Family matters: A pair of Cuban matriarchs come to the United States to make the case for the return of their grandson Elian Gonzalez. A bruising political fight gets even more personal.

Looking as if they'd like to knock a few people on the head with their handbags, two Cuban grandmothers flew into the middle of an American political brawl last week. They came to New York from communist Cuba, hoping to take their grandson 6-year-old exile Elian Gonzalez back home to his father. When they arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport, cameras flashed and journalists yelled at one another as they fought for position. We're all frightened to be here in front of you, said the Rev. Robert Edgar of the National Council of Churches, which arranged the visit. But Elian's paternal grandmother, Mariela Quintana, who has a way of thrusting her jaw and jabbing her hands to make a point, disagreed. I feel very well here, she said through an interpreter, glaring at the unruly media mob. I'm not afraid of anything.

That's good, because Quintana and maternal grandmother Raquel Rodriguez are strangers in a strange land. From the decrepit dictatorship of Fidel Castro's Cuba, they flew to a country of drawn-out legal battles, democratic checks and balances, media frenzy and political opportunism. They came on an intensely personal mission--to retrieve their grandson, who endured the drowning deaths of his mother, his stepfather and nine other would-be asylum seekers in the Straits of Florida over the Thanksgiving holiday. Yet they couldn't hope to achieve their aim without waging a very public fight. Mainly, the pair hoped to drive home the point that Elian belongs with his biological father, and not with his great-uncle and other Miami relatives who hardly knew him until two months ago. You can't imagine the psyche of that child, Quintana told NEWSWEEK in an interview on Saturday night. He saw his mother dying... He doesn't have a father to help him. They say in Miami that they love him very much. If they love him, why don't they return him?

The Clinton administration makes a similar argument, albeit less forcefully. The Immigration and Naturalization Service ruled on Jan. 5 that Elian should be sent home. And Attorney General Janet Reno, who met the distraught grandmothers on Saturday, has endorsed that decision. Laws, morals, family values that we talk about--all say that the bond between father and child is one of the most sacred... relationships there is, Reno told reporters last week. Yet anti-Castro relatives in Miami have filed court suits to keep the boy here. Those cases seem flimsy, but could buy time for political maneuver. Conservative senators plan to introduce legislation this week to make Elian an honorary U.S. citizen, which would make it hard for the government to deport him. (President Clinton opposes such legislation, but hadn't said last week whether he'd veto it.)

Enter the two Cuban grandmothers. Quintana and Rodriguez both come from Cardenas, a ramshackle town 75 miles east of Havana. On the day last week when the two women touched down in New York, most of the traffic on Cardenas's potholed streets consisted of horse-pulled carts and people on old bicycles. On the blue door of Quintana's house was a poster that read: You will return to the hearth of your family and your people and your land. You are our symbol, our child hero. That child belongs to us, he is from here, said Amarylis Duran, a 45-year-old neighbor who works in the town rum factory.

The two grandmothers had never traveled out of Cuba before last week. They were persuaded to make the journey by NCC officials, who in turn had responded to an appeal for help from the Cuban Council of Churches. Elian's father refused to come unless he could be sure to take Elian home, out of concern that Congress or U.S. courts might subpoena him. If he came, he might have been put in a legal position where he could not leave, Quintana said. (It's also conceivable that he'd be tempted to stay, although he'd be deserting a wife and child back in Cuba.) The grandmothers, in any case, were a safer bet for all concerned. Castro would have less to worry about because the matrons would be unlikely to bolt their homeland to make an uncertain start in a foreign country. And anti-Castro elements in the United States would be less likely to target them than they would the father. From the Cuban standpoint, grandmothers are sacred, says Nelson Valdes, a University of New Mexico sociologist who specializes in Cuba.

Yet Rodriguez and Quintana did not want to travel to Miami to confront their relatives directly. In the interview with NEWSWEEK, they said they were afraid to go (and they might also have been concerned, like Elian's father, about getting drawn into legal cases there). Instead, they demanded that the Miami relatives send Elian to see them. But the relatives weren't biting. A spokesman for the family hosting Elian suggested that Protestant church officials encourage Rodriguez, in particular, to visit the Statue of Liberty. Let her see the symbol of why [her daughter] Elisabet lost her life in the ocean to bring Elian to the country of freedom, said Armando Gutierrez.

Rodriguez scoffed at the notion of her daughter as a political martyr. She suggested that Elisabet had been forced to make the risky journey by an abusive husband, and asked for help in securing her grandson's release so that my daughter will rest in peace. For her part, Quintana fumed to reporters at the prospect of Elian's becoming an American. He is born in Cuba... He is Cuban, she said. And nobody has the right, even Congress or the president, to change his status.

She spoke from the heart. But Elian is more than a son or grandson now. For many on both sides, he is a powerful political symbol, a geopolitical pawn. At the weekend, the grandmothers' plans were to fly back to Havana on Monday, though they left open the possibility of returning: I am ready to go anywhere to pick up my little heart, Quintana told NEWSWEEK. Whether Elian stays in the United States or goes home to Cardenas, however, he'll never be just a regular kid again. Not even a grandmother's love can change that.