Elian Squirms Under Media Microscope Cuban Boy Shows Signs Of Rebelling Against Drawn-Out Tug-Of-War

For the first time last week, the world got to hear the true voice of 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez.

“Leave me alone!” Elian cried out one morning to the dozens of strangers, television crews and police officers who have been monitoring his every move since he was rescued from the sea last November.

These are the only words the little boy has spoken that have not been filtered through his relatives in Miami or in Havana, who continue to fight over custody of him.

What does seep through that filter is this: a little boy who wakes every day at 7 a.m. for school, who loves chocolate milk and Nintendo and who, like almost every other young child, seems happiest when playing outside with other kids his age.

But unlike every other child, Elian also rides around in a Lexus owned by his publicity man. He is followed everywhere by hordes of strangers, many of whom believe he is a divine spirit for having survived a sea crossing to freedom last Thanksgiving Day.

And there are the nightmares. Elian’s are of floating away across a great sea, his great-uncle says, away from the safety and comfort he knew before last Nov. 24.

That’s when Elian was found floating in an inner tube, three miles off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, sunburned and dehydrated, having witnessed his mother, his mother’s boyfriend and nine others drown - a horror that now seems almost forgotten in his ongoing story.

Even his relatives in Miami concede that Elian is being emotionally pulled apart by his family’s tug-of-war over him and the spotlight it has drawn.

“Elian at first loved all of the attention he was getting,” his great-uncle Delfin Gonzalez said when asked about Elian’s outburst. “But now he wants to be left alone.”

The night before, under a police escort that rivaled a presidential visit, Elian had a brief visit with his maternal and paternal grandmothers in the home of a Miami Beach nun.

But immediately afterward, Elian returned to his goldfish-bowl existence, where adults who claim to know what is best for him offer conflicting accounts of his wishes.

Marisleysis Gonzalez, a cousin who has become a surrogate mother for Elian since he reached Miami, says he wants to stay in Miami.

Elian’s father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, along with his grandmothers, says the little boy begs to come back to Cuba. Left unknown are the boy’s true feelings, which remain hidden behind his face, impish but always stoic.

“What we try to do is make life as normal for Elian as we can,” Delfin Gonzalez said. “One day, the cameras will go away, and we have to make him ready for that.”

In the meantime, it is hard to know what lessons the young boy is taking away. At times, his relatives seem to use the crowd almost as a disciplinary tool.

“Not that long ago, I tried to take away a toy someone gave Elian,” his great-uncle said, “and the boy swung and punched me on the chin, saying, ‘That’s my toy! It’s not yours to take away!’ “I scolded him. I told him that he has to respect his elders. I said to him, `See those people out there? They will stop liking you if they learn that you do not respect your elders.”’ Elian became quiet and lowered his head after hearing that, Delfin Gonzalez said.

Outside his house, around the clock, are political activists, supporters, religious groups, tourists and children.

All come to pay homage to the little boy who some have cast as the Christ child in a modern-day fable that features Fidel Castro as the evil Herod.

“If Elian goes to Cuba, Fidel will turn Elian, who was anointed by God, toward the side of evil,” said Marisol Echevarria, one of the many Catholics and other Christians who stop by the house to pray for Elian. “But if he stays in the United States, Elian will rise to defeat the Castro regime and bring salvation to Cuba.”

Others think that because dolphins were surrounding the boy when he was found - and warding off sharks by their presence - Elian must have been protected by aquatic angels.

Donato Dalrymple, one of the fishermen who saved Elian, is a born-again Christian who thinks that Elian was chosen by God for a special purpose.

“His survival is no accident,” said Dalrymple, who recently campaigned in Washington with the Gonzalez family to obtain citizenship for Elian.

But as the cameras whirl again, Delfin Gonzales insists that Elian, though special, is just a little boy who wants to live a normal life.

“Elian is a 6-year-old boy who has survived through much tragedy,” Delfin Gonzalez said. “That is all that he is.”