MIAMI.
THE war has begun and the rebels have won the first battle.
It wasn’t hard to notice the smell of victory in the humid Miami air.
On Northwest 22nd Avenue, at a two-way intersection near Elian’s Miami home, music producer Humberto Upierre, 39, had two Bose speakers on his front porch blaring the month-old Elian song.
“Elian isn’t going – Elian is staying,” the song’s chorus repeated over and over again in Spanish.
Upierre stood in front of his bungalow-style home with a giant grin on his face, using a Bic pen to scrape against an instrument called a guiro.
North- and southbound traffic crawled as flag-waving Cubans leaned on their car horns in ecstasy and paraded up and down the street. It looked like The Bronx after the Yankees win a World Series.
“It’s all part of the defense,” shouted Upierre, never losing the beat on the guiro.
“Every song helps us express what we feel – which in Cuba we couldn’t do.”
Across the street, dozens of people, old and young, lined the sidewalk, waving flags as if they were in a parade.
Several blocks away, on Luis Sabines Boulevard, Oscar Lopez, 27, stood on the corner holding a large sign stating: “Ms. Reno, you have produced civil disobedience in Miami.”
Inches away, his buddy repeatedly screamed into a bullhorn: “Liberty for Elian!”
An evangelical pastor by night and a business consultant by day, Lopez’s passion is driven by his religious experience in Cuba, which he left two years ago.
“When I was 13, I became a Christian,” he said.
“When I got older, the Cuban government told me I had to choose between Christianity and communism. I chose Christ, and I wasn’t allowed to study in a university.”
Further down the block, José Papadua, 27, and his friend Alex Vicente, 30, stood at the curb, waving a large Cuban flag at passing motorists.
“I’m standing here to represent. I’ve never seen a community so united,” Papadua said.
“They can’t stop us, not even the federales.”
Papadua and Vicente were so pumped up, they sometimes spoke at the same time. They planned to pitch a tent outside Elian’s Miami home last night and keep watch for the enemy.
With each victory, the rebel forces grow stronger, cockier. Some have even claimed that they will put their lives on the line to prevent authorities from snatching the little boy.
But this should have all been over yesterday at 2:01 p.m. At one minute after the deadline Reno imposed – after hearing great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez declare his defiance – Reno should have taken Elian to his father, and jailed Lazaro.
Instead, she let the Miami family spit in her face.