BY PAUL BRINKLEY-ROGERS, CURTIS MORGAN, ELAINE DE VALLE AND
 AUDRA D.S. BURCH

 Not since the Mariel boatlift, exactly 20 years ago, has so much perplexed
 attention been focused on the Cuban community. The struggle over 6-year-old
 Elian Gonzalez has deeply divided Cubans and non-Cubans, and is testing the
 stamina of one of America's most resilient cities.

 ``It is time for this to come to an end,'' said Cuba-born Esther Fishman, 50, whose
 family-run paint business is emblematic of Miami's immigration success story. ``It
 is time for everyone to go on with their lives.''

 Fishman said she and her family are exhausted by the turmoil, and that she
 hopes other Americans understand. But the truth is, she said, they will probably
 never comprehend her opinion as a Cuban that Elian is the victim of what she
 calls ``our Holocaust.''

 Nationally, the debate over Elian boils down to this: Should he stay or go? But in
 South Florida, the issue is more complex, wrapped in the wrenching stories of a
 41-year exile.

 Many non-Cubans have thrown up their hands, venting long-suppressed frustration
 with Cubans on both sides of the water.

 Respect the laws, they say. Why wave the Cuban flag? Callers to a radio station
 popular with Jamaicans complained Wednesday that Cuban refugees receive
 privileges denied emigres from black Caribbean nations. Listeners to other
 stations suggested that Elian partisans who protest unlawfully should go back to
 Cuba.

 As the controversy drags on, it has taken on an undertone of ``us'' vs. ``them.''

 Anti-Cuban rhetoric ``has to some degree reopened the old wounds,'' said Lourdes
 Cue, executive director of Facts About Cuban Exiles, a Miami-based group
 founded in 1982 as a result of Cuba-bashing.

 `I think the Cubans have come out looking more emotional on this issue than
 level-headed,'' said Jaime Suchlicki, director of the Institute of Cuba and
 Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami. ``A lot of people see the
 Cubans not as American citizens protesting. They see them as Cubans
 protesting America.''

 A BLURRED LENS

 He believes much of the negative reaction from non-Cubans comes from viewing
 events through a lens blurred by xenophobia.

 Cue has seen it in national press reports, with sweeping dismissals of Miami as a
 ``banana republic'' controlled by ``right-wing extremists.''

 She said, ``There is a tendency to resort to old stereotypes, descriptions and
 epithets. . . . In environments where there is less exposure day in and day out to
 the Cuban story, there is less sensitivity to the Cuban argument -- which is that
 we seriously doubt that the father is speaking freely.''

 Brenda Shapiro, a Miami family law attorney who joined the American Civil
 Liberties Union in a federal court brief that sought to protect Elian's right to a
 political asylum hearing on the one hand, and the father's right to his son on the
 other, said the hostility is not just confined to predictable outlets for
 outrageousness like radio talk shows.

 NEGATIVE VIEWS

 ``My greatest fear is that there are very good people who have held negative views
 regarding the Cuban community,'' she said, ``and now it's as though they've been
 given a license to say truly reprehensible things.''

 Whether the intolerance abates depends on how peacefully the issue is resolved,
 she said.

 ``There are people who will say to me, `I, of course will do anything I can to help
 you, but I can't be public in my position.' I deplore that. That speaks very
 seriously to the state of relations in our community,'' she said.

 ``If we give credence to this climate of lawlessness . . . no society can survive
 that, let alone little ol' Dade County.''

 One measure of how deeply the Cuba issue pervades Miami-Dade culture was the
 recent experience of Edwin Goldberg, rabbi of Temple Judea, a largely
 non-Hispanic synagogue in Coral Gables.

 EMBARGO A TOPIC

 A topic for an upcoming Reform Movement rabbinical convention is the American
 economic embargo of Cuba. Goldberg decided to bring up the issue with a
 committee of synagogue members, and the resulting discussion was heated, to
 say the least.

 ``It got to the point of my feeling like it wasn't something we could even deal with,''
 he said. ``And we're talking about a 40-year-old issue, not about a little kid. I
 would be afraid to bring Elian up as an issue. It would even be worse.''

 There are optimists.

 ``One issue does not spell doom and gloom. Humans aren't constructed that
 way,'' said George Wilson, a UM sociology professor specializing in race
 relations. Though he said some colleagues disagree, Wilson predicted passions
 will cool, no matter what happens to Elian.

 But he expressed concern that Cuban-Americans will become more alienated as
 they discover their anti-Castro zeal is no longer shared nationwide.

