Is this new museum really a museum? I suppose all museums represent an
ideology of some kind, each in it's own way, with artifacts that support a
certain specific way of believing, etc. - and maybe these underlying beliefs
are never as evident to the public as they might be.
So It's interesting to hear about a straightforward politically charged
anti-Castro museum disguised as a toy museum - especially when it
memorializes an event that occurred less than 2 years ago!
Former Home of Elian Kin Now Museum
.c The Associated Press, October 20, 2001
MIAMI -- The house where Elian Gonzalez lived with relatives for five months
during a widely publicized, international custody dispute has been
transformed into a museum honoring the boy.
Beginning on Sunday, an assortment of Elian's belongings and tributes from
Cuban Americans will be on display in the small house in Little Havana. It is
the same house where Elian was filmed by countless news organizations as he
played in the yard with his cousin and where he was seized by federal agents
before being returned to his father in Cuba.
Elian's Miami relatives, who no longer live in the house, waged a seven-month
custody battle in U.S. courts to keep the boy in the United States.
''We just want to preserve his memory,'' said Delfin Gonzalez, one of the
boy's great-uncles living in Florida.
Plans for the museum - known as Unidos en Casa Elian, or United in Elian
House - have been in the works for months.
''With all this terrorist stuff going on, we thought this would be a good
time to open and give people a distraction, a relief, comfort,'' Delfin
Gonzalez said.
Elian arrived was floating off the coast of Florida on Thanksgiving 1999. A
boat he and his mother had been on had capsized and she had drowned.
For several months following Elian's arrival, the home became a focus of
Miami's Cuban community.
Elian's Miami relatives were granted temporary custody of the boy after the
death of his mother, one of 11 people who perished when the boat sank during
the illegal attempt to immigrate to the United States.
The relatives fought to keep him in the United States, arguing that his
mother died to bring him there. Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez,
demanded that the child be returned to him in their native Cuba.
After a legal battle that went to the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. authorities
allowed Juan Miguel Gonzalez to take his son back to Cuba last year.
The Miami home, now emptied of furniture, is lined with cases displaying
Elian's toys, poems dedicated to him and hundreds of photograph collages of
the boy.
A motorized red and yellow car Elian rode in the yard is there, as is the
Batman costume he wore for Halloween. Preserved in Elian's former bedroom are
the race-car bed where he slept, a book bag, a camouflage jacket and a karate
uniform.
The house where Elian's belongings are on display isn't the only museum
created to honor the boy. In July, Elian, his family and Cuban leader Fidel
Castro inaugurated a museum dedicated to the fight for the boy's return to
Cuba.
The Oscar Maria Rojas Museum in Cardenas, about 85 miles east of Havana,
filled one of its five rooms with photos and newspaper articles on the fight
for Elian's return.
AP-NY-10-20-01 0636EDT
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