Back in 2000, Elian Gonzalez became embroiled in a heated parental custody and immigration controversy that made international headlines. At the height of the dispute, Gonzalez’s paternal relatives had wanted to keep Gonzalez in the United States after his mother Elizabeth Brotons Rodríguez had attempted to leave Cuba with him. Brotons Rodríguez had drowned while making her attempt to flee and Gonzalez’s father demanded that his son be brought back to Cuba.
At the time, Gonzales was only 7-years-old. Today’s he’s a 26-years old and a father-to-be.
In a post to his Facebook page, posted on Father’s Day, Gonzalez announced that he will soon be a dad.
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Speaking about his future as a father, Gonzales called his own father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez who took him back to Cuba, as his inspiration for being the ideal father. “Soon I will begin to understand what it means to be a father,” Gonzalez wrote on his Facebook page. “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.”
Speaking to CNN, on Sunday, Gonzalez said he and his fiancée are expecting their daughter to be born this summer
Gonzalez’s custody battle happened twenty years ago but still resonates with today’s political scene.
398283 06: Elian Gonzalez (C) celebrates his eighth birthday during a party December 6, 2001 at his school in Cardenas, 155 kilometers east of Havana, Cuba. Elian was taken in by Miami relatives after being picked up off the Florida coast in November 1999, then returned to Cuba in June 2000 after an eighth month international legal battle. (Photo by Jorge Rey/Getty Images)
Among Cuban-Americans, Gonzalez remains a poster child of government failures and excessive force. During his time in the United States, protests, demonstrations broke out in the states and Cuba as well. It resulted in a four-month battle that ended in middle-of-the-night Thanksgiving day raid by FBI agents. A photo of the raid, showed American officers holding a crying Gonzalez at gunpoint.
In the years since his return to Cuba, Gonzalez has been as strong supporter of the Cuban Revolution and graduated from a military academy in 2016 with a degree in industrial engineering.
In his head, he’s known as El Rey or El Jefe de Jefes but we call the hardest working superhero who raised us dad, papá, papi or apá. To show our appreciation for the man who gave up literally everything he had just to see us live a better life, we developed a collection with lots of love that we’re sure he’ll rock with pride.
For the dad who claims to be the king of the grill.
Dads are pretty nonchalant about just about anything except two things: fútbol and their carne asada. No clue why dads are so sensitive about their grill skills but gifting him this apron might just bring some emotion out of him.
He may not beg you to have kids as much as mom, but dad really wants grandkids. When he finally earns that title, he’ll want to show it off as much as possible. This tee is perfect for that.
Every mom has her favorite mug but dad never really had a favorite cup…until now. If the remote is already glued to his left had his right hand won’t be able to get rid of this El Jefe mug.
For the dad who likes to be referred to as El Jefe.
When he first heard Los Tigres del Norte sing “soy el jefe de jefes, señores” dad would walk around the house singing those words and pointing to himself. We get it, he likes being called jefe. Imagine when you give him this shirt. He’ll never want to take it off.
For the dad who thinks of himself as more of a king.
If he’s not walking around singing Los Tigres, he’s for sure chugging beer singing every single word to Vicente Fernandez’s rendition of “El Rey.” He’ll lose his sh*t when he sees this shirt.
If you’ve ever wanted to take one of those family-themed photos, you can theme it around your rey. This collection offers a shirt for la reina (mom), el principe (brother) and la princesa (sister). Though you may not always act like royalty, you can at least pretend to be on the gram.
If your dad, baby daddy, brother or tío are on the younger side, they’ll definitely get the reference. This will also grant their wish of making them the green ranger, the one they always wanted to be.
We’ve all been there. We wanted dad to let us go out with our friends but no matter how many times we asked, his response was always the same; “pregúntale a tu mamá.”
Dad bods aren’t just given. They are earned. They take a lot of work to achieve. And by work we mean beer and carne asada. We know dad is sick of being asked what his secret is to looking that round. Now he doesn’t have to say a word. This shirt will do all the talking for him.
