Cross-posted from ProPhotoDaily
[by David Schonauer]
Who is Elian Gonzalez?
And why was it news when, on Father’s Day, he announced that he was set to become a father?
“Soon I will begin to understand what it means to be a father,” Elian Gonzalez wrote on his Facebook page, notes CNN. “But what I know up until now is my father and I hope to do it as half as well as he did with me.”
Twenty years ago, Gonzalez became a news sensation as the protagonist at the center of a custody case that sparked diplomatic and tensions between the United States and Cuba. The story found its emotional focus in one of the most famous news images of the era: The Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, by AP photographer Alan Diaz, showed a terrified 6-year-old Gonzalez hiding in a closet with his father as armed federal agents burst in.