A year later, exiles remember

 BY ANDRES VIGLUCCI

 One year ago today -- can it be? -- two unlikely characters out for a Thanksgiving
 Day fishing trip happened upon a little boy bobbing in the ocean on an inner tube.

 The boy was Elián González, and soon the world knew his story: He was 5 years
 old, almost 6, and he had come from Cuba on a boat with his mother, who
 drowned, and 12 other adults, all but two of whom also perished trying to escape
 from their impoverished island and its Communist government.

 Before he was allowed to go back to Cuba with his father seven months later,
 Elián would be anointed savior, victim, cause and symbol. The struggle over his
 fate would mesmerize and polarize Miami and much of the country, and it would
 engulf two long-hostile nations, Cuba and the United States, in tense legal and
 political brinksmanship.

 Ultimately, it would set Cuban exiles on a collision course with the U.S.
 government, culminating in an armed raid by federal commandos in Little Havana
 and rioting in the streets of Miami.

 The spectacle became a media orgy that at different times seemed absurd,
 appalling, inspiring, even comical. Above all it was riveting.

 To most Americans, the melodrama came to a fitting close when the U.S.
 Supreme Court on June 28 declined to review the legal pleas of Elián's Little
 Havana relatives, who wanted to keep the boy in Miami, and cleared the way for
 Juan Miguel González to take his son back to Cuba.

 But in Little Havana, the spiritual center of the Cuban exile community, Elián's
 government-enforced repatriation is a story waiting for an ending.

 Today, Elián's life and whereabouts in Cuba are shrouded in obscurity. His name
 has disappeared from official speeches, and his face has been erased from
 billboards along the capital's main thoroughfares.

 The last the world saw of Elián was in September, when he returned from Havana
 and began the second grade at his old school in Cárdenas. Leaders of the
 National Council of Churches, a U.S. group closely involved in efforts to reunite
 the boy and his father, visited Cárdenas a few days later:

 ``He looked great. He seemed relaxed, like a normal child,'' said the Rev. Bob
 Edgar, NCC general secretary.

 In Miami, exiles and Elián's relatives are deeply skeptical. The relatives, who
 declined requests by The Herald for an interview, said through a spokesman that
 they have no contact with Elián or his family in Cuba despite numerous efforts to
 communicate.

 ``It will be a very sad day, on Thanksgiving Day, remembering when he came
 here, and that his mom lost her life for it,'' said Armando Gutiérrez, the political
 operative who became an exile hero for his early championing of Elián's remaining
 in the United States.

 ``It seems like this story never ends. Everywhere I go, all the time people come
 up to me and want to know how he's doing. And we don't know.''

 In a cathartic act, Cuban-American voters responded to calls to ``punish'' the
 Democrats on Election Day by voting overwhelmingly for Republican George W.
 Bush.

 ``If the boy Elián had not been sent back to Cuba, today Al Gore would be
 president,'' said Ramón Saúl Sánchez, leader of the Democracy Movement and
 prime organizer of exile demonstrations during the Elián saga.

 This week there will be acts of remembrance as well as revenge: a Mass today in
 front of the Miami relatives' home, which they have vacated and is being converted
 into a memorial to Elián; and on Saturday evening, a Mass at the Ermita de la
 Caridad, with a boat-borne torchlight demonstration in the bay behind the chapel.

 But there will be no replay of the media circus that turned the boy's Miami stay
 into a surreal exhibition.

 Reporters from all over the globe set up camp with their gear and trained their
 lenses around the clock on the now-famous house of Elián's relatives in Little
 Havana. Day and night, crowds of demonstrators in the street chanted his name.

 Their cause -- to honor Elián's mother's wishes by allowing him to remain in
 Miami -- rapidly took on political overtones.

 Within days of Elián's arrival, the Cuban American National Foundation had made
 the boy a symbol in the long struggle against Fidel Castro's regime.

 Questioning the sincerity of the wishes of Elián's father, the family and supporters
 assembled a team of lawyers to contest custody in court.

 On the other side of the Florida Straits, Castro turned Elián into a revolutionary
 cause celebre, mobilizing hundreds of thousands of Cubans to demonstrate for
 his return, and tarring Miami's exiles as fanatics willing to exploit a small boy for
 political reasons.

 He found an unexpected ally in the Clinton administration. U.S. Attorney General
 Janet Reno of Miami and the Immigration and Naturalization Service ruled that the
 father's parental rights were paramount under U.S. law.

 While legal experts said U.S. law clearly favored the father, the González family's
 attorneys stretched the legal fray out for months, all the way to the Supreme
 Court's portal.

 In Miami, the dispute exposed ethnic hostilities long buried under the surface of
 daily discourse. Embattled exiles closed ranks and grew increasingly bitter at
 what they regarded as non-Cubans' insensitivity to their cause.

 In full view of the world Elián turned 6, met Mickey Mouse, played with a new
 puppy and lost his front teeth.

 In full view of the world Reno came down from Washington, D.C., to plead with
 Lázaro González and his daughter Marisleysis to return Elián to his father. In full
 view of the world, Lázaro promised not to let Elián go to Cuba and told Reno to
 take him if she dared.

 In full view of the world armed government commandos battered in the door of the
 house one night just before the sun came up and carried off Elián in an airplane to
 his father in Washington.

 In a rage born of powerlessness, exile protesters set fires in the streets and
 battled police. Scores were arrested.

 There was still political fallout to come: the forced departures of the city's
 non-Cuban manager and police chief, more ethnic recrimination, bananas tossed
 at the City Hall.

 ``The exile community went through a time of great depression,'' said Sánchez,
 the demonstration leader. ``You could see it in people's eyes, especially the old
 people, this deep sadness, to see not only that they took the boy away, but how
 the community was vilified.''

 Some have sought silver linings, speaking of a new unity among exiles and
 commitment to the cause by young Cuban Americans previously uninterested in
 the issue of Cuba.

 ``When all is said and done, Elián will have done more good than bad for the
 community,'' said Carlos Saladrigas, a prominent Cuban-American executive.

 ``A major lesson is that the leadership of the community cannot wait until things
 get out of hand until we begin to act. We don't need to love each other; we just
 need to learn to live together and to work together.''

 In Little Havana, those who were closest to Elián nurse a faint hope.

 ``We still think,'' Gutiérrez said, ``that someday he'll come back.''