BY ELAINE DE VALLE

 The international incident that has pitted Miami exiles against Cuban leader Fidel
 Castro in a custody battle over 6-year-old rafter Elian Gonzalez began on a beach
 east of Havana during Thanksgiving week.

 That was when 14 people waded through shallow waters off Cardenas, pushing a
 17- to 20-foot boat far enough from homes so they couldn't be seen or heard.
 Destination: Miami. Only three people made it,  including Elian, who was rescued
 off Fort Lauderdale by two cousins who were fishing.

 Lost in the debate over whether the boy should be returned to his father in Cuba or
 left in Miami with relatives are the stories of the 11 others -- who they were and why
 they risked the deadly voyage. Through interviews with two adult survivors and the
 family of the dead in this country and Cuba, pieced together with the account of the
 U.S. Border Patrol, The Herald has tried to re-create the tragic journey.

 It is a story that dates back nearly 18 months, when Lazaro Rafael Munero Garcia,
 organizer of the ill-fated trip, first came to South Florida. The night of June 29, 1998,
 after landing near mile marker 71 in the Keys, he told Border Patrol agents he had
 come on a 12-foot boat with three other men.

 Munero, then 23, spent the night at the Krome detention center and was released
 into the community the next day. He went to live in Flagami with his uncle, Jorge
 Munero, his aunt, Maria Lopez Munero, and their young daughter in a small addition
 they rent behind another home on Southwest Third Street. But Lazaro Munero
 couldn't bear being apart from his family.

 ''From the beginning, he would cry for his parents, his wife and the boy,'' Jorge
 Munero said.

 Though his family doesn't believe that Lazaro Munero was legally married to
 Elian's mother, Elizabet Brotons Rodriguez, the two lived together for years.

 ''He considered her his wife,'' Jorge Munero said. ''He lived for her. He couldn't be
 happy here without her and the little boy. He loved that boy, too.''

 Shortly after arriving, Lazaro Munero wrote Elizabet a ''beautiful'' letter saying he
 couldn't live without her, the uncle said. When he heard of the deaths, the uncle
 looked for the letter among the things his nephew left behind when he returned to
 Cuba three months after arriving.

 ''He must have taken it with him to Cuba,'' said the short man with sad eyes who
 sighs.

 RAISING MONEY

 Lazaro Munero worked at a carwash in Westchester seven days a week to send
 much-needed dollars back to loved ones in Cuba, his family here said.

 ''He would leave at 7 or 7:30 and not come home till 9 or 10 at night. Then he
 would eat something and go to sleep,'' said his aunt, Maria Lopez Munero. ''He
 never went out to parties or even to drive around. I once told him, 'Come with me
 and the girl to the movies,' but he said no, that he couldn't enjoy it.''

 In October, Lazaro Munero returned to the communist-ruled island he had fled
 less than three months earlier. He took a motorized inflatable raft and headed in a
 direction few venture: south. His stint in Miami cost him a 62-day jail sentence in
 a state security prison in Santa Clara. ''Maybe they thought he was infiltrating the
 country to do some harm or something, since he came from here,'' Jorge Munero
 said.

 His nephew was released last New Year's Eve and returned to normal life driving a
 cab in Cardenas, a city in Matanzas province near the tourist spot Varadero
 Beach two hours by car from Havana.

 'BIG SURPRISE'

 About two weeks before the tragic voyage, Jorge Munero spoke with his brother
 and nephew for what would be the last time. When he learned that Lazaro --
 called ''Rafaelito'' because he was the spitting image of his father, to whom he
 was very close -- was home, he asked to talk with him, too.

 ''Hey, boy! How the heck are you?''

 ''As good as can be expected, uncle,'' Lazaro answered. ''But things will get
 better. You're going to get a big surprise.''

 ''You had your chance -- and you blew it.''

 ''Just wait, uncle. Just wait. It won't be long.''

 When his brother came back to the phone, Jorge Munero asked him what his
 nephew was talking about.

 ''Pay no attention,'' Rafael Munero said. ''You know how he talks craziness.''

 In Cardenas, Lazaro Munero told the opposite to anyone who would listen.

 ''He said he would never go back,'' said his aunt, Regina Munero. ''But now it
 seems like that was all a lie.''

 LIFE IN THE U.S.

 He told his best friend it was too hard and lonely in the United States. ''You work
 just to pay your rent,'' the friend quoted him as saying. ''He missed his mom so
 much.''

 Now, relatives realize that Munero's intention was to gather the materials, money
 and family members to make life in the United States worth it. He was going to
 live in Florida, after all. He just wasn't going to do it alone. His entire nuclear
 family -- dad Rafael, mother Marielena Garcia, brothers Jikary and mentally
 disabled Ricardo, and his common-law wife, Elizabet -- agreed to go along. He
 and Elizabet took her son, Elian.

 Elizabet apparently discussed the plan with Zenaida Santos. The two were
 waitresses at the Punta Arena Paraiso Hotel in Varadero Beach. Santos was
 married to Nelson Rodriguez, the brother-in-law of Elizabet's niece in Miami. The
 couple took the trip with Nelson's brother Juan Carlos and the boys' parents, Juan
 Manuel Rodriguez and Merida Barrios.

