In the back room of a bungalow in Little Havana, Miami, at number 2319 Northwest 2nd Street, hangs a tyre of the kind on which thousands of rafters have landed ashore in the United States in flight from Cuba, and aboard which many others have perished in the Straits of Florida. Beneath it, on the floor, is a blow-up of the famous picture of the moment when US federal marshals seized six-year-old Elián González, a Cuban boy who had crossed the straits to Miami. Elián's young mother, Elizabeth Brotons, drowned at sea along with her lover, who was to have become Elián's stepfather.
The little boy was found floating on a tyre in the raging waters off Florida by two cousins taking a fishing trip on Thanksgiving day 1999. The boy then spent five months in this house – both haven and fortress – as his Miami relatives fought to prevent him being taken back to his father in Cuba. The Elián González saga ended abruptly here in the early hours of 22 April – Easter Saturday – 10 years ago, when Elián was removed by the marshals during a raid ordered by President Bill Clinton's attorney-general, Janet Reno, and then reunited with his father, Juan Miguel.
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