PHOTO: Then & Now -- Elian Gonzalez All Grown Up
April 6 2010, Published 10:00 a.m. ET
Remember Elián González? He was the kid at the center of an international controversy in November of 1999 when he was found floating off the Florida coast in an inner tube, and eventually taken from the custody of relatives in Miami only to be returned to his father in his homeland of Cuba in April of 2000.
RadarOnline.com has a new picture released by Cuban officials Tuesday of Elián, now 16, clad in an olive-green military school uniform attending a Young Communist Union congress in Havana last weekend.
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Since Elián was returned, his father Juan Miguel González, a one-time restaurant employee, was elected to Cuba's parliament. Elián remains a popular political symbol in the Communist land, where his December 7 birthday is celebrated with annual parades.