BY ELAINE DE VALLE
edevalle@herald.com

Like many in South Florida, Jose Cohen Valdes watches the daily news accounts of Elian Gonzalez, the rafter boy rescued Thanksgiving Day who is now at the center of an international custody fight between his father in Cuba and relatives in Miami.

But Cohen probably watches a little more closely than most.

And each time Cuban leader Fidel Castro, a photo of Elian on the lapel of his olive green uniform, cites parental rights and demands the boy be returned to his father, Cohen winces.

``What about my paternal rights? I'm a father, too,'' Cohen said.

Cohen, who came to the United States from Cuba during the 1994 rafter exodus, was able to get his wife and three children visas to enter the United States in 1996. The Cuban government won't let Lazara Brito and her kids -- Yanelis, 16, Yamila, 13, and Isaac, 8 -- leave.

``They are hostages,'' Cohen said. ``I knew I would have to pay a price for leaving but I never imagined it would be this extreme -- so many years separated from my children.''

Brito has written to many Cuban officials, including Castro. His response: Not my problem. In a telephone interview Saturday, Brito read the answer to her letter to Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's National Assembly: ``This office is not equipped to intervene in that issue.''

Said Cohen: ``Everyone says it is someone else's responsibility or function. They give her the runaround. They are sent to one place and then to another. It's a show.''

Reached at her in-laws' home in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana, Brito -- who doesn't have a phone and lives a block away -- said things get worse with the passage of time. Instead of answers, she keeps getting notes left under her door telling her to forget her husband -- forever.

ANONYMOUS NOTES

``Anonymous little papers. One of them says, `Lazara, forget it. You'll never get out,' '' Brito said. Another little missive even told her to try the trip on a raft, she said.

``They are stimulating illegal exits,'' Brito said about the Cuban government. ``They say the U.S. and the Cubans in Miami provoke it, but they are the ones stimulating me and my children to leave illegally. Because we have no choice.''

Life for her family has been hell since her husband left, she said. She can no longer work. Her eldest daughter, who would have been in a pre-university program by now, can't go to school because she has asked to leave the country. The family is constantly watched.

``They are on top of everything I do -- who I talk to, who I write to,'' Brito said.

She is most worried about her children.

``They have seen how the security comes and searches the house; how they have taken out the photos of their father and thrown them all over and confiscated letters he has written to them. These are things that will mark them forever,'' she said.

Brito's middle child, Yamila, was put on a bus at school and taken to one of the mass demonstrations to demand Elian's return in front of the U.S. Interest Section in Havana, her parents said.

``And she knows what's going on,'' said the girl's father in Miami, who said he was ``disgusted'' with the irony. ``She's not dumb. She knows she's the one who's been kidnapped.''

FAMILIES DIVIDED

Many Cuban exiles have called Castro a hypocrite for his comments about Elian and his father's rights and they point to several cases, like Cohen's, where people have U.S. visas to join family here and yet have not been allowed to leave.

``Castro is notorious for that,'' said Jose Basulto, who remembers how the family of Pablo Morales -- one of the four Brothers to the Rescue members killed in 1996 when Cuban warplanes downed two of the group's aircraft -- was hounded for a year as they waited for their exit permits.

There was also the well-publicized case of Orestes Lorenzo. It was big news when Lorenzo, one of the Cuban air force's MiG pilots, hijacked a Soviet warplane and landed it at the Boca Chica Naval Air station just north of Key West. It was bigger news when he flew back to Cuba 21 months later, undetected, in a civilian Cessna, and scooped up his wife and two sons, whom the Cuban government had refused permission to leave the island despite having U.S. visas.

Lorenzo's wife, Vicky, told reporters that the Cuban government had told her she would never leave and even offered her a large home in Havana and a job if she denounced her husband.

Julian Lago, who with Lorenzo formed a group called Fathers For Freedom, couldn't fly over and get his son. He had to wait. Watching the Elian story unfold on TV these past few weeks brings it all back.

`UPSIDE-DOWN' CASE

``It's the same case, but upside down,'' said Lago, who left Cuba in April 1992, while his son -- who got a U.S. visa the same day he did -- was kept behind.

``Well, not really the same because this boy is free. Here, he has a future and there he would be in the darkness -- a black fog for all his life,'' Lago said.

Lago said his son, Ivan Barrios, was a political prisoner who had made human rights denunciations and taken part in peaceful street marches.

``But even though he served his sentence, they told him they wouldn't give it [an exit pass] to him because he was in the age of military service. It was a trick,'' Lago said. ``Political prisoners are not called to the military. It was a way to keep him in Cuba.''

Barrios, whose mother had died years earlier in a car accident, finally came to Miami a year later. But his father will never forget the feeling he had when he thought he would never see his son again.

``It happens a lot,'' said Maria Dominguez, director of the Human Rights Institute at St. Thomas University. ``Mainly with the refugee program.''

EXIT ROUTES

There are three ways for Cubans to legally leave the island, she explained: The family reunification program, which can take years; the visa lottery system that awards at least 20,000 entries a year into the U.S. from Cuba; and the refugee program, for which a Cuban must request political asylum.

Apparently, Dominguez said, Cuba doesn't like that last one.

``The people that are having a lot of difficulty getting out are people in one of two cases: when they win an asylum claim and then . . . they won't get released by the Castro government. They cannot get the white card.

``Or, if they are here in the U.S. already and want to petition for their family members in Cuba, the government won't allow the relatives to come.''

Charles Shapiro, director of the U.S. State Department's Cuban Affairs Desk, said the topic is a priority in ongoing migration talks between the two governments, like the meetings in Havana last week.

``It is an issue every time: exit permits and who gets exit permits,'' he said.

Brito said the common practice is the government's revenge for losing top officials like her husband, who worked in the Interior Ministry reporting on foreign investments to the Cuban government.

``This is simply a way to punish him for leaving. Until they decide that my husband has paid enough, it is my children who have to pay this price,'' she said.