BY ELAINE DE VALLE AND DANIEL de VISE

Dora Sánchez, 71, turned up Wednesday at a Westchester shop called La Estrella de Cuba with a bag of baby clothes, bottles, diapers and booties for her brother's new grandson, her grand-nephew, born June 8 in Havana.

She was a day late.

On Wednesday, people who live in the United States lost the right to send clothing, photographs and an array of other items to loved ones living in Cuba.

The new rules, along with restrictions on travel, were ordered by President Bush and are tailored to hit Fidel Castro in the pocketbook and hasten the demise of his regime.

But in the envios, or shipping houses, of Hialeah and Little Havana on Wednesday, there was a more immediate impact.

Dalia González, a Hialeah woman, typically goes to Havana every August to visit her daughters and her grandchildren, ages 6 and 1. She stopped by Cuba Export and Travel on Wednesday, but only to make a few copies. She will not see the grandchildren again until 2006.

''I understand: the new rules help. But the new rules don't permit me to go to Cuba. I don't like that,'' she said.

``I help the cause of liberty when I go . . . and I tell all of my friends about how it is in the United States, the whole truth.''

The new measures have left Cuban Miami tense and divided. The early exiles, those who left Cuba in the early 1960s, mostly favor the sanctions. Those who have arrived since 1990, with fresher ties to the island, seem largely opposed.

STRONG SUPPORT

Sánchez, the grandmother barred from sending booties to her brother, couldn't disagree with the measure.

''Some people like me will suffer,'' she said, ``but they had to do something about the shameless Cubans who are getting here and in 18 months they want to go back to that hell to leave dollars there. My brother will adjust.''

Across town, at a shipping agency called Almacén El Español, Carlos Royo begged to differ.

''It's not about Fidel. It's not about Bush. It's about my family in Cuba that is poor and hungry,'' Royo said. ``Fidel will go on over there. Bush will go on in his White House. And my family will go on hungry.''

At issue are new rules issued by the federal Treasury and Commerce departments, part of a broader strategy to speed the demise of socialism in Cuba. They narrow the range of acceptable actions -- already quite limited -- by Americans who wish to travel to Cuba or to send packages there.

PACKAGES

Cuban Americans may now send packages only to immediate family, not uncles, aunts, cousins or friends. The parcels may only include food, medicine and a few other vital items. No longer allowed: jeans, shoes, underwear, soap and other items that typically can't be bought by Cubans on the island and were de rigueur in most care packages before.

Travelers accustomed to visiting Cuba once a year may now go only once every three years. Baggage is restricted, and the daily spending limit is trimmed from $167 to $50.

At La Estrella de Cuba in Westchester, the phones rang ceaselessly Wednesday with callers still confused about what they could or could not send.

''Only food and medicine,'' employee Zumel Michel told caller after caller. ``No, no clothing. No shoes, either.''

The agencies, licensed to ship parcels to Cuba, had seen business double or triple in the past few weeks and stayed open late as the cutoff date neared. Many customers ''left here crying,'' Michel said, ``because they knew that was the last package they could send.''

On Wednesday, traffic at the envios dropped to nearly nothing.

One Hialeah shopkeeper posted a hand-written note and took the morning off. Another complained, two hours after his business opened, that he had yet to see a single customer.

''All of our businesses are affected. Where are the customers?'' said the owner of Cuba Export and Travel, who gave his name only as Morales. ``In three months, half of these businesses will close. That's what I think will happen.''

Most shipping agencies are raising their prices to help compensate for the lighter boxes: from $13 to $16 a pound at La Estrella, for example, and by as much as 50 percent at others.

Tom Cooper, president of Gulfstream Air Charter, said he anticipates his company's business to Havana will decrease by 60 or 70 percent, the Associated Press reported. In Havana, where charter flights from the United States usually arrive full, a 122-seat plane arrived Wednesday with only 17 passengers, the AP said.

STRONG SUPPORT

The restrictions are the talk of Cuban radio and Spanish-language television. About two dozen Cuban Americans demonstrated Wednesday outside the Doral district office of U.S. Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart, the Miami Republican, in support of the measure.

A day earlier, Díaz-Balart had been confronted at the airport by a group opposed to the sanctions.

Díaz-Balart said his office took 235 calls favoring the restrictions, three against. Spanish-language radio station WWFE-AM (670) La Poderosa took 115 calls on a recent day, 112 of them to support the new rules, said owner Jorge Rodriguez.

''I have never seen the community more united,'' Díaz-Balart said. ``It's absolutely overwhelming, the support for President Bush and these measures.''

But Democrats smelled a backlash and, perhaps, an opening for their nominee to make a dent in a traditionally Republican-leaning voting block by appealing to moderate Cuban Americans and those with family still on the island.

John Kerry, in a statement Wednesday, denounced Bush's policy as a ''cynical, election-year'' ploy and said the restrictions will ``punish the Cuban people and harm Cuban Americans with families on the island while doing nothing to hasten the end of the Castro regime.''

Herald staff writers Jonathan Abel and Lesley Clark contributed to this report.