BY ANNE MARTINEZ AND TRUONG PHUOC KHANH
 Knight Ridder News Service

 SAN JOSE, Calif. -- After Saturday's raid to snatch Elian Gonzalez from the Little Havana home of his relatives, tensions ran particularly high within Silicon Valley's Vietnamese-American community, one of the few immigrant enclaves outside of Miami that share such a vehement anti-communist belief.

 They speak different languages, eat different foods and often follow different faiths. But when it comes to politics, Cuban Americans have more in common with Vietnamese exiles than their Hispanic brethren.

 ''Americans don't know the price of freedom and democracy as we know it,'' said Nhut Ho, 61, who escaped Vietnam with his wife and two infant children by boat in 1976.

 ''For us, it was fight for freedom or die.''

 Those who reduce Elian's plight to that of a simple child-custody case lack the empathy over the 6-year-old's fate that Cuban and Vietnamese immigrants painfully share.

 ''How can an American understand that?'' asked Le  Van Minh, a gift shop owner in San Jose. ''We should all protect this little boy.

 By no condition should we accept his return to Castro.''

 The common bond between the Cuban-American and Vietnamese-American communities was demonstrated in January after a former South Vietnamese air force pilot, Ly Tong, 51, rented a plane from Key West to Cuba on New Year's Day, then dropped leaflets over Havana that advocated rebellion.

 TONG HAILED

 Cuban-American activists hailed Tong's flight. Tong, who forfeited his pilot's license after the incident, was later honored during Miami's Three Kings parade.

 Polls show that most Americans do believe Elian, whose mother died trying to raft with him to America, should be returned to live with his father.

 Cuban Americans overwhelmingly support keeping Elian in the United States.

 Other Hispanics, however, do not share Cuban exiles' do-or-die position.

 In fact, most of the country's largest Hispanic advocacy groups have remained officially neutral on Elian's case.

 ''We have deep splits within our community, and there's passions on both sides,'' said Lisa Navarrete, spokeswoman for the National Council of La Raza, a predominantly Mexican-American organization based in Washington.

 ''The Cuban community sees this as a political issue while many others view it as a custody issue.''

 For many Vietnamese, however, returning Elian to communist Cuba is equivalent to sentencing the child to death. Family separation, they say, is part of the price of freedom.

 To say Elian belongs only with his father is ''simplistic thinking,'' said Le, the gift shop owner.

 ''Americans live in a country of peace and freedom. Children live with their parents, that is normal,'' Le said. ''But in the world of communism, it is an entirely different situation.''

 IN COMMON

 Like countless Cuban exiles, many Vietnamese fled their homeland in cramped boats, often leaving behind family and loved ones.

 In many ways, Miami's anti-Castro protests are not unlike the rallies that arise within the Vietnamese community when images of Ho Chi Minh appear in public.

 Despite their similarities, Vietnamese and Cuban exile communities also have their crucial differences.

 Vietnamese Americans failed to prevent Washington and Hanoi from establishing diplomatic relations.

 Cuban exiles, meanwhile, have successfully blocked opening up ties with Cuba.

 And Cuban Americans wield more financial and political influence, in part because they have been here longer.

 They began arriving in the United States after Castro seized power in 1959, more than 15 years before South Vietnam fell to communism.

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald