A BOY DIVIDED.

• Author: VILBIG, PETER
• Position: Elian Gonzalez

A TRAGIC BOAT RIDE LEAVES A CUBAN BOY MOTHERLESS AND TORN IN A TUG OF WAR BETWEEN TWO ENEMY NATIONS

Six-year-old Elian Gonzalez must have thought it was pretty cool--a chance for a boat ride--as he clambered aboard a little skiff in his native Cuba with his mom bound for America in mid-November.

But two days out at sea, things went terribly wrong.

A storm overturned the small aluminum boat in the early-morning darkness, miles from the coast of Florida. Several passengers drowned soon after. Elian survived, strapped on top of an inner tube, his mom clinging to the side. Sometime during the next two days, she lost her strength and let go, sliding away into the depths. On Thanksgiving Day, when fishermen found the boy bobbing in the waves off Fort Lauderdale, they thought he was a rag doll lashed to the top of the tube--until his hand moved.

But plucked safely from the water, Elian found that dry land was not a safe harbor from all storms. Relatives in Miami said the boy should remain with them in the U.S. His father, in Cuba, who had not known that his ex-wife planned to take the boy out of the country, demanded the child's return. Within days, the international custody dispute blew up into a major political battle between the two most bitter enemies in the Western Hemisphere, the U.S. and Cuba, the tiny island nation 90 miles off the Florida coast, where Communist dictator Fidel Castro has held sway and thumbed his nose at the United States for 40 years.

In Cuba, Elian's return has become a patriotic cause. His face adorns billboards and T-shirts, and Cuban cities have stopped dead as thousands of protesters lined the streets to support his father's case. "We have the right to have our child next to us," cries Isabel Alarcon, a neighbor of Elian's father.

SANTA COMES TO TOWN

In the U.S., the incident has inflamed old passions that have been dormant since the end of the Cold War struggle between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Throngs at huge rallies, including one in January that paralyzed traffic in downtown Miami for hours, have demanded that the U.S. keep the boy. Republican members of Congress have echoed that cry. One politician gave Elian a black Labrador puppy. Another showed up dressed like Santa Claus. Relatives have taken the boy to Disney World.

But the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, the agency that handles refugee cases, interviewed the boy, his father, and family members, and ruled that Elian should go back to Cuba...