 The whole family drowned. The body of Juan Manuel Rodriguez is one of four that
 have not been recovered. The others lost at sea are Lazaro and Jikary Munero
 and Elizabet Brotons.

 In a house across the street from the Rodriguez home, Lilka Guillermo, 23, told
 her grandmother she was visiting her sister. She wanted to leave the country.
 Everybody knew that, her grandmother, Rosa Betancourt, said. But she planned
 to do it legally. In fact, Guillermo had two previous opportunities to leave illegally
 when a boyfriend and her mother -- both rafters -- left on separate trips. It is
 believed her boyfriend came last year with Munero.

 But she was afraid, relatives said. She didn't know how to swim. Nobody
 expected her to try this.

 ''If I knew where she was going, I would have gone after her,'' said Betancourt. ''I
 would not have let her go.''

 NOBODY KNEW

 Although so many people were part of the plan, many in Cardenas said nobody
 knew that Munero was building a vessel using spare parts, aluminum and a motor
 he fashioned. He used money he saved as a taxi driver and cash he got from
 selling his 1955 Chevrolet. He made himself captain of the voyage.

 ''He knew the most. He had experience,'' said Munero's best friend, who didn't
 want his name published. ''It looks like he talked the others into it.''

 Days before the departure, the Muneros started parceling out the family's
 belongings. A brand-new TV set and a refrigerator went to Rafael's brother, other
 electronics to their friends.

 But Rafael Munero, 49, felt uneasy. He was leaving behind his younger brother,
 Dagoberto, who worked with him and was more like a son. At 9 p.m. Nov. 20, the
 night before the voyage, Dagoberto went to his brother's house to talk him out of it
 -- or say goodbye.

 Rafael seemed half-drunk and half-ready to stay home in Cardenas, his brother
 said.

 ''He didn't want me to stay,'' Dagoberto Munero, 41, said. ''And I didn't want him to
 leave.''

 PERSUASION FAILS

 The younger brother tried to persuade Rafael to change his mind, but his
 sister-in-law Marielena was eager to go, and so was his brother's son, Lazaro.

 ''I gave him advice,'' Dagoberto Munero said. ''I said, 'Don't go. Don't go. Don't go.' I
 didn't want him to go because he was like my father. I can't live without him. But
 every time I tried to say that, my nephew would step in to say, 'Why are you
 taking these ideas out of his head?' We exchanged a few salty words.''

 The argument ended badly.

 ''My nephew threw me out of the house,'' Dagoberto Munero said. ''I didn't say
 goodbye.''

 Meanwhile, Elizabet was telling her family that she was taking a two-hour trip to
 the big city. ''She said she was going to Havana for a visit,'' said her mother,
 Raquel Rodriguez. ''I never saw her again.''

 Arianne Horta Alfonso and her boyfriend, Nivaldo Fernandez Ferran, the only adult
 survivors of the voyage, also found out about the trip. They told U.S. Border Patrol
 agents that they offered Lazaro Munero $1,000 to take them.

 Jorge Munero, Lazaro's uncle in Miami, said the two survivors are the only
 passengers from the ill-fated vessel whom he didn't know in Cuba before he left in
 1992. He is sure his nephew didn't charge anyone for the trip, all of them being
 family in one way or another. Elizabet was related to the Rodriguez clan through
 her niece Carmen, the wife of a third Rodriguez boy, Orlando, who left Cuba last
 year.

 More likely, he said, Lazaro feared that if he didn't take the couple, they would
 spill the beans.

 SETTING OUT

 About 4:30 a.m. Nov. 21, the 15 would-be emigrants made their way to Sierrita, a
 spot on the shore a block or so from a shipyard where the tin houses are far
 enough away so that no one can see you. There, a beaten path in the shrubbery
 opens out to a rough shore.

 They carried water, bread, crackers, cheese and previously boiled hot dogs. Like
 many rafters before them, they also took three inflated inner tubes -- just in case
 they needed them -- which they tied and trailed behind the boat.

 Soon, the voyagers had trouble with the outboard engine and returned to the
 Cuban coast for repairs. Arianne Horta dropped off her daughter, Estefani, 5,
 because she feared the trip would be too dangerous. Then, believing they had the
 problem fixed, the group set off again in the dawn that Monday.

 The Cuban Foreign Ministry said in a statement three days after the survivors
 were found that it had alerted the U.S. Coast Guard about the overloaded boat
 headed for U.S. waters. The Cuban Border Patrol, it said, had spotted the boat
 Monday morning leaving the waters off Cardenas and patrol agents repeatedly
 warned the passengers to turn back.

 U.S. Coast Guard officials acknowledged getting a telex from their Cuban
 counterparts and said agency planes and cutters were dispatched to search for
 the boat. They found nothing.

