Elian at Twenty

by Steve Martin

The New Yorker
May 22, 2000

Yes, the photos were doctored. I was taken to a little room, where a photographer held me at gunpoint. Janet Reno came in and started into her irresistible shtick and I burst out laughing. The photo was snapped, and my head was Photoshopped onto another kid's body. I was then taken to a play yard, where a man masquerading as my father threw a Nerf Ball that I was supposed to chase. My own father is quite fat, certainly not as attractive as the man who was chosen to pose as him. I ran after the ball with a big grin on my face. Wouldn't you, with six AK-47s trained on you from six separate windows in a courtyard? It reminded me of when I was in Waco, being used as a pawn by the Clinton Administration.

The toughest part was the three years I spent on a neutral raft outside Havana Bay. Couldn't dock, couldn't go back to the United States. Food was helicoptered in by a Swiss mercy group, and sometimes my real father, Ugly Miguel, would row out and deliver the two dozen jars of mustard donated each month by the fine folks at Gulden's.

When I finally got back into Cuba, I was placed in a wooden box, which was then suspended from a scaffold in the town square while Castro himself held the ropes. I can still hear him saying, "Zees ees what happeeens to leettle boyz who sail acrozz zee sea." Then, of course, they started manufacturing my Smilewear™ briefs, and I never saw a penny from it. The man who posed as my father, the famous Cuban actor Desi Fundamenta Machista, would never see me afterward. I went to his trailer on the set of "Cabana Boy," but he wouldn't come out. I did get his autograph through an intermediary, however. I still have it.

I never blamed myself for all the Elián hopefuls who motor-boated to Little Havana and barricaded themselves in at Relatives R Us. The media didn't even bother to cover the last dozen rescues, and when Al Sharpton came down to intervene in No. 64, there were only four protesters and a "Jerry Springer" segment producer on hand to witness it.

All this just to make Castro look good. I think that this event was what made it possible for him to snag and marry Jennifer Lopez. I now also see that I was an important figure in opening up U.S.-Cuban trade, although it certainly put an end to my life's dream of becoming a cigar smuggler. Don't get me wrong; I still love my relatives in Little Havana. After all, they are my mother's ex-husband's father's brother's family. I guess blood is thicker than water.