By
The Associated Press
MIAMI - Alan Diaz had been preparing for his Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph long before he heard the footsteps of federal agents running toward the house where Elian Gonzalez slept.
For months, the photojournalist had been talking to the Cuban boy's relatives and getting to know the house and its surroundings. Now, in the pre-dawn darkness last April 22, that preparation was about to pay off.
"It's going down!" Diaz yelled as he grabbed his camera, which he'd placed beneath a towel to protect it from the early morning dew. He jumped the fence into the side yard of the Gonzalez family's Little Havana home, paused to set his shutter speed and strobe light and then ran through a door opened by a relative.
"Where's the boy?" he yelled in Spanish, as Elian's frantic relatives scurried around the living room. A man pushed Diaz toward the boy's bedroom, where he threw on the light. Elian wasn't there.
He pounded on the bedroom door across the hall, which Elian's aunt opened. Diaz could see 6-year-old Elian being held in the closet by Donato Dalrymple, who had helped pull the boy from the Atlantic five months earlier.
Inside the room, Diaz took the photograph of a federal agent with an assault rifle confronting a screaming Elian and a stunned Dalrymple.
That photo won Diaz the 2001 Pulitzer yesterday for spot news photography.
"It's awesome! I can't believe it!" Diaz, 54, said as he was mobbed by co-workers.
"It's a great picture, just a great picture, and we're very pleased for Alan that he won," AP President and CEO Louis Boccardi said.
"It's an amazing job by an amazing, talented photographer," said Vin Alabiso, an AP vice president and the executive photo editor.
The raid also produced a Pulitzer for The Miami Herald, for breaking news reporting. After the raid, Elian was reunited with his father and eventually returned home to Cuba.
Miami Herald Publisher Alberto Ibarguen said the boy's story had elements that divided Miami, with many Cubans angry about the raid and many non-Cubans angry about the protests that followed.
"Husbands and wives wouldn't talk to each other, co-workers had arguments. This was a very, very emotional time in Miami and I think we did a fantastic job and covered it in a way so that anybody who was interested could find their story reflected in the pages of the paper," Ibarguen said.
About 40 reporters, editors and photographers shared in the coverage, Ibarguen said. All gathered in the newsroom and cheered the announcement.
He said he was proudest in the week following the raid when the number of reader letters shot up from about 1,000 to about 8,000 and almost all were opinions about the raid - not about the paper's coverage of it.
"That was enormously satisfying and this recognition by the Pulitzer board is absolutely wonderful icing on the cake," Ibarguen said.
Diaz was a free-lance photographer when he was hired by the AP to take daily pictures of Elian soon after the boy arrived in November 1999. His mother and 13 other Cubans had tried to flee across the Florida Straits, but their boat sank. Elian, who was lashed to an inner tube, and two adults survived.
Since the photo, Diaz's life has changed dramatically. A free-lancer for 12 years, the AP hired him for a full-time position in June. He has won many awards and been sought after for interviews by other journalists.
"Everything turned around on me," Diaz said. "I don't mean that in a bad sense of the word, but now everybody wanted to hear from me. I'm not used to that."
