Around 150,000 children and teenagers are to march in Havana today to demand the return of six-year-old Cuban castaway Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban government said yesterday.
The school students will include nearly 1,000 from Marcelo Salado school, Elian's school in Cardenas. The children will "protest with all their energy, calling for Elian to be returned to Cuba," said a source.
The Cuban government has mobilised people in mass demonstrations unseen for a decade over the case of Elian Gonzalez, who was found clinging to an inner tube off the Florida coast following an attempt by his mother and other Cubans to flee Cuba for the United States in November. His mother and the others were drowned.
He stayed with relatives in Miami following the rescue and an international custody battle ensued when his father, backed by the Cuban government, urged the boy be returned to Cuba.
Elian was finally reunited with his Cuban father in the United States on April 22nd, after US federal agents made a controversial armed raid on the Miami relatives' home in Miami's Little Havana section.
Elian and his father, who wants to take the boy back to Cuba, are awaiting a possible decision by the US Supreme Court over a possible appeal by the Miami relatives.