In a Little Havana Home, a Little Boy Divides Them

Not far from the tiny stucco house where a 6-year-old Cuban castaway has spent months living like a bubble boy under the persistent eyes of the media, there resides a 61-year-old Cuban bus driver and grandfather named Marcos Correa.

All is well and calm in the Correa household until the subject of the castaway boy comes up. Then the home erupts into one of those high-decibel shouting matches Little Havana is known for, a really angry argument filled with finger-pointing and the occasional Spanish swear word.

Correa is among the small minority of Cubans in South Florida who thinks Elian Gonzalez--or “Eliancito,” as he’s affectionately known--should be reunited with his father. He says this even while acknowledging that the boy’s return to Cuba will benefit Cuban President Fidel Castro, who, just about everyone here agrees, is a vile dictator.

His wife, Maria Elena, hears this and can barely contain her anger. “There is no gray here. It’s black and white. You’re with Fidel or you’re not!”

For four months the story of Elian has played out like a municipal telenovela in Miami’s Cuban American community, a story that obliges its audience to take sides. It is a drama all the more compelling because a real boy’s life hangs in the balance and because most Cuban families see one parallel or another in his young life to their own.

Opinions backing the boy’s return to Cuba are not often expressed publicly. Although about 1 million people of Cuban descent live in South Florida, Little Havana is a much smaller place, where a certain provincialism reigns. Every Cuban American family here, it seems, can claim some connection or another to one of the protagonists in the story.

With the case accelerating toward a conclusion that most Cuban Americans in Miami consider tragic, the mood is especially raw. Among the Correas--profiled 16 years ago by the Miami Herald as a “typical” working-class Cuban American family--there have been more heated discussions between parents and children, and between husbands and wives.

“The other night my husband and I had an argument about this,” says Marilyn Correa Gonzalez, 39, the Correas’ oldest daughter. “My husband is a selfish male. His opinion is that a father has as much right in Cuba as anywhere else. But I don’t believe this man [Juan Miguel Gonzalez] has any interest in his son.”

Marcos and Maria Elena Correa’s family arrived in Miami on July 14, 1962--like most exiles, the exact date of their departure from Cuba has remained etched in their memories. Now they live on the western edge of Little Havana, on a street lined with tamarind trees where the gentle breezes and moist skies resemble those of a certain nearby Caribbean island.

Youngest in Family is Most ‘Obsessed’

The youngest of the Correas’ five children, Orlando, 27, is the one most “obsessed” with Elian’s fate, his parents say: He believes passionately that the boy should stay in Miami. Orlando Correa’s is by far the dominant view here: a recent poll showed 88% of Miami Cubans oppose the boy’s return to Cuba. But the Correas also have a daughter who thinks the rowdy protesters keeping a constant vigil in front of Elian’s house are an embarrassment to the Cuban American community.

“The old folks who have no life, who are all on Social Security, are the ones out there,” says Blanca Correa, 31. “The people who are young and who are up-and-coming are not out there.”

The protesters have become the public face of Cuban Americans to the outside world. On Sunday they took turns beating up a bra-wearing effigy of Castro. Some have vowed to create a “human chain” around the house should federal agents come for Elian. But interviews with members of the Correa family suggest that such strong views are not universal.

“From the beginning, I felt he should be with his father, if that’s what his father wants,” says Blanca Correa’s husband, Jose Cespedes, the Cuban-born son of a former political prisoner. “As a father, if he was my kid, I would want him with me. You wouldn’t want anyone else to raise him. He’s my son, my blood.”

Close Family Ties to Havana

Maria Elena Correa is a teacher at Citrus Grove Elementary, a few blocks from the home where Elian is staying. At least one of Elian’s cousins goes there, and if Elian had attended public instead of private school, Maria Elena may have been his teacher. One of her co-workers has family in Cardenas, the small town where Elian lived with his father, and says she knows the Gonzalez family.

“This man mistreated his wife, and that’s why she got a divorce,” Maria Elena says, repeating allegations that some family members have made in legal briefs. “My friend goes there three times a year, so she knows. She’s from that barrio. And that’s what they say there.”

For a bit of “inside” news from Elian’s home itself, the Correas can talk to their next-door neighbor, Jose Lopez, 62, who says he is friends with a priest who ministers to Elian’s Miami relatives.

“He goes to that house every day and conducts a Mass there,” Lopez said. “And I can tell you, because this man has told me, there has never been any pressure put on Elian.”

Orlando Correa went to the same high school as Marisleysis Gonzalez, the emotionally fragile cousin of Elian’s who is sometimes described by the media here as the boy’s “surrogate mother.”

