HAVANA (AP) -- It's hard to find anyone on the streets of Havana who
                   doesn't think Elian Gonzalez should be returned to his father in Cuba.

                   But once they get past the party line, Cubans can be surprisingly frank about
                   what they think of the 6-year-old boy at the center of an international custody
                   battle.

                   Some say Fidel Castro is using the case for political ends. Others say they're
                   just plain sick ofin a public square in Old Havana. When he noticed a
                   policeman staring at him, he asked to end the interview.

                   Although opinion polls don't exist here, there's no doubt most Cubans believe
                   the little boy rescued at sea and now living with a great uncle in Miami should
                   be returned to his father.

                   Interviewed in bars and in restaurants, on street corners and in food markets,
                   Cubans said failure to return Elian would amount to breaking up a family and
                   keeping a father from the son he loves.

                   "This is not a political problemhas set in. The island's communist government
                   has turned the case into a major national crusade, staging daily public rallies,
                   bombarding the airwaves with news about the boy's "kidnapping," and
                   plastering the walls of major cities with "Save Elian" posters.

                   Almost every evening, Castro himself joins Elian's father and grandparents in
                   elaborate pro-Elian demonstrations replete with choir and dance performances
                   and impassioned speeches extolling Cuba's communist revolution.

                   The boy was found clinging to an inner tube in the Atlantic on Nov. 25 after a
                   boat wreck that killed his mother and 10 other people. Elian's U.S. relatives
                   believe the boy should international law.

                   Strolling with her husband through Havana's Chinatown, a housewife named
                   Carmen confided she thinks Castro is capitalizing on the Elian saga to stir up
                   revolutionary fervor and divert attention away from the country's economic
                   ills.

                   Her husband, Jorge, recalled with amusement a rumor now making its way
                   through Havana that a television announcer was fired after forgetting to turn
                   off his microphone and saying on the air he was sick of reading news about
                   Elian.

                   "He was just saying what a lot of us think," Jorge said. Sources at the
                   state-run television said the incident never occurred.

                   Another man standing outside a food market said he pops in a video on his
                   VCR every time news about Elian comes on.

                   Another said he believed Elian's father and grandparents, now celebrities in
                   Cuba, were receiving economic favors from the government, and that those
                   privileges could end once Elian is returned.

                   Still another, a 24-year-old artist name Alexander, said he doesn't understand
                   why Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, hasn't traveled to Miami to pick up
                   his son personally.

                   "I would go to the bowels of the earth to get my son," he said.

                   Alexander's friend Keyner, also an artist, disagreed.

                    Copyright 2000 The Associated Press.