HAVANA -- Rows upon rows of Cuban mothers -- hundreds visibly pregnant, others carrying small children -- marched along a seaside boulevard in Havana on Friday as Fidel Castro's government appealed to emotion in demanding the return of 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez.
"Bring back our son!" the women cried, waving Cuban flags as they moved slowly up the Malecon coastal highway to the American diplomatic mission in Havana. "We want our son!"Cuban authorities estimated that 100,000 women participated in what it called the "March of the Combatant Mothers."
The protest marked a return to the larger demonstrations of early December, when hundreds of thousands of people rallied in some of Cuba's biggest gatherings since the triumph of the revolution that brought Castro to power 41 years ago.
Elian, the boy at the center of the international dispute, was found clinging to an inner tube Nov. 25 off the coast of Florida after his mother, stepfather and others died in a failed attempt to reach U.S. shores. He has been staying with relatives in Miami who do not want to send him back to Cuba.
Friday was the U.S. government's original deadline for Elian to return to his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service earlier ruled that only the father can speak for Elian on immigration issues.
Attorney General Janet Reno lifted the deadline to give Elian's relatives in Miami a chance to fight for the boy in federal court. Reno said this week that only a federal court has jurisdiction in the case and rejected a Florida state judge's order that Elian remain in Miami until March 6 to hear arguments by his American relatives.
Ricardo Alarcon, president of the National Assembly and Castro's point man on U.S.-Cuban relations, said Friday evening that Cuban authorities are frustrated by Reno's failure to set a new deadline and the INS's failure to enforce its decision that Elian be returned to his father. It is up to the U.S. government to enforce its own decision, he said.
"No enforcement action was ever announced by the INS," said Alarcon, former Cuban ambassador to the United Nations. "You have a very strange situation."
A sign outside the American diplomatic mission in Havana on Friday showed a portrait of the first-grader behind a chain-link fence, underscoring Cuba's position that the boy has been "kidnapped" by relatives in Miami.
Elian's young stepmother, Nelsy, was at the head of the massive march, pushing his half-brother in a stroller. She was flanked by Elian's two grandmothers and Vilma Espin, head of the Cuban Federation of Women and wife of Raul Castro, the president's brother and armed forces minister.
Elian's paternal grandmother, Mariela, told reporters that she was willing to go to Miami to retrieve her grandson if it was assured to her that she could pick him up and return immediately to Cuba without become embroiled in legal or political problems.
"I would go there just for one minute to get him. To get him. Nothing more," she said.
Red, white and blue Cuban flags fluttered amid the sea of women stretching for blocks down the Malecon as choppy ocean waves splashed against the coastal wall. A few men and children also joined the march.
Since his sea rescue, Elian has been increasingly referred to in Cuba as "our son," a boy hero symbolizing the government's decades-long ideological battle with Cuban exiles in Miami. Rather than a clash between two governments, the dispute over Elian is a battle between Cubans of differing political views living on both sides of the Florida Straits.
In an interview Thursday with ABC's "Nightline," Gonzalez, 31, expressed growing rage and frustration over his separation from his son.
Elian's maternal grandmother, Raquel Rodriguez, expressed her own despair in recent days, saying that her dead daughter will not rest until Elian is back in Cuba. Elisabeth Brotons, Elian's mother, was among 11 people who died when their boat sank off Florida's coast.
Elian's paternal great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, is fighting to keep the boy with him in Miami, saying he can give the child a better life outside Cuba. He and others who oppose the boy's return to Cuba say that Brotons died to give the boy freedom in the United States.
"Saying that keeping Elian there out of respect for my daughter's will is a bunch of lies," Rodriguez told Cuban journalists this week.
"You can see that none of them know her," she said, referring to the statements made by Elian's relatives in Miami about her daughter. "I was her mother and I knew her better than anyone."