In a New City, Family Searches for Allies

Like two lost tourists, Elian Gonzalez’s female cousins from Miami clutched arms as they searched the vast stone halls of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

They were looking for a bit of home, a statue of the patroness of their native Cuba, La Virgen de la Caridad. But they and the other relatives who had come to this church, this city, were anxiously seeking something else--a sympathetic ear for their near-lost cause.

For most of Sunday the tiny band from Miami kept the media, their most powerful remaining ally, close by. (They had lost possession of their best asset, photogenic little Elian, early Saturday when he was grabbed by federal agents from their home.)

The Miamians tipped off reporters in advance that they would be attending a 2:30 p.m. Mass at the famous church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. And journalists, as they had for five months in Miami, dutifully traced their every move, as they fell in with the sparse crowd of worshipers, taking communion, kneeling and praying during the sacred service.

They seemed desperate to seize if not inflame public opinion to generate enough political interest in their cause so that by May 11, when this soap opera returns to the courts, they may find a way to win Elian back.

“With my truth,” said Marisleysis Gonzalez, the 21-year-old cousin who says she has been like a mother to the boy, “I’m going to get to every heart and every mind. Just with the truth.”

But for the first time since the tug of war over Elian began, the Miami relatives seemed to be casting about, at a loss for a singular strategy. On unfamiliar turf, in a near-deserted Washington, they careened around empty government offices on Capitol Hill and raced in two minivans from photo opportunity to staged event.

Early Sunday, they held a rambling, 90-minute news conference in the Dirksen Senate office building at which eight family members and allies ended their time at the microphone with an appeal for public support. Only one senator was present.

Midday, they took a stuffed Easter bunny and some candy to Andrews Air Force Base, where Elian is in seclusion with his father. But they and their gift were turned away.

And then they went to church, where the liturgy--in English--seemed at times lost on some of them. As the priest read the Gospel of John, a story of resurrection, a defiant Lazaro Gonzalez, Elian’s great-uncle, sat stone-faced. He speaks little English.

Not only had these family members lost custody of their 6-year-old charge, they were no longer in the comfortable insulation of Miami’s Little Havana, where, until Elian’s father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, showed up in America, they held the public relations advantage.

But they are in Washington now.

Headquarters of the Justice Department. City of Bill Clinton. Home of Janet Reno. In anger and desperation, they personalized the battle, even railing against the U.S. president for being an alleged draft evader and belittling the attorney general for not having children of her own.

“You still don’t know what being a mother is,” Marisleysis said of Reno.

But the drama reached some kind of bizarre pinnacle when Marisleysis accused Elian’s father of doctoring a photograph of his happy reunion with his son.

“The picture they show with the father,” she barked, “that is not Elian. That hair is not Elian’s.” She had cut his hair three days earlier, and in the picture it looked too long.

“That is not Elian’s hair,” she said, breaking down yet again. In fact, it seemed Marisleysis was always crying Sunday, talking to the press, climbing out of the van, when the organ music swelled in the basilica. Her nose was reddened, her eyes swollen, her lips almost always aquiver.

Last night she and her family were to have a dinner at the home of Sen. Bob Smith, the New Hampshire Republican who is culturally worlds apart from them but has been one of their few outspoken allies in Washington.

It was unclear how many more allies they will find here in the coming days. And after a wrenching Easter Sunday, it was unclear how much they had even accomplished.