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Because of the relentless media blitz, by now nearly every American knows the tale of the little Cuban boy whose mother drowned along with eight other people as they attempted to sail from the island to the United States. His grandmothers' visit to the United States -- which also made national news -- was an effort to rally U.S. public opinion, lobby Congress and petition the U.S. Justice Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to enforce their decision that the child should be reunited with his father in Cuba.

The visit made national headlines, but nowhere did it monopolize public attention the way it did in Miami. Here the news is all Elián, all the time. It's topic A in bars and in grocery stores. On Wednesday the local networks preempted their regularly scheduled programming to broadcast what they could of the grandmothers' visit and the hoopla surrounding it.

The case is changing dynamics within the Cuban exile community, but also between the Cubans and Miami's white and black residents, who have begun to take a rooting interest in the boy's fate -- but on the opposite side from most of their Cuban neighbors. The issue has plainly exacerbated tensions in what at least one historian has called an "ethnic cauldron."

Of course, the grandmothers came to see Elián on their visit, as well as press their case with American authorities. But Lazaro González, Elián's great uncle and now his de facto guardian, would not agree to a private meeting in a neutral location. González and his supporters, led by the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), the leading anti-Castro organization in the United States, wanted the grandmothers to come to the González's Little Havana home for dinner and a visit with the child in the presence of Miami-based relatives.

The world watched the struggle unfold, the latest chapter in their legal, political and public-relations holy war to keep Elián in Miami. And some of the characters are well known here: Political consultant Armando Gutierrez, the key strategist on the team, is renowned for conducting some of the dirtiest campaigns in a city known for hardball politics. Among his clients: Rosa Rodriguez, the Miami-Dade Circuit Court judge who astonished legal experts across the country when she granted temporary custody to the Miami-based relatives and scheduled a March 6 hearing.

In the end, of course, thanks to INS pressure, Elián got to meet his grandmothers at the Miami Beach home of Sister Jeanne O'Laughlin, a Roman Catholic nun in the Dominican order and the president of Barry University, a private institution in Miami.

Sister Leonor Esnard, herself a Cuban-American who came to the United States unaccompanied by her parents in the early 1960s as part of the Pedro Pan program, witnessed the first encounter between the child and his grandmothers after more than two months of separation. "They were trembling, they hugged him repeatedly, they told him how glad they were to see him, they cried," she told reporters.

O'Laughlin described the rumors and mutual mistrust that had to be overcome before the two-hour private meeting between Elián and his grandmothers could take place. "Fear was the greatest element" standing in the way of the meeting, she said. At one point it was discovered that prominent members of the CANF were present in the residence next door to the O'Laughlin house. They were asked to leave so the meeting could be conducted, and they complied, but later complained loudly on Cuban-oriented Spanish-language media. At another point, a cell phone belonging to one of the grandmothers rang. It was believed to be Elián's father, Juan Miguel González, trying to talk to the boy. The cell phone was confiscated.

The grandmothers later flew back to Washington without making a statement. But at Lazaro González's home, his 21-year-old daughter Marisleydis -- who has assumed a maternal role toward Elián despite having met him only once before his voyage to Florida -- was jubilant. "I feel he is more to this side than that side," she said. Later Elián reportedly told a radio station, "Tomorrow they will make me a U.S. citizen."

In a turnaround that exemplifies the heightened emotions of the situation, O'Laughlin said she feels Elián would be best off in the United States. She told reporters that prior to the meeting, she believed Elián should be with his father -- but that what she had witnessed made her fearful that the Castro government was manipulating both the child and his grandmothers. "What I saw and felt really frightened me for the child," she said. "When I look at the real fear, I say he would grow to greater freedom of manhood here." She blamed both sides for the political manipulation and stressed her political neutrality. "I don't represent pro-Castro, anti-Castro or INS."

Next page | "Why do they wave the Cuban flag if they want him to stay in the United States?"