A BOY DIVIDED.

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. His outraged Miami relatives petitioned Attorney General Janet Reno, who agreed not to send the boy home until the family has had a chance to challenge the ruling in federal court.

And what does Elian, the little boy at the center of it all, want? Psychologists say the boy's state of mind is difficult to know, given the trauma he has survived. When his Miami relatives put him in front of news cameras and asked him if he wanted to stay in the U.S., Elian offered a faint, tentative, "Si," suggesting the inner uncertainty of a child in deeper emotional waters than any 6-year-old should ever be.

A KIND OF TITANIC

Ellen's predicament is only the latest episode in a battle between the U.S. and Cuba that has been going on since 1959, when Castro overthrew a pro-American dictator and allied himself with the Soviet Union. The U.S. banned all trade with the island and has since supported efforts to kill or overthrow Castro. Cuba has repeatedly tried to destabilize nearby countries allied to the United States. Castro has survived, first on aid from the Soviet Union, and then, after its collapse in 1991, on tourist dollars. Now Europeans and Canadians flock there to fancy beach hotels, where jinoteros (heenoh-terros), hustlers for tourist dollars, bring in just enough money to keep the economy afloat. (U.S. citizens, except for journalists and relatives on humanitarian missions, are still barred from visiting.)

The island's grinding poverty and lack of political and economic freedom, have caused about 1 million Cubans to flee the country the over the past 40 years, often in rickety rafts and small makeshift boats. Many have died. "This is a sort of Titanic," says one resident of Santiago de Cuba. "Everyone is trying to get a boat to leave."

Yet many Cubans still idolize Castro, remembering the rule of Fulgencio Batista, the dictator Castro overthrew. In those days, U.S. mobsters ran Havana casinos. People literally starved in the streets, and Cuban women were forced into prostitution. Now Cuban socialism offers free education and health care, and has given the nation the highest literacy rate and the lowest infant-mortality rate in Latin America. "When Fidel came, it was as if we had been in great pain and someone had given us a painkiller," recalls Rafael Guillen, an accountant.

But debates about the merits of life in Cuba versus the U.S. probably mean little to Elian Gonzalez. When he boarded a boat ride at Disney World, Elian's question was: "It won't sink, will it?"

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When the U.S. and Cuba argue over Elian Gonzalez, they're talking about more than the fate of a little boy. Both sides share a bitter history. Some key moments:

January 1, 1959: After waging a two-year-long guerrilla war against pro-American dictator Fulgencio Batista, a former lawyer turned revolutionary named Fidel Castro routs Batista's forces and takes charge of the island.

1960-1961: After increasingly hostile moves by both sides, Castro allies himself with America's rival, the Soviet Union. In April 1961, a U.S.-trained army of Cuban exiles invades Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Castro crushes the rebellion.

October 1962: President John F. Kennedy learns that Soviet nuclear missiles have been positioned in Cuba. Kennedy orders a naval blockade and demands that the missiles be removed. For several tense days, the world is as close as it has ever come to all-out nuclear war. The Soviet Union finally gives in, in exchange for the U.S. secretly agreeing to remove missiles near its border.

1980: Castro allows Cubans to leave from the port of Mariel; more than 200,000 pour into Florida on makeshift rafts and boats, sparking a refugee crisis.

1991: The Soviet Union collapses, ending its economic aid to Cuba. Cuba's economy verges on meltdown, but Castro opens the doors to tourism, bringing in cash.

1994-2000: Castro allows 35,000 refugees to flee to the U.S. in 1994. The Cuban economy limps along, but Castro's grip on power seems as firm as ever.

With reporting in Cuba by New York Times correspondents MIREYA NAVARRO and JAMES C. MCKINLEY JR.