Assembly but later resigned without any official explanation.
Despite promises that he would return to his old life, Elían González never stayed out of the public spotlight for too long.
At the boy's seventh birthday party, the guest of honor was Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
The images of Elían and Castro celebrating were first shown on the island's state television and then broadcast around the world, to a public still fascinated by the case of the so-called Cuban "little rafter."
“I do not profess any religion, but if I did, my God would be Fidel Castro.
It is like a ship that knew how to lead its crew on the right path,” González said in an interview with Cuban state media in 2013.
González used to say that Castro was like a second father to him.
In a rare interview with CNN in 2017, González said he would like to reconcile with his relatives in Miami, but also made it clear that he planned to continue to openly support the government that brought him home.
“Living here is a debt that I owe to the Cuban people,” González said.
"It's what I will always work and fight for."
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