By James Anderson
Associated Press Writer
Thursday , April 13, 2000

CARDENAS, Cuba –– It began with the poems, letters and signs deposited on the museum steps: Discarded tributes to Elian Gonzalez. The donations kept coming – and Elian's plight became a national cause – so the museum set up an exhibit for the child hero.

Eventually, when it's all over, the exhibit will be stowed away, its artifacts another chapter in Cuba's tumultuous history with the United States.

"When he returns, all this will be taken down and will go into the Elian collection," said Raul Raventos, an aide at the Oscar Maria de Rojas Museum in Elian's rural hometown of Cardenas, about 90 miles east of Havana.

A mandatory stop for visiting dignitaries and journalists as well as Cardenas residents, the exhibit chronicles Juan Miguel Gonzalez's fight to regain custody of his son. It also shows mementos of a simple past that was shattered when Elian left Cuba with his mother and others in an illegal attempt to reach Florida. Eleven people, including his mother, were killed when their boat sank.

There are photos of the smiling child at the nearby resort of Varadero Beach, images of Elian in Miami captured by newspaper photographers and CNN, letters from classmates, signed tributes by the Mothers and Grandmothers of Cardenas. There are children's marbles games and photos of Fidel Castro surrounded by residents, letters from Gonzalez demanding justice for his son.

And then here's the pinata – "a symbolic pinata," Raventos says – bearing a portrait of Mickey Mouse, a not-so-oblique reference to Elian's much-publicized visit to Walt Disney World and Cubans' anger at what they call the 6-year-old boy's commercialization.

For the moment, the pinata, traditionally loaded with goodies for children, is empty. "We'll fill it when he comes," Raventos said Wednesday.

On a wall, local artists painted a mural depicting the Caribbean island of Cuba as a brilliantly colored garden – and a hand, unmistakably Uncle Sam's, plucking a prized flower: Elian. Schoolchildren's wooden desks occupy much of the room.

Soon, Raventos hopes, the exhibit will be dismantled – perhaps shrunken to lesser spaces in the colonial structure, one of Cuba's first museums. It houses Chinese and French porcelain vases, oil portraits of Spanish Queen Isabella II, Masonic Lodge medals, exotic butterflies, firearms used by rebels fighting the Spanish occupation in the 19th century, an elaborate horse-drawn
funeral hearse from times past.

For now, the curious tour Elian's exhibit, inspecting each photo, each poem. One, penned by sixth-grader Daneysis Leon Garcia of the 13th of May School, reads:

"Elian, trust in your fatherland

In those of us who are here

Have faith in your comandante,

Do not stay over there."

                                    © 2000 The Associated Press