Baby Elian

Manic Street Preachers

Blockades won't win you more votes
A Cuban adjustment act
Offer the world a dream
Dress it up, it's blackmail

Internal matter they say
For two million dollars a day
Maybe a future in film
But Cuban boxers still win

Kidnapped, to the promised land
The Bay of Pigs
Or baby Elian
Operation, Peter Pan
America
The Devil's playground

Baby Elian
Baby Elian

Across the unfair divide
Where black will never meet white
So read my token lips
As if they never exist

You cannot buy a nation
Not even the Miami mob
We follow a shining path
That you will never destroy

Kidnapped, to the promised land
The Bay of Pigs
Or baby Elian
Operation, Peter Pan
America
The Devil's playground

You don't just sit in a rocking chair
When you've built a revolution
You don't just sit in a rocking chair
When you've built a revolution

Baby Elian
Baby Elian


Lyrics submitted by Thom Webbe

Baby Elian Lyrics as written by Jones Bradfield

Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Lyrics powered by LyricFind

Baby Elian song meanings
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8 Comments

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  • 0
    General CommentElian Gonzalez, America's Famous refugee
    Thom Webbeon April 10, 2004   Link
  • 0
    General Commentdoy. At second glance, i didn't think i'd like it (at first glance I was listening to it for the first time), but now i discover it's not so bad at all.
    pumkinhedon February 08, 2005   Link
  • 0
    General Commentoh and by the way, this album is hugely underrated.
    pumkinhedon February 08, 2005   Link
  • 0
    General Comment"We follow a shining path/That you will never destroy" - Pretty sure this is an allusion to the Maoist rebels known as The Shining Path who have been waging a civil war in Peru for some time now. Their name comes from a quote of their founder: "Marxism-Leninism will open the shining path to revolution." Anyway, that's where that lyric comes from, which would make sense given the song's pro-Cuba message...
    blackemmaon April 12, 2007   Link
  • 0
    General CommentI am absolutely in love with this song's melody, I think it's beautiful, so hearing the studio version for the first time just now was really disappointing, as the live acoustic version I'm accustomed to shows off the melody so much better :( Normally I don't like the stripped down, acoustic version of a track, but the this song sounds kind of wrong so produced. Oh well.
    taviangoon January 17, 2010   Link
  • 0
    General CommentNicky Wire's brother named his son Elian. Poor little sod.
    JackKnifeBarberon October 16, 2010   Link
  • 0
    General CommentElian Gonzales was a young Cuban boy found clinging to an inner tube off the Florida coast in Nov. 1999 and became the subject of an international dispute between the U.S. and Cuba after the boy's American relatives and the U.S. Cuban community demanded that the six-year-old refugee remain in Miami rather than be returned to his father in Cuba, arguing that American democracy would benefit the boy more than life in Castro's Cuba. A dramatic raid by armed federal agents on April 22 ended the stand-off, and the boy was reunited with his father. The influential Cuban-American community lost a good deal of public sympathy by pitting political ideology against familial bonds. For Castro it was a publicity bonanza, emphasizing the intransigence of the official U.S. policy toward Cuba, which has imposed a 38-year-old trade embargo and other cold war-era sanctions.
    manic4manicson October 25, 2012   Link
  • -1
    General CommentThe music and song are great. The lyrics are shite. Sounds less like the genius Nick Wire lyrics of old, and more like a college freshmen after attending a Campus Marxists meeting.
    ratanxon September 05, 2006   Link

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