Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Coming up on tomorrow's show, food writer Melissa Clark will be here to answer your Thanksgiving cooking questions. Special shout out to those of you preparing your first turkey, fear not, help is on the way. Tune in tomorrow around this time. We have a special Get Lit announcement. We have been reading Taffy Brodesser-Akner's novel Long Island Compromise. We'll be meeting next next Wednesday, December 4, to discuss at the New York Public Library. Now we can announce our very special musical guest. It's Suzanne Vega. [music]

The bad news is tickets already sold out. If you have one, I'll see you at the library. There is a wait list at the library, first come, first served, no guarantees, or you can follow along with our livestream. Head to wnyc.org/getlit for more information. Again, that's wnyc.org/getlit. That is in the future. Now let's get this hour started with podcasts.

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25 years ago on Thanksgiving, two Florida men fishing off the coast of Fort Lauderdale discovered a five-year-old boy clinging to an inner tube. His name was Elian Gonzalez. He'd been part of a group of Cubans, including his mother, who were escaping the country. Their boat capsized, his mother drowned. Elian was alone. Once he was on shore, he was sent to live with relatives in Miami. His father, Juan Miguel, who remained in Cuba, wanted him returned.

The custody battle that ensued became a proxy for a larger struggle, pitting Miami's Cuban American community against both Cubans living in the country and the American government. It also caused a political rift here in this country that reverberates to this day. The story is told in the new podcast, Chess Piece: The Elian Gonzalez Story. It's from Futuro Studios and iHeartMedia's My Cultura podcast. It's hosted by investigative journalist Peniley Ramirez. She joins me now in studio. Peniley, thank you for coming to WNYC.

Peniley Ramirez: Thank you for the invitation.

Alison: Elian was found on Thanksgiving and his rescue immediately became symbolic for Cuban Americans. Why did Elian's story have so much resonance for the Cuban community in Miami?

Peniley: When Elian was found, especially on Thanksgiving Day, it was considered like a Thanksgiving miracle. He was in all news, all newspapers, and he became super quickly a symbol of something that has been happening for decades but was happening in that moment, late 1990s, that was Cubans escaping the island and crossing in the Florida Straits under a lot of personal risk, as Elian and his family and his mother, who passed away during the trip. What happened was that he became a symbolic figure of that need for many Cubans to escape the island and try to reach Florida, no matter how. At that point, there was a special treatment for Cubans who were coming to the United States. There was a specific executive order called Dry-Foot, Wet-Foot.

Alison: Dry-Foot, Wet-Foot. Yes.

Peniley: If you literally put up foot on shore, you will be granted asylum, but if you were captured any place before you reach the US Soil, then you will be returned to Cuba. That was what they were trying to do when the mother passed away. Most of the people who came in with Elian, it was Elian and two other survivors. He became the symbol because he was a little boy, because the relatives in Miami were trying to keep him here, saying that his mother was dying, trying to bring him to freedom.

On the other side, the case became politically so quickly, because only a few days after he was rescued, Fidel Castro, who was the Cuban dictatorship and was alive at the time, sent an ultimatum to United States saying that the US had 72 hours to send the boy back because the father, Juan Miguel, who was in Cuba, was claiming him back.

After that, it was months and months of the geopolitical battle of Cubans in Cuba, Cubans in Miami, the two governments, and this poor little boy in the middle of it without really having a say in all that was happening around his life. It was one of the first stories that became this 24/7 news cycle. It was all over the news all the time. It became a case that symbolizes this need for Cubans to reach the United States.

Alison: I remember, I think I worked at ABC News at the time, and it was everywhere. It was everywhere. When you think about his father, Juan Miguel, he said he wanted him back in Cuba. It raises the question, did he really want him back in Cuba? Did he have free will, or was he under, we'll say-- I don't want to say threat of Fidel Castro, but advisory from Fidel Castro.

