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As I write, Reno is said to be finally preparing for what has come to seem inevitable: the forceful removal of the boy from his Miami relatives' home. The saga may soon be over. But Miami in the days of Elián has been a tragic tale of two cities, and nowhere is the schism more evident than in the pages of the city's two main dailies, despite the fact that both papers are published in the same building and owned by the same company, the Miami Herald Publishing Company, itself owned by Knight-Ridder.

The Herald, with its split personality, at once chronicles, mirrors and perpetuates racial and ethnic divisions that predate the Elián case but have now come to a head. After Miami relatives of Elián González failed to meet the Justice Department's deadline for turning the child over and the government declined to act, subscribers to the Miami Herald read a sobering tale of defiance of the law, while El Nuevo Herald readers were treated to a description of mass relief and joy over what was construed as a reprieve from deportation. The stark difference in slant reflected a systematic pattern present also in other media. Coverage by Miami's two Spanish-language television stations was relentlessly sympathetic to those who want to keep Elián in the United States.

Beyond their personal and passionate relation to the subject of Cuba, one reason most Miami Cuban-Americans have such strikingly different views from other Americans on Elián and issues like the embargo is that the part of the press that caters to them strives mightily to tell them what they want to hear. Examples are legion and sometimes comical, with recurring reports of Fidel Castro's death at the top of the list.

One Sunday El Nuevo Herald carried a huge headline trumpeting the tale of a Cuban neurosurgeon who had recently treated the Cuban president for a near-fatal condition. Every aspect of the story turned out to be a complete fabrication concocted by a nursing-school dropout masquerading as a doctor who even lied about her name.

Little wonder then that the Elián case has underlined the fact that many Cuban-Americans live in a separate reality when it comes to certain issues. A Herald poll published April 9 showed 83 percent of Cuban-Americans want Elián to stay with his South Florida relatives. That contrasts with the majority opinion of Americans, and even more sharply with the attitudes of their African-American and Anglo neighbors in Miami, who favor the return of Elián to his father in Cuba by 92 percent and 76 percent respectively.

Many Cuban-Americans believe that fellow Americans disagree with them because the national media has not told their story. But nowhere in the United States has the media cast a more critical eye on the Cuban government of Fidel Castro nor portrayed Cuban-Americans in a more sympathetic light than in Miami, and yet here other Americans are even less attuned to the Cuban exile view of the world.

For a Cuban-American like myself, whose views are distinctly in the minority in this exceedingly emotional case, the Elián tragedy and our community's isolation is excruciatingly sad and profoundly disturbing. I live in the heart of the old Cuban community in Miami, not in a new suburb like most of my fellow Cuban-American professionals. The house where Elián González is staying is five minutes away by car. Yet I feel a million miles distant.

Am I really part of a tiny minority -- only 9 percent -- of Miami Cubans who, according to the Herald poll, think parents are more important than politics? I tell myself that most of the 8 percent who didn't answer or didn't have an opinion were too afraid to break rank; they are really on my side. I tell myself the data for the Cuban sub-sample has a margin of error of 5.6 percent. I tell myself the pollster who did the survey recently predicted a tax initiative would pass by a slim margin, and the next day it was defeated in a landslide.

But put it all together and at best it means that perhaps I am outnumbered in my own community by only 5-to-1 instead of 11-to-1. For some perspective, I talk to a former prominent Washington official living in Miami, a white liberal who was part of a minuscule minority growing up in Mississippi during the bad old days. He knows exactly how I feel. It's small consolation.

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