BY ANA ACLE

 Ramon Saul Sanchez, mastermind of many large exile street protests in Miami in recent years, has emerged as the man behind civil disobedience plans to prevent the return of Elian Gonzalez to Cuba.

 His message is always nonviolent. But there is no doubt that when Sanchez calls a protest it can cause chaos.

 In the mid-1990s, Sanchez led sit-ins that caused massive traffic jams in Miami -- and ticked off many motorists. Exiles were protesting a change in U.S. policy that allowed the Coast Guard to intercept rafters at sea.

 Once an unknown in the exile community, Sanchez, 46, is now the person many in the community turn to for guidance on how to respond to developments in the Elian case.

 Sanchez spends his days at the Little Havana home of Elian's Miami relatives, instructing demonstrators with a megaphone, and even sleeping in his car. He and his team brought flowers to the crowd so they could be seen on national television welcoming Elian's father and his grandmothers when they visited.

 When truckers recently conducted a wildcat
 strike to protest higher gas prices, Sanchez won their appreciation by showing up
 at their demonstrations at the Port of Miami-Dade.

 Now, the truckers are repaying Sanchez with truck caravans around the home --
 to show solidarity with Elian's Miami relatives who want to keep the child in the
 United States.

 At the Elian home, Sanchez has taught demonstrators how to lock arms and form
 a human chain around the house -- a move that seems to go beyond civil
 disobedience.

 But Sanchez plays down the significance of the human chain as an act of
 obstruction.

 ''It's a human chain of solidarity,'' Sanchez says. ''It's symbolic. Some people have
 misinterpreted that we will get in the way of federal marshals.''

 Pressed further, he says they would jump out in front of the marshals, but then
 allow their entry because ''we have a responsibility for the safety of the community
 and of Elian Gonzalez.''

 The pressure is taking its toll on Sanchez, who was exhausted Sunday.

 Once a secret gun-toting commando, Sanchez seems to have grown more
 passive over the years. He says he admires the work of Martin Luther King Jr. and
 Mahatma Gandhi, and tries to follow their example.

 Sanchez, who styles himself a philosopher, says nonviolent demonstrations
 make a louder impact than violent protests. He knows that violence would only
 give critics a stronger voice.

 DOMESTIC ISSUES

 Beyond Cuban exile causes, Sanchez stakes positions on domestic issues that
 often depart from the more conservative stands of the exile community.

 He comes out in favor of workers in labor disputes, supports fighting poverty
 through social programs and endorses enhancing the civil rights of women.

 Sanchez grew up in Colon, a town in Cuba's Matanzas province.

 He immigrated to Florida when he was 12 years old. Over the years, he has
 married four times -- all unions ending in divorce.

 His first two wives were 17 at the time of the marriage. Sanchez was 26 and 34,
 respectively, according to public records.

 He once told The Herald that his divorces were due to the long hours he devotes
 to ''the cause.''

 Sanchez has a job as a clerk -- but he is on a leave of absence for the Elian
 case.

 ''I'm a blue-collar worker, if I don't go to work, I can't pay my bills,'' he once said.
 He doesn't say where he works because he doesn't want problems with his boss.

 CUBA CRUSADE

 In his 20s, Sanchez began his crusade to free Cuba, and quickly learned he
 would be thrown in prison for not abiding by the law. Sanchez was not always
 nonviolent.

 During police surveillance on members of the violent anti-Castro organization
 Omega 7 in 1980, Sanchez -- then 26 -- pulled a gun on a plainclothes Miami
 police officer who had been assigned to shadow him.

 Sanchez later said he thought the undercover cop was an assassin sent by Fidel
 Castro to kill him after his name appeared on a Cuban government list of
 enemies.

 A jury convicted Sanchez of aggravated assault and a weapons charge, but the
 conviction was overturned.

 In 1982, Sanchez -- then president of the Organization to Liberate Cuba -- was
 thrown in a New York jail for refusing to answer a grand jury's questions about
 anti-Castro groups, including Omega 7.

 During that time, he did a 20-day hunger strike until officials began to force feed
 him. Four years later, he was released.

 Sanchez emerged as an exile leader again in the mid-1990s when he created the
 nonprofit Democracy Movement, known for its flotillas to the edges of Cuban
 territorial waters.

 But that, too, sparked controversy.

 During a memorial flotilla in 1995, a year after the Cuban government rammed and
 sank a tugboat filled with people trying to escape, Sanchez floated into Cuban
 waters with an unarmed boat.

 As Cuban government aircraft circled overhead, passengers threw flowers in the
 water and then evaded Cuban gunboats in a sea chase until those boats collided
 with them, and the Miami Cubans had to turn back.

 BOATS SEIZED

 The U.S. Coast Guard confiscated Sanchez's boats several times, saying that
 they feared he would provoke an attack and draw the United States and Cuba into
 war.

 Sanchez lashes back, saying the Coast Guard obstructs his plans to sail to Cuba
 but allows other boats to travel there and participate in yacht excursions and
 festivals.

 In May, the government decided to return a confiscated boat, the Human Rights,
 after he went on a 20-day hunger strike.

 He said then: ''Either I leave here to get my boat or I'm taken to my grave.''

 Always the innovator, Sanchez also was behind a remote-controlled boat that
 landed in Havana in 1998.

 Marked with the word ''Democracy,'' the boat carried humanitarian supplies: soap,
 diapers and pencils, Sanchez said.

 He had attached a Global Positioning Satellite System on the inflatable boat that
 took it directly to Playa del Chivo, a Havana beach near the Malecon coastal
 boulevard.

 In July, he was a key figure in exile protests after a televised Coast Guard
 interdiction of six rafters off Surfside.

 When 16 exile leaders met recently to discuss U.S. Judge K. Michael Moore's
 ruling that upheld U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno's decision that only Elian's
 father speaks for the boy, Sanchez said Cuban Americans should stage a
 ''massive protest.''

 SOUGHT AFTER

 At Elian's Little Havana home, Sanchez spends a good part of the day answering
 media questions and doing interviews. Sanchez is so sought after, that lately
 reporters find it difficult to get one-on-one interviews with him.

 Privately, Sanchez says he hopes no one will get hurt if indeed the human chain
 is called upon to ''symbolically'' discourage federal agents from raiding the boy's
 home, and has recommended that protesters offer no resistance to arrest. But
 Sanchez worries that ''Castro agents'' may incite the crowd to violence.

 In January, a man accused of spying on the Democracy Movement was
 sentenced to seven years in prison for attempting to infiltrate U.S. military
 installations in Florida for the Cuban government.

 Herald staff researcher Elisabeth Donovan contributed to this report.