Peniley: We have an entire episode to try to respond to that question, because we have the same questions as part of the production team. What we do in the podcast is that we try to get into a very nuanced approach, because it's not an easy case, because if you see it straightforward, you see the mom is not alive anymore, the father is alive. The boy should belong with the father. That's very straightforward if you think about it. At the same time, if you think about what the family was saying, was saying, we want him reunited with his father, but in the United States.

We don't want him to go back to Cuba because he escaped Cuba, he managed to survive, and he's in freedom right now. The reason why is not as straightforward, it's because what you mentioned about the free will, because once Fidel Castro got involved in the case, that was super, super soon in the case, everything became so political. The father was saying and claiming, "I'm not being pressured by the government." The father was a member of the Communist Party even before. He was close to the government even before the case. The big question was if this case became a political tool for Fidel Castro.

As I said, it became a symbol, but also for the Cuban American community that was trying to explain to the world and to the United States how bad was to live in Cuba and how difficult was to live in Cuba at that time, and the fact that you were not really free, even if you were saying that you were free. We have, as I said, an entire episode to try to understand all the nuances of this part. What we do in the podcast is that we try to get pieces by pieces and try to understand what was the perspective of the Cuban community in Miami, what was the perspective of the Cubans in Cuba, and what are the personal issues that were--

People that were reflecting about this became so passionate, everyday Cubans became so passionate on both sides of the Florida Straits. Even people who were not Cubans, everybody had something to say about the case. As you said, it was everywhere. It was a pretty straightforward case. Everybody had an opinion. This is part of the complexities that we try to unpack in the podcast.

Alison: His cousin, it was Marisleysis, she was just 21 years old. She really took on a maternal role for the little boy. She turned you down for an interview, a lot of interviews, but that was one that she turned you down for. You said you respected that in the podcast, that you respect her putting up boundaries. Why?

Peniley: It's hard because as you said during my introduction, I'm an investigative internally, so my training is to pursue something really bad. At the same time, it is a story that it's, as I said pretty emotional. When you see the videos of her back in the day and you reflect about, she was only 21 years old. She was a girl, she a young woman who understood this country better than her relatives because she was raised here. She spoke good English. She became the spokesperson for the family. She was under a lot of pressure from the media, from the local politicians, from the Cuban American community.

She was playing the role that she's supposed to be playing at that point. That took a toll on her personally. She went to the hospital several times following mental health concerns. At that point, we didn't have the open conversations about mental health that we have nowadays. Considering all that she went through and all the material that we have from our archive, we decided to pursue the interview, to insist, but at some point we said, "We can tell the story with what we have from the archives and we respect her decision to put a boundary on something that was not just another story for her," was something that was also taking a personal toll because they're cousins and they haven't talked not even once since 2000, so for more than 20 years. This is important because it is a very public case, but it's also a case that broke a family.

Alison: 25 years ago on Thanksgiving Day, a five-year-old Elian Gonzalez would spur an international custody battle and have lasting implications for US-Cuba relations and the Latin [unintelligible 00:10:58]. The stories told a new 10-part podcast, Chess Piece: The Elian Gonzalez Story. We're joined by its host, investigative journalist Peniley Ramirez. Something else that makes this series quite different is there are parallels between your own story and Elian's as part of the podcast that you and your father were separated from for eight years, I believe it is?

Peniley: Yes.

Alison: Would you share what happened?

Peniley: That part was challenging for me because we are trained as journalists to tell the story of others, not to tell the story about ourselves. We believed that in this podcast we needed to go personal because early on in the production process, I shared with the team that the reason why this case was so meaningful to me was because at the same time that Elian was in Miami and his father was in Cuba trying to bring him back to Cuba, I was in Cuba and my father was in Miami and he was trying to bring me to the United States. My father left Cuba in 1998.

He was the coach of the national diving team of Cuba. He left for an official competition and never came back. He told me a little secret. I was a preteen back then. He told me he was not coming back to Cuba, and I could not tell nobody. I kept a secret, and I said goodbye to him, not knowing that I was going to be separated from him for eight years. We were reunited many years after in Miami. During the time of the case-- We have a scene in the podcast when I share a memory that I have of this massive protest organized by the Cuban government in Cuba, and people screaming in Spanish, [Spanish language] Elian. Bring back Elian.

