Cubans Florida

In Cuba he became a policeman like his older brother, and then studied to be a physical education instructor. After he, his wife and their two young children got visas to come here in 1984, he worked odd jobs--painting boats and doing body and fender work. Lazaro Gonzalez was never political. He was no community leader. He made no news. But right now the 49-year-old great-uncle of Elian Gonzalez is one of the most talked-about people in America. To the U.S.

Organizers of the Latin Grammy Awards said Monday they will shift this year's event, originally scheduled to occur here in three weeks, to the Los Angeles area because of fears that protests by anti-communist Cuban exiles might turn violent. C.

An 18-wheeler blocked six lanes leading to the Port of Miami on Sunday as Cuban Americans protested the new U.S. policy of sending Cuban rafters back home. About 200 people climbed on the truck and jumped police barricades outside the port, where a cruise ship that had picked up 13 Cuban refugees last week docked before dawn. More than 100 officers tried to control the crowd.

When Fidel Castro fainted this summer during a speech, there was really only one place for TV crews to come to take the instant pulse of the Cuban American community: a Little Havana restaurant where the gossip and news are as hot as the high-octane coffee. Thirty years ago, a Cuban immigrant opened a small eatery called Versailles, for the French royal pleasure palace. Since then, the establishment on Southwest 8th Street has expanded four times.

By the hundreds of thousands, schoolchildren took to the streets of this Communist nation Friday to honor legendary poet Jose Marti, a national hero shared by Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits. But pinned to their shirts was the image of a 6-year-old boy who has come to symbolize all that divides them. A mournful photo depicts shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez behind a chain-link fence at the house of distant relatives in Miami.

On any one of a half-dozen Spanish-language radio stations here, today's topic of discussion is Fidel Castro. The Cuban leader was the chief topic yesterday, and he will be the focus on tomorrow's call-in shows, too. For more than a generation, about the only thing more certain than Fidel as the exile community's favorite topic is the South Florida summer weather. And both remain hot.

Nelson Mandela, on the eve of his visit to Los Angeles, got the cold shoulder from Cuban exiles on a steamy, 90-degree Thursday in Miami but found plenty of new friends later in Detroit, where auto workers cheered him as a hero for working people everywhere. "You are not only workers.

GUSMAN CENTER IS OVERFLOWING, THE GALA CROWD OF CUBANS AND OTHER LATINOS IN fancy dress who paid up to a hundred dollars for a scalped ticket to the highlight of the Miami Film Festival pacing up and down the rows, exchanging kisses and abrazos and warm nervous smiles as they wait for the star, their star, to arrive, anxious children of Spain gathering in a theater that seems a courtyard in a Mudejar castle, battlements on the sides, ogivalesque windows and a blue-domed sky where yellow

Free speech advocates were fuming Sunday as local officials decided to yank a cigar magazine from Miami International Airport newsstands because it might help Cuban President Fidel Castro. The ban on the June issue of Cigar Aficionado has exacerbated complaints that Miami-Dade County officials are guilty of the kinds of free speech violations that Cuban exiles accuse Castro of. The cover bears photos of Castro and President Clinton and asks: "Is it time to end the embargo?"

On the street where Elian lives, reality crept in like a familiar dull ache. Perhaps as early as next week, the Cuban child will go back to the communist island with his father, just as U.S. officials have insisted for months. But to many Cuban exiles, the winner here is not the American government. And it is certainly not Elian Gonzalez. The winner is Fidel Castro. And that's what makes the long-expected turn of events so galling.

As a television crew in Miami immersed itself in filming the love story of jazz master Arturo Sandoval's long-burning desire to escape Fidel Castro's government, only a few miles away Cuba's newly famous refugee, Elian Gonzalez, had sparked intense reactions from the city's Cuban exile community.

More than two dozen taxpaying residents of this country took a day off Tuesday to join a protest of a government action they considered unacceptable. They were passionate and peaceful. Yet they were also major league baseball players. So how dare they? A taxpaying resident of the Los Angeles community spent two hours Saturday walking in front of the Federal Building in Westwood to protest the same government action. He was calm and conscientious.

Irene Alonso's husband, Ruben, kept the television on all night--just in case. Then, at 5:15 Saturday morning, he shook her awake with horror in his eyes and venom in his veins. "Look! Look what they're doing to that poor little boy!" Alonso shouted as he dragged his wife to the set in their Little Havana home as federal agents launched Operation Reunion live on global TV.

Elian Gonzalez was reunited with his father Saturday after a SWAT team of federal agents, armed with semiautomatic weapons and firing pepper spray, rushed the home of the Cuban boy's Miami relatives and seized the child near a back bedroom closet. Crying "Help me! Help me!"

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno told the father of Elian Gonzalez on Friday that she has made no decision on whether to send law enforcement officials into a small Miami home in Little Havana and forcibly take the boy. "I told him that I could not commit to a particular course of action or timetable," she said, a clear signal that she is still grappling with the best method for ending an international impasse.

The rumor poured out over Radio Mambi last Friday night: Immigration officials were en route to the home of Elian Gonzalez to snatch him away. Never mind that the report turned out to be false. Within half an hour, thousands of Miami's Cuban Americans had surrounded the house--testimony to the central role the 50,000-watt Spanish-language station has played for months in fomenting the standoff over the 6-year-old boy's fate.

Nobody knows when--or if--Fidel Castro will fall. But his demise, whether it occurs today or 20 years from now, is sure to set off one of the world's largest impromptu street parties in a city where about 60% of the residents are Cuban. Others predict an ever greater impact: the virtual shutdown of parts of South Florida.

A bomb exploded Thursday at the Cuban Museum of Arts and Culture, causing extensive damage but no injuries. The FBI said the attack was the latest in a series of terrorist bombings apparently committed by a group of anti-Castro militants. The museum, which has been at the center of a political controversy within Miami's large Cuban community, was rocked by the explosion at 1:09 a.m., FBI agent Paul Miller said.

In Cuba he became a policeman like his older brother, and then studied to be a physical education instructor. After he, his wife and their two young children got visas to come here in 1984, he worked odd jobs--painting boats and doing body and fender work. Lazaro Gonzalez was never political. He was no community leader. He made no news. But right now the 49-year-old great-uncle of Elian Gonzalez is one of the most talked-about people in America. To the U.S.

In Washington and Havana, among the powerful who are deciding the fate of Elian Gonzalez, what's at stake is the rule of law. But in Cuban Miami on this Palm Sunday, the fight is about something closer to a Cuban's Catholic heart: It's about a little boy who, in the months since he was pulled from the shark-infested waters that claimed his mother, has become a potent symbol as much religious as political.