Playing loose and free with the concept "museum" has bothered me greatly
over the last decade, but it has been a battle I have thought not worth
taking on.

Personal opinion?  This "museum" is nothing more than an ideological
statement, an effort to cast as "fact" a political outlook held by a small
group of people.  Elian is not a hero, a martyr, or much of anything other
than an ordinary little boy put through extraordinary trials.  Few of the
adults involved in his rescue and subsequent care seemed as concerned about
Elian as they were about some mythical future that life in the United States
apparently could guarantee and that life in Cuba would preclude.

My sense is that if the "Elian Gonzalez Museum" receives no more attention
than it merits (which is in my opinion none) then it will die a natural and
appropriate death.

Ellen B. Cutler
LNB Associates: Writing, Editing and Research Services
Aberdeen, MD

----- Original Message -----
From: Allan Mccollum <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, October 21, 2001 12:55 PM
Subject: FYI: Former Home of Elian Kin Now Museum


> 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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