A producer at a local television station, Orlando has taken time off from his job to immerse himself in Elian’s cause, joining the circle of activists working hardest to keep Elian in Miami.

Through his friendship with Marisleysis, Orlando has been able to meet Elian. He describes these encounters in a tone of deep reverence.

“Whenever I’m with Elian, I see him like one of my nephews and nieces. He wants to enjoy the paradise of this country,” Orlando Correa says. “The attachments that he has deposited with his cousin and his family in Miami have filled that emptiness in his heart” caused by his mother’s death.

Orlando says he no longer shares these views with his own father, who thinks Elian should go back to Cuba.

“I try to avoid the tension,” Orlando says. “I don’t take anything away from what my father went through.” (The Correa family patriarch fled Cuba because he could no longer stomach Castro’s regime. The Cuban police later searched his house and briefly detained his brother.) “My father puts that blindfold on his eyes. I respect everyone’s point of view, but there’s a lot of ignorance out there.”

In the interest of family unity, Orlando Correa’s brother-in-law Jose Cespedes also tries to steer away from the subject.

“I can’t talk to Orlando about it,” Cespedes says. “He gets very emotional. He started bothering me about it, he wanted to know what I thought, so I told him. And then he started giving me 300 reasons why [Elian] should stay.”

The passions here, already high, have been stoked even further by a vociferous--and often quite imaginative--Spanish-language media. Last week a Miami Cuban American radio show suggested that if Elian returned to Cuba he would be given electroshock therapy to “reprogram” him as a Communist.

There is also an ever-circulating current of rumors, most of which involve Castro himself. Sometimes referred to simply as “the monster,” Castro is seen as an omnipotent figure manipulating events behind the scenes. “Castro is really enjoying himself, dividing all these Cuban families,” says Maria Elena Correa.

Marilyn Correa Gonzalez recounts a story she’s heard about why the Cuban leader is working so hard to get Elian back. Castro, the rumor goes, has always been a believer in Santeria, that exotic blend of Yoruba and Caribbean beliefs akin to voodoo. The Santeria priests have told Castro that Elian is a boy who carries special powers. They have prophesied that if Elian does not return to Cuba, Castro’s reign over the island will end.

“Nobody has been able to kill [Castro] all these years, so he’s got something going for him,” she says. “And it isn’t God.”

Like others here, Marilyn has her own take on the trustworthiness of the various characters in the saga. The biggest enigma is Elian’s father, an apparently loyal follower of the Castro regime. When Juan Miguel Gonzalez appeared on television and shed tears for his faraway son, many here were surprised--Cuban men are not known to cry easily. But Marilyn didn’t find it convincing.

“He is being controlled. His tears are not for his son,” she says. “His tears are because he can’t do what he wants.”

Listening to this, Marcos Correa turns quiet. A proud man who likes to express his opinions, he becomes deferential in the presence of any of his daughters. When he begins to say something about Elian, he allows Marilyn to cut him off.

“Papi, please!” she shouts.

By contrast, Marcos Correa doesn’t hesitate a second to debate his wife.

When Elian goes back to Cuba, he tells her, Elian will finally have a normal life.

“I don’t know how you can think it’s normal there,” Maria Elena replies. “When we went back to Cuba, we had those two guys following us all the time, remember?”

“We better not talk about this more,” Marcos says. “Because if we do, the family . . . .” He then makes a gesture of two joined hands splitting apart.

Elian’s Rescue Reignites Enmities

Before Elian was rescued from the sea last Thanksgiving, it seemed the old enmities in Cuban Miami were starting to fade. In recent years, for example, it has become common for families in Miami to travel to the island. (By contrast, when the Correas traveled to Cuba in 1968, their Miami home was picketed on their return).

Even now, Correa too seems eager to make peace with those who disagree with him.

When he visits his neighbor Lopez, the two men have a mean-spirited exchange about Elian. Lopez sees a miserable future for the boy in Cuba. “I believe Elian has a right to liberty. When it comes to that, I am an extremist. An extremist in defense of liberty.”

“I’m a moderate,” Marcos Correa retorts with a taunting grin. “That’s why I think Elian should be with his father.”

This provokes Lopez into an angry response in which he belittles Correa’s “socialist” politics.

A few minutes later, the two men, neighbors for 20 years, seem to have put their differences aside.

“OK, I’ll see you later hermanito,” Lopez says at the front door, using the affectionate diminutive for “brother.”

Correa asks if he can borrow his neighbor’s garden hose.

“Of course,” Lopez says with a smile. “Whenever you like.”