I remember myself screaming there as a kid. Then I reflected that I was screaming for my own father because the case was so personal for me. For the first time, I never spoke with my father about this, not even about the emotional toll on the family separation with me and my brother and him, because we don't talk about that. Sometimes it's hard, even within families to have these conversations. The first time ever that I spoke with my dad about this was interviewing him for this podcast.

It's a really emotional and personal interview. I think it is important because I have heard from so many of our listeners why the podcast is being meaningful also for them, because they also have been going through family separation, and not just for the Cuban community, for the immigrant community in general in the United States. We have plenty of cases of family separation that goes beyond this new cycle of this scandal in the news. I think this is one of the things why the podcast is touching on so many people on a personal and emotional level.

Alison: There was one line that your stepmother said that just really struck with me. She said, and I'm paraphrasing that with, all Cubans have a book of pain. We're all different, but we're similar in a way that that's a scar that never really heals. Your dad went on to say that the only thing that was between us was earth and water.

Peniley: It's hard to talk about these things, even for me, because it's a wound that we say in the podcast that never really heals, that when you are reunited, you start healing that wound, but you never recover the time that you were separated. I think when you reflect on how many commonalities we have among Cubans who have been suffering this separation, but also, as I said, as an immigrant community in general, beyond even the Cuban experience, it's okay to realize that there are some things that you will never recover, even if you have the chance, as I had to come to the United States and be living here and spend Thanksgiving with my family, very Cuban Thanksgiving--

Something funny about the podcast is that we have a very specific explanation about why Thanksgiving for Cuban is so particular. That's part of one of the levity moments of the podcast. The reality is that as reporters, sometimes we're so focusing on getting the facts and explaining the numbers and explaining, but this podcast is also an opportunity to go deep into what are the long-lasting consequences of something like family separation.

Alison: Back to Elian. The Supreme Court rejected an appeal that would keep Elian in Miami. In April 2000, armed federal agents removed Elian from the home with his relatives in Miami. This was an image that was unbelievable. The federal agents that the photographer from the AP won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography, that incredible image that we all remember. You also interviewed the leader of the US raid. What did he see as his job that day?

Peniley: This case is so personal for every single person that we interviewed. That was something that really surprised me because every person that we interview for the podcast, they all remember this picture that you just described because it was so impactful. It was everywhere in every single newspaper. As you say, Alan, the photographer from Associated Press won the Pulitzer for the picture. It was really everywhere. If you get into this person who was leading the raid, he was saying that he was doing his job and he was training for months. We explained in a lot of detail how they were training for this.

While the negotiations were happening, while the courts were deciding about the case, the US government had this plan B of what if everything fails and we need to go and just get the kid, which is what ended up happening. He was so focusing on, "I'm reuniting this boy with his father. That's my goal." At some point, he describes the raid. It was pretty violent. He described how they took Elian out of the house of the relatives in Miami. We have an entire episode.

It's pretty cinematic, this episode, because we have a lot of first time accounts of how it happened from different perspectives. It's really like a movie, this episode. Then when they are finally out of there, and he's reuniting him with his father, I asked him, "What were you thinking?" He was thinking about his own son. This person, member of the US government, trained to be focusing on his goal, he was also getting emotional and also thinking about his own son that he said was Elian's age by the time. As I said, even the person that is more goal oriented, that you won't expect, will get emotional with retelling this story, even he was emotional during the interview with us.

Alison: One of the people you interviewed was Ada Ferrer, a Cuban American historian who said many people in the community blamed Attorney General Janet Reno. You asked her how her own mother reacted, and here is her response. This is from episode five of Chess Piece.

Ada Ferrer: She used to read the newspaper all the time, the Nuevo Herald, and there was a front page picture one day of Janet Reno. She took her sewing scissors, and tore out the eyes of Janet Reno. That's how she felt.

Peniley: Oh, my God.