 IT'S ABOUT CASTRO

 Suchlicki said it should not be forgotten that the fight isn't so much about Elian:
 It's with Fidel.

 ``American public opinion can change very easily if the father was to stay here
 and denounce the Cuban government or if the child was to go back and Castro
 make a big mockery out of the issue,'' he said.

 Alicia Corral, an architectural engineer who works in Coral Gables, says most
 Americans cannot understand why most Cubans feel strongly that Elian should
 stay.

 ``The family unit is a very important thing to Cubans,'' she said. ``For us, family is
 the most important thing, and what the world has to understand is that if we are
 advocating that the boy stay here, it is because there is a very strong reason. We
 understand that sometimes you have to make a parent-child sacrifice in order to
 save the child.''

 A DIVIDED FAMILY

 Corral said her mother was sent from Cuba by her grandparents when she was
 just a teenager. Two of her uncles are Pedro Pan kids who came alone, without
 their parents, in a massive Catholic operation that removed 14,000 children out of
 Cuba in the 1960s.

 She said those who want to give Elian to his father do not realize that in Cuba he
 would no longer belong his father -- he would belong to the state.

 ``At the beginning this could have been solved within the family. But now, it's no
 longer the father. Now it's Castro and it's the regime that's taking him back.''

 But Cuban Americans have not convinced many other Americans.

 The Rev. Wayne Lomax, pastor of The Fountain in Pembroke Pines, for example,
 took up a familiar theme on Tuesday among black Americans, who view the
 struggle as primarily a legal and political one.

 ``There is hostility surrounding what is perceived to be the manipulation of the
 system,'' Lomax said. ``[The perception is] if Elian were another ethnicity, this
 would not have unfolded this way, or lasted this long.

 `IT'S NATURAL'

 ``The child belongs with the father, period. It's natural. It doesn't take much
 training to understand that.''

 ``The child is being used for political purposes'' by all sides, he said. ``Even the
 presidential candidates are getting in on this.''

 Carmen Morris, marketing consultant in South Dade, said the rest of the world
 sees a community coming apart. ``People are clearly seeing us in a light that we
 don't want to be seen in,'' she lamented. ``People are saying they turn on the
 radio or television and look at the newspaper and they are seeing something that
 seems to have taken on a life of its own.''

 LaJuane Mack, a technology company manager in Broward and a resident of
 North Miami, worried that ``the Elian case it has shown just how segregated our
 community really is.''

 ``In some ways,'' said Mack, who believes Elian should be with his father, ``it feels
 like Miami against the world. Blacks, whites, Haitians, and everyone else say
 send him home, but most of the Cubans say he needs to stay.''

 A WIDE DIVIDE

 A January poll by WLTV-Univision 23 showed how wide the divide is. Nearly 90
 percent of surveyed Hispanics thought Elian should stay in Miami. But nearly 80
 percent of blacks and 70 percent of white non-Hispanics thought he should go.

 Elena Freyre, executive director of the anti-embargo Cuban Committee for
 Democracy, said Elian may be driving a wedge between those Cubans who
 support isolating the island nation and those who seek reconciliation.

 ``It's the cold war,'' Freyre said. ``It's going to take a while before people start
 talking again.''

 She likened the divided Cuban community to the Gonzalez family itself.

 ``The worst thing of all is this Gonzalez family,'' Freyre said. ``How is this family
 going to heal? It's going to be extremely hard. . . . There's no room for any kind of
 accommodation or negotiation.''

 MIXED EMOTIONS

 Yet there are many wrenched both ways -- including Uva de Aragon, assistant
 director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University.

 ``The day that the child arrived my grandchildren had just left my house. It was
 Thanksgiving, and he [Elian] even looks like one of my grandsons,'' she said. ``I
 wanted to embrace the child. I wanted him to stay. But then you learn he has a
 father and four grandparents. As a grandmother and someone who was never able
 to see my own grandmother again after leaving Cuba, I thought the child should
 be returned.''

 She is afraid there will be no happy ending.

 ``It's been more than four months and he's grown attached to his family here and
 to this way of life. Also, he's been turned into an icon in Cuba and he's going to
 be used politically there. My heart aches for this child.''

 She likened the situation to the one faced by King Solomon when two women
 claimed a child, and he tested their love by threatening to cut the baby in two.

 ``I pray for Elian and I pray for the Cuban people,'' she said. ``As years pass,
 instead of finding more things that unite us, more things polarize us. That is
 certainly not what I hope for the future of Cuba.''

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald