By MIKE CLARY, Times Staff Writer

                MIAMI--In Cuba he became a policeman like his older brother, and then studied to be a physical education
           instructor. After he, his wife and their two young children got visas to come here in 1984, he worked odd
           jobs--painting boats and doing body and fender work.
                Lazaro Gonzalez was never political. He was no community leader. He made no news.
                But right now the 49-year-old great-uncle of Elian Gonzalez is one of the most talked-about people in
           America. To the U.S. government he is a law-breaker who has defied several federal mandates, gone face to
           face with Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and refused to budge, and now is daring immigration officials to enter his house
           and seize the 6-year-old child in an action that many believe could explode into civil unrest.
                According to Gregory B. Craig, an influential Washington lawyer, Lazaro Gonzalez has "not only
           broken the law, but emotionally damaged and exploited this most wonderful little boy." Craig is
           representing Juan Miguel Gonzalez, Elian's father, who wants to return with the boy to Cuba.
                Surveys indicate that around the U.S., most people agree with Craig that Lazaro Gonzalez is
           flouting the law by refusing to hand over Elian, whom he has cared for since the boy was rescued at
           sea Nov. 25.
                But that opinion doesn't garner much support when translated into Spanish and offered up to the
           throngs on the street in front of the great-uncle's Little Havana home. Here, Lazaro Gonzalez is a
           Cuban everyman, thrust almost at random onto a world stage and asked to undergo a test of personal
           integrity that has been magnified by global and exile politics. And to the vast majority here, Gonzalez is
           passing the test with flying colors--the red, white and blue of the American and Cuban flags.
                "I think he is an excellent man, un hombre recto," said Maria Machado, 60, who like hundreds of
           Cuban Americans stops by the house almost daily to lend support to the Miami relatives' fight to
           prevent Elian from returning to Cuba.
                "I wouldn't say he is a hero exactly. He is just doing what any of us would do--the right thing."
                For weeks, Lazaro Gonzalez has made his position clear: He will not try to prevent U.S.
           Immigration and Naturalization Service officers from removing Elian from his home, but he will not
           deliver him into their hands either. That, said Gonzalez, would betray a promise he made to Elian, who
           the family says often expresses his desire not to go back to Cuba.
                "Lazaro has repeatedly been given a series of ultimatums the likes of which I think are
           unprecedented in this country," said Roger Bernstein, one of several Miami attorneys volunteering to
           represent Gonzalez. "He's a very courageous man who cares deeply about his family and loves Elian
           like he does his own children."
                In Washington, where he has been waiting for 11 days to regain custody of his son, Juan Miguel
           Gonzalez, 31, is furious with Lazaro. Elian's father has spoken bitterly of how he gave up his bed to his
           uncle when Lazaro and the family visited their hometown of Cardenas, Cuba, in 1998.
                Now, the way Juan Miguel sees it, his uncle--his father's brother--won't give him back his own
           son.
                Juan Miguel said Sunday on CBS-TV's "60 Minutes" that he didn't believe a video taped at the
           relatives' home in which his son said he didn't want to go back to Cuba.
                "This is child abuse and mistreatment, what they're doing to this boy," Gonzalez said. "The way
           they're abusing him, turning him against his father . . . he's suffering more here among them than he
           suffered in the sea."
                Nonetheless, tensions eased a bit over the weekend before an expected ruling this week on the
           Miami family's request to grant Elian an asylum hearing. But the pressure on Lazaro Gonzalez is
           unrelenting.
                On Friday, the government formally revoked his temporary custody of Elian, and the 24-hour crowd in
           front of his house is more vocally supportive and more demanding. The flag-waving, sign-toting supporters want
           to hear from him, have their picture taken with him, even touch his hand.
                The strain is showing. A square-shouldered man of medium height, Gonzalez is often seen leaning against the
           front fence, sucking on a Marlboro, head down, listening intently, while some lawyer, politician or celebrity offers
           advice.
                According to those around him, Lazaro Gonzalez listens and then makes his own decisions. And at times
           those decisions run counter to his advisors' suggestions.
                The controversial videotape of Elian telling his father that he did not want to go back to Cuba, for example,
           dismayed some legal advisors, say sources. On a CNN-TV talk show Sunday, Spencer Eig, another lawyer,
           dodged questions about whether it hurt Lazaro's case.
                Born in Cardenas in 1950, Lazaro is the youngest of nine children. He was 34 years old when he
           followed the path to Miami blazed years earlier by his older sister Caridad and his brother Delfin, who
           had been convicted of actions against the Communist government and jailed for 10 years. When
           Lazaro and his wife, Angela, arrived here on immigrant visas, their son William was 12, their daughter
           Marisleysis was 6.
                Prior to Elian's arrival, Lazaro Gonzalez was arrested twice for drunken driving, for which
           Armando Gutierrez, the family's spokesman, said Gonzalez is sorry.
                In the escalating verbal war between Cuba and the exile community over the Elian case, officials of
           the Fidel Castro government called Lazaro an "alcoholic" and accused him of sexually abusing students
           in Cuba. Gonzalez has countered those allegations with a 1983 Cuban government document
           certifying that he has not been sanctioned by any criminal court.
                For years, Angela Gonzalez has worked in a clothing factory in Hialeah. Marisleysis, 21, who has
           welcomed the role of Elian's surrogate mother, is a 1997 graduate of Miami High School. After three
           semesters of community college, she found work as a bank loan officer, a job from which she is on
           leave. William, married with a young child, lives elsewhere in Miami.
                Since Elian's arrival, Marisleysis has been hospitalized several times for stress and various stomach
           disorders. And Lazaro Gonzalez has had little time to work. Gutierrez said the family gets by on
           Angela's income, along with some help from Delfin Gonzalez, 63, who has a business selling lobster
           traps.
                The Cuban American National Foundation, a well-connected lobbying group, has paid for the trips
           to Washington that Marisleysis, Delfin and other relatives have made in urging an asylum hearing for
           Elian. But foundation spokeswoman Ninoska Perez said Lazaro Gonzalez has refused other offers of
           cash. "He says, 'I don't want anyone to say I'm doing this to help myself,' " she said.
                This week, Lombardo Perez Jr., the owner of a Miami Ford dealership and a director of the
           Cuban American National Foundation, told the Miami Herald that he has hired Gonzalez to eventually
           work in the body shop and has already begun paying him.
                Government-appointed counselors who met with Gonzalez last week say the fishbowl existence in
           which Elian lives--with television cameras trained on the house constantly--is not healthy for the child.
           Nor for adults.
                "He's very volatile," said psychiatrist Paulina Kernberg of Cornell University, who met with Lazaro
           Gonzalez for less than an hour last Monday. "You know, he converts to a kind of fighting, brassy
           persona. He would say one thing, and then he snatches it away. He's been, I think, under too much
           pressure."
                Ironically, Gonzalez and his family made their journey out of Cuba with the one member of the
           family in Miami who does not agree with his stance on Elian. Manuel Gonzalez, 59, has supported
           Juan Miguel, and the brothers who live six blocks apart no longer speak.
                Manuel Gonzalez has visited family in Cuba three times in recent years. He was there when
           Elisabeth Brotons was pregnant with Elian, he said in a recent interview; he was there when Elian was
           2 years old, and again in 1998, when the boy was 4½. That is the summer that Lazaro Gonzalez first
           met Elian.
                After Elian's mother, Elisabeth Brotons, and 10 others drowned and the boy was plucked from the
           sea, Manuel and his wife, Emilia, were in Spain on vacation. Had he been here, said Manuel, he might
           have been given custody.
                And, he said, Elian might be back in Cuba by now.
                                                ---
                Times staff writer Esther Schrader in Miami and Associated Press contributed to this story.