Ada: My mother was a lovely, funny, warm, warm woman, but she was so angry. It was just such an emotional, visceral response to the raid.

Alison: That emotional, visceral response led to political fallout.

Peniley: Exactly.

Alison: For whom?

Peniley: At that point, the case, as I said, started in Thanksgiving 1999. We were entering the presidential cycle. All the year 2000 when the case was developing, and then the raid happened and then this moment, I think I love this part of the interview because I think it's very telling about the emotions that everyday people were having around the case. Then you had the US presidential election. As you will remember and some of our listeners will remember, that election was defined by Florida. The Miami vote was very important in the election. We have an episode that we call the Punishment Vote.

My colleague Tasha Sandoval is the one hosting that episode. We try to unpack there what was really happening in Miami and what are all, again, the long-lasting consequences. We just passed a presidential election and we just had a Republican winning the Miami vote after many years of Miami being considered one of the cities that the Democrats will win. You have Florida, not anymore as a swing state, but a solid red state. We can trace that to what happened in 2000 and what happened with the Cuban American vote after Elian and what they will say in Spanish, they will call it El Voto Castigo or the Punishment vote.

What people were so angry, as the mother of Ada Ferrer, we just heard from, saying that even if at some point they were supporting Al Gore and they were supporting the Democrats, they switched to Bush because they considered that the US Government was betraying the Cuban American community. I was siding with Fidel Castro for the first time by giving this boy back and sending the boy back to Cuba. As we said in the podcast, something that you never ever, ever do in Miami is to side with Fidel Castro. The case had long-lasting consequences politically there, that you can trace from that time, but you can even trace until today.

Alison: What do you think non Cuban Americans don't understand about the Elian Gonzalez story?

Peniley: I think the passion and the reasons, all the things that you really need to let go when you leave Cuba. As a journalist, I have been covering immigrant communities for a long time. Something that happens with a lot of immigrant communities is that the people who migrate have the hope to go back at some point, to go back to build a house or to retire. The open door exists, even if you think that it's going to be 30 years from now. In Cuba, that door doesn't exist.

If you leave, you really leave. That pain of really feel, not just an immigrant, but an exile is something that you don't have in other immigrants community so strongly as you have with Cubans. I think that the reasons why people really leave Cuba thinking, "I really cannot go back," or in the early days of the revolution thinking, "I'll be back in two months and never go back in 60 years," is something that other communities don't understand, especially because all that passion was also portrayed in the media in a way that was not good for the Cuban American community. We have members of the Cuban American community in the podcast saying that they lost the narrative. We lost the narrative. Not just the custody case, the legal battle, even the political battle, but also the narrative. That's another thing that has been hard to recover even after so many years.

Alison: Elian Gonzalez is 30 years old. He's married with a child. He's a member of Cuba's national assembly, it's Congress. Did you have any contact with him?

Peniley: That's another thing about why the story is very current. It's not just a story from 25 years ago. We were ready to go to Cuba, an interview with Elian through one of her colleagues in Cuba. We were told that he was open to an interview. Then we were rejected to go by the Cuban government. The reason why they rejected us to go, we disclosed this in the podcast is because the Cuban government didn't like some tweets that I posted in July 2021 when Cuba was seeing, for the first time, massive protest.

Those protests were political protests. People were protesting because it was after the pandemic. People were saying, "We don't have medicines. We don't have foods. We don't want this anymore." I was, as a journalist, saying these protests are happening in Cuba, please pay attention to what is happening. The Cuban government felt that that was enough reason to deny me, first, the crazy thing, that I needed to ask for a visa to enter my own country, the country where I was born. Second, that they denied the visa because they didn't like some tweets that I posted. That prevented us from interviewing Elian directly. We have a lot of accounts in the podcast around all the things that Elian has been saying. I think that we have enough material to really understand his perspective and his life in Cuba after he went back.

Alison: The podcast is called Chess Piece: The Elian Gonzalez Story. My guest has been Peniley Ramirez. Thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it.

Peniley: Thank you and happy Thanksgiving.

[00:25:14] [END OF AUDIO]