By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday , April 20, 2000 ; A14

CARDENAS, Cuba, April 19 –– At the central market in this run-down coastal town where Elian Gonzalez began his life,
Cubans expressed bewilderment and disbelief today that the will of the U.S. government is so easily thwarted. That sort of thing
does not happen on this island under President Fidel Castro.

"What's with those people over there? This is a 6-year-old kid, and he should have been home a long time ago," said a fuming
60-year-old woman. Like many people in Elian's home town, she said she does not understand the U.S. legal system and does
not care to. The problem, she said, is a weak and indecisive government. "What's the story in the United States when the
president can't make things happen?"

Those and even stronger feelings greeted the ruling by a court in Atlanta that Elian--the first-grader whose picture is plastered
all over Cuba, and whose five-month custody saga is a national obsession here--is not free to leave the United States while the
legal wrangling over his fate continues.

Elian has been living with relatives in Miami since he was found by fishermen clinging to an inner tube off the coast of Florida on
Thanksgiving day. His mother and nine other people fleeing Cuba drowned when their 17-foot boat capsized.

Elian's father, who was divorced from his mother, is in the United States trying to reclaim his son so they can return to Cuba.
The U.S. government has ordered that the boy be given to his father, but the Miami relatives have refused, saying Cuba is no
place to raise a child and pursuing their cause in court.

The Cuban government reacted angrily to the latest U.S. court decision on Elian, declaring it helps perpetuate the boy's
"kidnapping." Cubans in general--who are accustomed to swift and forceful justice under Castro--found it incredible that the
U.S. government could not force people to obey its laws or could not simply seize Elian and give him to his father.

"The U.S. government manipulates everything; they can say what they want, but they're a bunch of liars," said a 41-year-old
mother of three who doubted the U.S. government's sincerity in seeking to return the boy to his dad, Juan Miguel Gonzalez.
"The father is there, and he has rights, but they have no principles. The authorities in the United States defecate and urinate on
their own laws."

Many said the key issue is not when the pair might return to Cuba. More important, they explained, is reuniting the boy and his
father, who has been in the United States since April 6 and still has not seen Elian face to face.

"That child has to be with the father because that's the person to protect and take care of him," said Aleida Hernandez, 33. "I
don't care if they stay there until [the legal process] is over. The issue is that they have to be together. If the family is together,
it's not important if they stay there forever or leave. But the father should decide."

Other townspeople said that, since it now appears the boy will be in the United States for at least several more weeks, the U.S.
government should approve a proposal by Castro to allow other Cubans to travel to the United States and stay with the boy
during the rest of the legal process. The plan calls for members of Elian's family, doctors, teachers and 12 of his first-grade
classmates to live with him for several months--both in the United States and then in Cuba--to comfort him and help heal any
psychological wounds.

"They should let the kids, the psychologist and the teacher go over there so they can help with his recovery, because he has
been very traumatized, and they should stay there until it ends," said Juana Iglesias, 69, who lives several blocks from Elian's
home.

"Between the U.S. and Cuba, everything is political, but this is criminal," said a shoe repairman, Orelo Bombessis, 84, who
lives several blocks from the Gonzalez family home.

"I don't understand the law in the United States," he said. "Here, when they say something, that's the law and that's how it
goes."

                                 © 2000 The Washington Post Company