A SLOW CHANGE IN CUBAN AMERICA.

• Position: Brief Article

Thousands of people are marching angrily through downtown Miami, waving placards, shouting slogans, linking arms, and blocking traffic. At one intersection, riot police fire tear gas to disperse the protesters. The reason for the heated emotions: a little boy.

From elsewhere in the country, the scene might seem a bit bizarre. But for many of the nation's 1.5 million Cuban-Americans, the dispute over Ellen Gonzalez is just one battle in the larger struggle between Communism and democracy. And to them, it is a deeply personal and emotional struggle.

Like Elian, many Cuban-Americans made the perilous voyage in makeshift rafts and leaky boats over the last 40 years, fleeing the Cuba of Communist dictator Fidel Castro. "His mother died at sea," says Marta Santana, who fled Castro's Cuba 40 years ago and has lived in Miami ever since. "He's living. She sacrificed herself to come."

Such views are particularly strong among older Cuban-Americans, many of whom were among the first to leave Cuba when Castro came to power 40 years ago. For decades, their extremely conservative and fiercely anti-Castro views have shaped American policy toward Cuba. Their most cherished goal: to oust Castro and to return to a capitalist Cuba. But even as they raise their voices over Ellen Gonzalez, a second generation of Cuban-Americans, often born in this country, has begun to question their elders' tactics, if not their goals.

A VIRTUAL CUBA

About half the nation's Cuban-Americans live in the Miami area, where Cuban exiles have re-created a virtual prerevolution Cuba, renaming streets, reactivating Cuban social clubs, and filling supermarkets with Cuban products...