 BAD WEATHER

 Late that Monday, from all accounts, the group ran into foul weather and the
 engine quit again. They drifted, bailing water that was coming in over the sides in
 the five-foot waves, until Tuesday night -- it was dark, survivors said -- when the
 boat capsized.

 They clung to the hull for a while and righted it again, but the boat kept taking on
 water. Fearing they would sink, the group decided to use the inner tubes. Seeing
 that one was flat, they formed two groups on the others -- women and the boy on
 one, the men on the other.

 Then, one by one, they started slipping into the sea.

 It is believed that Lazaro Munero and his brother Jikary were the first to go. One of
 them decided to try to swim for land and send help. When he ran into difficulty,
 his brother followed. When both seemed to struggle, a third man swam off to help
 them.

 None of the three were ever seen again.

 Perhaps the third man was their father, Rafael. Shortly after, Horta said, a woman
 who learned that both of her sons were dead decided she had nothing left to live
 for -- and let go. It is believed that the woman was Marielena Garcia, Munero's
 mother. Horta tried to grab her as she and others screamed for her to hold on. But
 it was too late and they were all weak.

 The next day, Horta and Fernandez said, they saw at least two big ships. They
 aren't sure if they were cruise ships or freighters. They screamed and waved -- but
 the vessels didn't stop.

 At that point, Horta, the boy and another woman -- perhaps Barrios, who is
 believed to have been the last one with Elian -- remained on one inner tube, and
 Fernandez was on the other. Later Wednesday, Fernandez became delirious and
 started to lose consciousness, so Horta untied herself from one inner tube and
 swam to the other -- at this point they were still connected by a piece of rope.
 She slapped him back to life.

 That night, they could see little lights in the distance, and they were sure it was a
 shore. They tried to swim, but the currents kept pushing them back. Tired, weak
 and thirsty, they decided to rest for a while, keeping their eyes on the horizon.

 In the night, they also became separated from the other inner tube, which
 disappeared. It could have been when Horta and Fernandez fell half-asleep for a
 short while; they couldn't keep their eyes open. The next morning, when they saw
 some lights, the two started to kick and paddle toward the shore. They saw
 boats, a marina. They were just off Key Biscayne.

 A FISHING TRIP

 Meanwhile, Donato Dalrymple was at the controls of his cousin's boat, setting off
 from the dock behind his cousin's house on the Intracoastal Waterway in
 Pompano Beach for a fishing trip. Sam Ciancio had called him the day before to
 invite him. It was a rare treat. The two hardly ever see each other -- maybe once a
 year, Dalrymple said.

 ''He said he wasn't going to go if I didn't go. I canceled two jobs to do it,'' said
 Dalrymple, who has a small housecleaning business and is in the middle of
 moving.

 They left about 7 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day.

 Ciancio told Dalrymple to look out for floating debris under which fish sometimes
 gather.

 ''We were just out of Lighthouse Point, and I was zigzagging southeast at an
 angle,'' Dalrymple said. ''There were three- to five-foot waves. It was rough out
 there, very rough.''

 About 8:30 a.m., Dalrymple spotted something -- a dark thing, circular in shape.
 They neared it and Ciancio started baiting the poles, when Donato noticed what
 he thought was a person inside the floating black rubber doughnut. He saw what
 he thought was a hand and the top of a man's head with dark, wet hair.

 ''Nah,'' Ciancio said, still baiting.

 ''I'm telling you, Sam, there's somebody in there.''

 Ciancio looked again. ''Isn't that a sick joke? That somebody could tie a doll to an
 inner tube?''

 A CLOSER LOOK

 Just then, there were tugs on the poles and both men began to reel in their catch.
 As Ciancio kept fighting with a fish on the end of his line, Dalrymple lost the bite
 on his. ''So I went back to the steering wheel to get a closer look,'' Dalrymple
 said. ''I didn't think it was a dummy in there.''

 Something kept nagging at him. ''I'm telling you there's someone in that inner
 tube. I think he's dead,'' he yelled to his cousin. Then, as if on cue, he saw a hand
 move. It slipped a little, then reached up again to get a better grasp.

 His cousin told him to pull the boat over as he stripped in seconds and jumped
 into the water. When he pulled the boy in, they couldn't believe it.

 ''I asked him, 'Do you speak English?' and he didn't answer,'' Dalrymple said. ''He
 didn't look American, so I asked, 'Tu hablas español?' and he said, 'Si.' But real
 softly, like a little sigh.''

 The boy never cried. ''He never showed any tears or signs of being scared, even
 though he's probably been through hell and back and I'm sure he's never seen two
 Americans before,'' Dalrymple said, his eyes widening as if he were telling the
 story for the first time.

 The man with the tattoos covering both forearms cradled the weak foreign boy in
 his arms anyway.

 ''While my cousin is on the phone, I'm kissing his face, his forehead and his
 cheeks and his chin, and holding him,'' Dalrymple said, crossing his arms on his
 chest as if he still held the child.

 The exhausted boy immediately fell asleep, he said.

 A Herald staff writer in Cuba contributed to this report.

                     Copyright 1999 Miami Herald