By Hanna Rosin
                  Washington Post Staff Writer

                  When Jose Basulto first got a call about the little Cuban boy who had been
                  rescued at sea near the Florida coast, he didn't think much of it. As
                  president of Brothers to the Rescue, Basulto has helped save hundreds of
                  waterlogged refugees, and this one sounded like a routine case.

                  Once he arrived at the hospital, it soon became clear that this rescue,
                  involving a 6-year-old named Elian Gonzalez, was not routine at all. Unlike
                  the other two survivors of the accident that killed Elian's mother and nine
                  others, Cubans say the boy had no scratches on his legs, no sunburn, and
                  he was not especially dehydrated after clinging to an inner tube for two
                  days.

                  "I've seen 450 cases of these rafters, and I've never seen one like this,"
                  said Basulto. "Two days with his feet dangling in the water and no fish
                  bites? No scratches? Nothing? There's no other explanation: This was an
                  act of God."

                  Like many in Miami's tight Cuban community, Basulto has begun to refer
                  to Elian by another name: El Milagro--The Miracle. Belief in his destiny has
                  spread beyond the small group of extreme anti-Castro activists such as
                  Basulto who have helped to promote the "miracle" of Elian. In the
                  newsletters and restaurants of Little Havana, stories circulate about the
                  school of dolphins that nudged the boy to safety, the hovering angels who
                  warded off sharks.

                  Elian Gonzalez has been called a political pawn, a symbol of American
                  imperial arrogance to Fidel Castro, a symbol of Castro's tyranny to his
                  enemies. To those various identities the Cuban community of Miami has
                  added one other: "He is the Cuban Messiah," said Orlando Battista, a
                  self-appointed family spokesman.

                  This prophetic element adds a twist to the political story. The community's
                  ability to keep Elian in America despite public opinion is usually described
                  as evidence of their political savvy, of one small immigrant community's
                  success at exploiting their high-level connections, manipulating the
                  American system.

                  But this mystical belief in the boy messiah uncovers their more vulnerable
                  side. By identifying so thoroughly with this helpless boy, the community is
                  revealing its desperation, and its sometimes fatalistic strain.

                  Many who fled Cuba when Castro took over in 1959 are now entering
                  their seventies and are afraid they'll die before he's deposed. Faced with
                  the disappointment, "they're desperately looking for some sign, some
                  announcement, some harbinger, and this boy is it," said Max Castro, a
                  sociologist at the University of Miami who studies Cuban immigrants and is
                  no relation to Fidel.

                  The religious fervor is not entirely out of character for the Miami
                  community, although it's usually buried beneath their political persona.
                  Most are Catholic and have faith in divine intervention.

                  That faith has always been open to miracle stories, usually involving Our
                  Lady of Charity, the patron saint of Cuba. About 15 years ago, for
                  example, a rumor spread in Miami that she had been seen in Havana and
                  the local community took it as a prophetic sign that things were about to
                  change.

                  In Elian's case, the messianic stories began two days after the rescue, when
                  a caller to one of Miami's radio stations said he'd heard that the fisherman
                  who rescued Elian on Thanksgiving Day had seen him surrounded by
                  dolphins, traditionally the sea-bound messengers of angels.

                  In later versions, Elian was seen reaching his hand out to an angel floating
                  above him. In some tellings, she is described as Our Lady of Charity,
                  soother of panicked seamen. (In Cuban mythology, a virgin appeared
                  before three fishermen lost at sea and promised to protect them. She led
                  them to safety and they built a statue called Our Lady of Charity in her
                  honor.)

                  A recent drawing in La Verdad (The Truth), a popular Little Havana
                  newspaper, shows young Elian resting peacefully in his inner tube staring
                  into the sky as a school of dolphins leap around him and two angels hover
                  above.

                  Of course, the myth sometimes shows little deference to the facts. When
                  Elian was discovered, he did in fact show the physical signs of having been
                  lost at sea. And Donato Dalrymple, the "fisherman" who found Elian, says
                  he's not actually a fisherman, just a businessman who was fishing that day.
                  He personally acknowledges that he did not see any dolphins, only what he
                  calls "dolphin-fish." Yet he too said he believes they were both there--the
                  dolphins and the angels.

                  "If you met Elian you would realize he has a vivid understanding of
                  everything that's happened," said Dalrymple. "He was looking directly at
                  me and he said, 'There's the man that pulled me out of the water when
                  there were a lot of dolphins around me.' Every doll they give him, he names
                  it 'dolphin.' He remembers when his mother went under, and when an angel
                  appeared to him at nighttime."

                  The stories have even outgrown Cuban mythology. Elian, found floating in
                  the water, is compared to Moses, even obliquely to Jesus.

                  "The daughter of the pharaoh took in Moses and this changed the history
                  of the Hebrews," wrote Jose Marmol, a columnist in one of the Cuban
                  papers. "Moses lived to lead his people out of slavery in Egypt to the
                  promised land of Israel, an exodus that lasted 40 years--about the same as
                  our exile from Cuba. . . . Many see [Elian] as the messenger of a
                  miraculous mission to return the liberty to the suffering Cuban people."

                  Basulto calls Elian "the child" in a reverential tone that reverses the usual
                  order of deference between adults and children, a tone reserved for such
                  figures as the next Dalai Lama.

                  "I visit him every day," said Basulto. "I want to know everything about the
                  child. It's important for me to find out, if I may say so, his mission. This
                  child is part of a miracle. I don't know exactly what it is but I am curious."

                  With the prophet discovered, the minor characters fall into place. Stories
                  are told about Marisleysis Gonzalez, Elian's self-appointed substitute
                  mother; about her saintliness, her suffering; often, it's said in local
                  newspapers, she faints suddenly.

                  Others around Elian are starting to think of themselves as apostles.

                  "In church a man once prophesied that I would be involved in something
                  big," said Dalrymple, who used to be a missionary. "The man didn't know
                  me, and he was weeping when he said it. . . . What I get out of this is that
                  God can still use me. He [Elian] was in my path and I did what God
                  wanted me to do. I saved the boy's life."

                  In this cast of Biblical characters, Fidel Castro fits quite neatly as the devil.

                  "I believe in God, and believe in diabolical agents," said Basulto. "And
                  Castro is one."

                  There are voices of temperance among the fervor, but they are few. Max
                  Castro wrote an op-ed article in the Miami Herald headlined "Replace
                  Hate with Reconciliation," urging his fellow exiles to stop seeing the world
                  through the filter of "the white hot hatred of Fidel Castro. . . . Hatred of a
                  regime justifies keeping a child from his father against all law and logic," he
                  writes.

                  Or mention the dolphins to Elena Freyre of the Cuban Committee for
                  Democracy, the moderate voice in the Cuban American community, and
                  she laughs.

                  "The poor kid," she said. "he must be confused with all this astrology. And
                  who knows if he's even baptized?"