By April Witt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday , April 21, 2000 ; A14

MIAMI, April 20 –– A woman in a wheelchair holds aloft a color poster dominated by the innocent face of Elian
Gonzalez--the Cuban exiles' littlest messiah--while in the background a bloody figure of Jesus Christ hangs on the cross.

"After the crucifixion Elian and Cuba will rise up too," reads the legend of the glossy poster, which shimmers in the tropical glare
outside the modest Little Havana home where throngs of praying, chanting demonstrators gather daily to try to prevent the
Clinton administration from sending the shipwrecked boy back to Cuba with his father.

On this Good Friday, while Christendom is reflecting on the suffering of Jesus Christ and preparing to celebrate his resurrection
at Easter, many Cuban exiles here are meditating on Elian, the 6-year-old boy being hailed variously as a messenger from God,
a Cuban Moses sent to lead them out of exile or the embodiment of an Afro-Cuban deity who appears as a child and foretells
the future.

In some Roman Catholic churches, in small shops selling the accoutrements of Santeria practice and along the protest
barricades, Cuban exiles are groping for meaning in the long-running saga of El Nino Milagro--the Miracle Child--asking what
message he brings about the fate of the Cuban diaspora and the downfall of Fidel Castro.

"God has made a gift to us in this community of a miracle, of saving this kid who was two days in the sea and was not hurt,"
said the Rev. Jose Luis Menendez, pastor of Corpus Christi Catholic Church here and one of several priests ministering to the
boy and his relatives. "Now the problem is, if God gives us this gift, they want us to return it back to Herod?

"Herod--Castro--is waiting in Cuba," Menendez said. "Pontius Pilate is washing his hands in Washington, and that is President
Clinton. And the suffering of this child is the suffering of the Cuban people."

The exiles' Holy Week victory in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has strengthened their conviction that the boy is some
kind of miracle and God is on their side.

"The human beings have lost control of this," said Maria Elena Quesada, a Roman Catholic of suburban Kendall who keeps
vigil outside the home where Elian is ensconced.

"Castro has lost control of it. Clinton has lost control of it. Reno, even the family, has lost control of it. Whatever happens now
is in the hands of God," she said.

"Elian is a sign from God saying to the exile community: 'I haven't forgotten you.' "

The Rev. Francisco Santana, a popular Cuban American priest, said he has prayed and an improbable notion has come to him:
If the boy's battling family, his communist father and his anti-communist Miami relatives, can make peace, then Castro will fall.

"I am absolutely certain that communism began in Cuba by dividing the family and communism is going to end in Cuba when
this family is reunited," Santana said. "I haven't heard voices or had a vision. I am a man of hope. Maybe it's wishful thinking."

Among Cuban exiles in Miami, diasporic religion has long mixed mysticism with hatred of Cuban President Castro. When
Cuban American Catholics gather to venerate their patroness, a mantilla-draped image of the Virgin, Our Lady of Charity, they
often pray the rosary, sing the Cuban national anthem and ask her intercession to destroy Castro.

"In the Cuban community where politics and religion are joined, political figures, and that's what Elian finally is, can become
saints," said Thomas Tweed, an associate professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina and author of "Our
Lady of the Exile."

At the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Miami, the hierarchy has remained conspicuously noncommittal about the legal battle
for Elian, the attending religious fervor and popular accounts of Elian miracles--from dolphins protecting the boy as he floated
for two days at sea in an inner tube, to an image of the Virgin Mary appearing in a Little Havana bank window in the wake of
his arrival here. "Hooking a spiritual message to a political agenda can prove to be very shortsighted," the Rev. Thomas
Wenski, auxiliary bishop, said in an interview today. "The political is always a temptation."

But demonstrators are undeterred.

"Whether our leaders agree with us or not, it's not pertinent," said Ana Maria Lamar, a Roman Catholic who celebrated the
federal appeals court victory earlier this week by wrapping herself in a large American flag and shouting: "It's a miracle! This is
the power of prayer!"

At a flower-festooned shrine down the block from the home of Elian's relatives, Christian symbols--palm fronds tied in the
shape of a cross and drawings of the Virgin Mary--mingle freely with ritual offerings, such as cigars, associated with the
Afro-Cuban religion of Santeria. Some followers of Santeria believe that Elian is the embodiment of a spiritual emissary named
Ellegua, and if Castro doesn't get the boy back he won't have a political future.

Demonstrators pause from their chanting and sign-waving to ponder the question: Just who is Elian?

"God's will is absolutely inscrutable to man's mind, but the characteristics of this case point to Elian being something like
Moses," said Octavio Carbo, a Catholic who was a political prisoner in Cuba.

Menendez, the priest, said simply: "This is a special kid. He was lost for two days without anyone else. But his skin was like a
baby. It was not burned by the sun. I am not going to make a mythology. I will only say he came in a strange way."

Menendez is struck that three waves of Cuban immigrants--the earliest exiles, those who followed during the Mariel boatlift,
and others who arrived recently by raft--are united in trying to prevent Elian from returning to the island. "It's like a miracle," the
priest said. "What he has accomplished in a few months--the unity, the identity, the sense of pride--is more than we have
accomplished in 40 years.

"We know we have alienated ourselves from the rest of the world. . . . Perhaps he has a message he brings to the Cuban
community: that we are alone and what we don't do for ourselves nobody will do for us."

In a lull in the protests this Holy Week, Quesada, the Roman Catholic woman from Kendall, said she will accept whatever
happens next. "Whether we like it or not, we might have to go to Gethsemane," she said, referring to the place where the Bible
says Christ was arrested by the Roman soldiers before his crucifixion.

"We might have to say, 'Let it be. You were not mine.' "

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