Little Angel

--John Milton

And the child sailor
was protected by the dolphins,
who resembled little angels
hovering over the little rafter.

--from a poem about Elian Gonzalez by Miami Cuban exile Jose Manuel Carballo

Anyone who still sees the custody battle over Elian Gonzalez as a purely political squabble between Miami's Cuban exiles and Fidel Castro should visit the Domingo Padron Art Gallery in Coral Gables, an upscale suburb of Miami. There you'll find "El Nino de los Delfines"--"The Boy of the Dolphins"--a new painting by Cuban exile artist Alexis Blanco. The 30-by-24-inch oil-on-canvas work depicts Elian drifting at sea on his inner tube, surrounded by three dolphins and bathed in a shaft of light that appears to be descending directly from heaven. One of the dolphins in the painting is "pushing Elian's raft, to show that he will not return to communism," Blanco told The Miami Herald.

Blanco's arresting work renders pictorially what has already become folk wisdom among Miami Cubans since the boy--one of three survivors of a shipwreck that killed 11 other Cuban refugees, his mother included--was plucked from the sea on Thanksgiving Day: Elian's survival after two days alone on the ocean was, quite literally, a miracle. God intervened to save the child's life and bring him to freedom in the United States. At His command, a school of dolphins arrived to protect the child from sharks and nudge him gently toward shore.

So widespread is the Miami Cuban community's belief in this version of events that it is posted, quite matter-of-factly, on the official

. "The fishermen that found Elian reported that Elian was surrounded by dolphins...who were protecting him from the shark infested waters," the site explains.

If divine intervention brought the 6-year-old to safety in the United States, it follows that he belongs here--that he should be allowed to stay with his great-aunt and great-uncle in Miami rather than be sent back to his father and grandparents in Cuba, and that any other dispensation by the U.S. government would be not only a political and legal mistake but also a kind of blasphemy. No matter that the story is almost certainly not true. The fisherman who found Elian, Donato Dalrymple, has told me and other journalists that he didn't see any dolphins protecting Elian. Nor did the Coast Guard officer who responded to Dalrymple's call for help. We are told, by Dalrymple and others, that Elian himself has recounted seeing dolphins. But he was drifting in and out of consciousness during his time on the water.

Whatever the story's literal truth, the point is that so many people believe it. Clearly, what the rest of us need to understand is both the speed with which an entire mythology has grown up around the boy's amazing survival and the power with which these stories have fed the Miami Cubans' determination to prevent Elian's repatriation--despite unfavorable legal rulings and strong indications that most of the American public is against them.

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