several others had crowded into a
motorboat that had capsized, killing
Elian’s mother and 10 others and leaving
Elian to float on an inner tube for two
days before being rescued. The U.S.
Immigration and Naturalization Service
(INS) placed the boy in the custody of
relatives in Miami’s Little Havana neigh-
borhood. Elian’s father, Juan Miguel
Gonzalez, who had remained in Cuba,
asked to have the boy returned; Castro
supported his wish, sponsoring anti-
American demonstrations to put pres-
sure on the United States. Passions in
the United States ran high, with the
boy’s Miami relatives and others insist-
ing that the mother’s wish to secure free-
dom for her son from Castro’s
dictatorship should be honored. Other
Americans argued that the father’s right
to custody of his son trumped the issue
of whether the United States or Cuba
had a superior form of government.
When Gonzalez came to the United
States to take custody of Elian pending a
court decision on the case, negotiations
for transferring him from the care of his
Miami relatives failed, prompting the
U.S. Justice Department to seize the
boy in an armed raid on their house. In
the end, the courts ruled in favor of per-
mitting Elian to return to Cuba with his
father, leaving behind renewed aware-
ness of unfinished business between
Cuba and the United States.A Vibrant Community
Cuban Americans remain most strongly
concentrated in Florida, particularly
Miami and surrounding Dade County,
home to more than 700,000 people of
Cuban descent. But Cuban-American
communities exist in many other areas as
well. As of 1990, New York, New Jersey,
Connecticut, and California each were
home to between 25,000 and 100,000
Cuban Americans; Texas and Illinois each
had 10,000 to 25,000 Cuban Americans.
Cuban Americans made numerous
contributions to the commerce and cul-
ture of the United States in the last 25
years of the 20th century. With their
bilingual advantage, Cuban-American
businesspeople in Miami spearheaded a
strong and growing trade with Latin
America, converting the city into a com-
mercial gateway to the southern part of
the Western Hemisphere.
During this period the Cuban com-
munity in the United States offered nov-
elists like Oscar Hijuelos, author of the
novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of
Love (1989), and pop musicians like
Gloria Estefan and her Miami Sound
Machine. Cuban-American baseball play-
ers like Livan Hernández continued the
tradition of excellence begun by Tony
Oliva, a hitter and later coach for the
Minnesota Twins beginning in 1964. In
this field their major rivals seemed to be208 ATLAS OF HISPANIC-AMERICAN HISTORY
Cuban-American Population Distribution, 2000