By PETER T. KILBORN

          MIAMI, Feb. 8 -- For more than two months the Florida family of
          Elián González has been a staple of the nightly news. There is
          Elián, the 6-year-old refugee, swinging a baseball bat in front of the little
          stucco house in a working-class neighborhood of Little Havana. There he
          is kicking a soccer ball with his great-uncle Lázaro González and hugging
          Marisleysis, his cousin.

          But not surprisingly, a closer look provides a far more complex portrait
          of an immigrant family suddenly caught up in an international spectacle of
          a dispute over the custody of Elián, who survived a crossing from Cuba
          in which his mother and 10 other people drowned. It is a striving,
          hard-working, close-knit family that neighbors say is unassuming, helpful
          and easy to get along with.

          The two-bedroom, one-bath home of Lázaro González, 49, his wife,
          Angela, and their daughter, Marisleysis, 21, is the gathering place for an
          extended family that itself is divided over Elián's future. And it is the focal
          point of a public relations struggle between Miami's Cuban-Americans
          and the Cuban government of Fidel Castro.

          But this extended family is also one that has run afoul of the law in ways
          that could affect their bid to gain permanent custody of Elián, whose
          father in Cuba wants him returned, experts in custody law say.

          Lazáro González, an automobile mechanic who moved here from
          Cárdenas, Cuba, 15 years ago, has four convictions for driving under the
          influence of alcohol during the 1990's, according to the Florida
          Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. His license was
          revoked or suspended for a total of three years. He completed an
          alcohol treatment course after his most recent conviction, in July 1997.

          Mr. González's brother Delfin González, 63, a fisherman who usually
          lives in Marathon in the Florida Keys but who is a staunch supporter of
          Lázaro's custody claim and has been staying here with the family, has
          four convictions for driving under the influence over the last decade, most
          recently in May 1997. Two of the cases involved accidents with property
          damage or personal injury. Delfin González had his license revoked for a
          total of two years.

          Two other relatives who have been periodic visitors at the home have
          also had run-ins with the law, the weekly New Times newspaper here
          first reported.

          Jose Cid, 32, one of Lázaro and Delphin's nephews and a son of their
          sister here, Georgina Cid, went to jail last month to begin a 13-year
          sentence for grand theft, forgery and violating probation, according to the
          Miami-Dade Department of Corrections. His twin brother, Luis Cid,
          goes on trial on Feb. 18 on charges relating to a robbery last September
          in Little Havana.

          While legal problems like those of the Gonzálezes are not uncommon,
          lawyers say the drunken-driving convictions, especially, create problems
          for Lázaro González's claims for custody and give the government a new
          argument in defending its decision last month to return the boy to Cuba.

          "This does have an impact on the fitness of these adults to raise this child,
          unquestionably," said Bernard Perlmutter, a professor and expert in
          family law at the University of Miami.

          Martin Guggenheim, a professor of law at New York University and a
          specialist in child and family law, said, "Increasingly in recent years,
          courts have been interested in any and all information that bears upon
          parental fitness.

          "The child might be in the car and subject to an accident caused by drunk
          driving," Mr. Guggenheim said, "or the parent could end up injured, dead
          or in prison because of drunk driving."

          No close González relatives in Miami could be reached for comment.
          Armando Gutierrez, a prominent Cuban-American political consultant
          here and the relatives' publicist and spokesman, said he had not heard of
          the driving records until today.

          The driving convictions, said Spencer Eig, the relatives' lead lawyer, are
          less troubling than comments by one of Elián's grandmothers, who told
          Cuban television that she bit Elián's tongue when she visited him here last
          month to goad him to talk and unzipped his pants.

          Lázaro and Angela González live in a neighborhood of fortresses and
          locks. Chain-link fencing cuts across the front of most yards, with
          padlocked gates across the front walks and the driveways. Many houses
          have wrought-iron gates to protect the front door, and wrought-iron grills
          on the windows.

          To varying degrees most households are reaping the benefits of the
          nation's prosperity. The most prosperous have central air conditioning,
          red ceramic tiles on their roofs, replacing asphalt tiles, and tall, spiked
          iron fences.

          The González home, a 48-year-old, gray-white stucco house, is more
          modest than most. Except for Elián's outdoor toys, all donated, nothing is
          new. It is assessed for tax purposes at $67,298. Marisleysis shares her
          bedroom with Elián. Real estate agents said the rent would be be$500 to
          $1,000 a month.

          Only Lázaro, Angela, Elián and and Marisleysis are living their now,
          although Delfin often visits. William, Lázaro and Angela González's
          27-year-old son, moved out about three years ago, after marrying the
          granddaughter of Guillermina Ferrer, the Gonzálezes' next-door neighbor.

          One member of the clan, Manuel González, a brother of Lázaro, is not
          welcome in the house because he has supported Elián's repatriation.

          Angela González rises before dawn each day to work in a factory sewing
          clothes and devotes the rest of her day to domestic activity inside the
          home. Lázaro González works irregularly. Now and then he comes out
          to tinker with a red 1988 Thunderbird, registered in his wife's name, that
          was bought four years ago.

          Marisleysis is a loan officer at the main branch of Ocean Bank here,
          along with a cousin, Georgina Cid Cruz. Georgina is the sister of the Cid
          twins.

          Mrs. Ferrer has lived next door for as long as the Gonzálezes have been
          there. She said she watched William and her granddaughter Jacqueline's
          6-month-old son while the parents worked.

          "Angela is a very quiet woman," Mrs. Ferrer said. "Even before all this
          started, you never even heard her talk. You never even knew when she
          was around."

          "I've never heard of anyone in that family getting into any kind of trouble
          or anything," she added.

          Maria Castillo, across the street, said, "They're always there to help you.
          That family gets along fine and is very close."

          Neighbors said that for entertainment, the Gonzálezes tended to stay
          home with relatives, rather than go out.

          Across this neighborhood, and across Little Havana, there are few signs
          of the epic war of words and lawsuits that have stirred Congress, the
          Clinton administration, Cuba and the Cuban-American leadership.

          The media vans and the demonstrators, largely anti-Castro immigrants
          from outside the neighborhood, have the Gonzálezes to themselves. Just
          one household near Elián's, a block away, has taken any note of ther fight
          still raging in court. "Back To No Future," a sign on the door reads.

          But the case for holding Elián has taken another sharp turn. It is harder to
          argue for holding him in America, Mr. Perlmutter of the University of
          Miami said, in view of family's troubles with the law.

          The family here is attempting to argue that it can offer Elián a better life
          than his father can, while the real issue is whether the father, Juan Miguel,
          is fit to raise his son, he said.

          With the disclosure of the drunken-driving convictions, Mr. Perlmutter
          said, the Miami family's case is harder to make. Except for innuendo and
          unsubstantiated rumor, he said, no one has challenged the father's fitness
          to raise a child.

          "He should win hands down," he said.

                     Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company