Herald Staff Report

 HAVANA -- The backdrop to Havana's famed Coppelia ice cream shop is now a
 large billboard. It depicts ``Eliancito'' with sad brown eyes that seem to cry out a
 desperate desire to come home.

 ``Return Elian to his country,'' the billboard reads.

 It's displayed all around downtown Havana and especially outside the U.S.
 Interests Section, where each day at 4 p.m. thousands of people gather to
 demand the child's return.

 Between cries for Elian, they shout communist rhetoric, denounce American
 schoolyard violence and save particular venom for the Cuban American National
 Foundation.

 ``I've never seen a country love a boy so much!,'' said one taxi driver who was
 anxious for the boy's return. ``I'm crazy for him to be sent back, because until
 he's back you can't drive along the Malecon, along the side streets -- anywhere.
 It's all politics. And politics is dirty business.''

 In Havana, Elian Gonzalez has come to represent all that is wrong with America,
 a country many here view as too wrongheaded to recognize its own custody laws.
 From the communist newspapers to the all-day television newscasts to the
 side-street cafes, the talk is of the bashful 6-year-old and the greedy government
 that won't let him go home.

 But for every bit of resentment spouted toward the U.S., there is even more for
 Elian's mother, who risked her son's life on the perilous journey across the Florida
 Straits.

 `DANGEROUS'

 ``That child's mother did something dangerous and inconsiderate,'' said a woman
 waiting for a bus in Havana. ``And for her, because of what she did, that boy is in
 a critical and weak situation.''

 Laurencio Ricardo Napole agrees, but thinks the United States is to blame.

 ``If that was a Mexican child, he would have been shipped back by now,'' said
 Napole, who spends his afternoons selling fish bait along the Malecon. ``That
 child should be returned -- must be returned. That was an illegal kidnapping -- by
 the mother, but illegal nonetheless.''

 Napole is interrupted by a man he called a delinquent. ``That boy would have
 clothes there, the system of life is better,'' the man said. ``Here you need dollars.
 If you don't have dollars, you don't have anything.''

 An outraged fisherman named Jorge Agosto piped up.

 ``I don't care where he is, he could be in the best place in the world, but as a
 father I'd want him with me.'' he said. ``This is craziness. In Miami he'd have nicer
 toys, but he wouldn't have his father.

 Elian's case has dominated media coverage here, where TV stations have
 continually broadcast footage of this week's protests -- over and over again. The
 boy is virtually the only subject covered by the Communist Party newspaper
 Granma, which has published handwritten letters to Elian from Cuban
 schoolchildren.

 ``I advise you not to trust what the Americans give you,'' said a scrawled note
 from a third-grader named Lorena. ``Because they are bad.''

 OPEN LETTER

 A fifth-grader named Jorge Fernandez wrote Elian an open letter urging him to
 shun the big bucks America is sure to offer.

 ``Over there, you'd have every comfort you'd want, but you'd be missing one, the
 comfort of your heart, the lack of family,'' Jorge wrote. ``Here your friends await
 you, your family awaits you, Fidel awaits you, the Cuban people await you.''

 The same edition of the paper included a note from President Fidel Castro in
 which he wrote that his intelligence sources tell him that the ``extremist
 Cuban-American Mafia'' plans to offer Elian's father $2 million to defect if he were
 to come to Miami to reclaim his son.

 ``Not a single person thinks he should stay there. What's he going to do over
 there?'' said Jacqueline Castillo. ``Anyone thinking that is not thinking straight.''

 But the philosophical taxi driver thinks otherwise.

 He suggests that, deep in their hearts, some Cubans are secretly praying for
 Elian to stay in Miami. He might run the risk of succumbing to drugs and
 violence, he said, but he would have milk to drink even after his seventh birthday,
 the cut-off age for Cuban children to receive free milk from the government.

 ``There are people who think the boy should stay in the United States,'' he added.
 ``You won't hear anyone say it, but they think it.''

                     Copyright 1999 Miami Herald