A picture says a thousand words, and some pictures say so much more that they become iconic and unforgettable. Over the years, there have been many photographs that most people have seen at some point and they’ve been seared into our memories. You’ve probably seen many of these iconic images, but do you know what happened to the people in the photographs after they were taken?
1. Elián González – Then
Elián González was a young Cuban boy in 2000, who became embroiled in a heated international custody controversy involving the governments of Cuba and the United States.
González’s mother, drowned in November 1999 while attempting to leave Cuba with González to get to the United States. The U.S. government initially placed González with maternal relatives in Miami, who sought to keep him in the United States against his father’s demands that González be returned to Cuba.
A federal district court’s ruled that only González’s father, and not his extended relatives, could petition for asylum on the boy’s behalf.
In the pre-dawn hours of Easter Eve, Federal agents forcibly took González from the maternal relatives and returned him to his father in Cuba in June 2000. This photo won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News.