By Mary Anastasia O'Grady

"Elian amigo llévame contigo. " (Elian, friend, take me with you.)

As this popular ditty makes its way around Cuba, 90 miles away in Miami Elian Gonzalez will soon go to court where a judge will decide who speaks for him and 'whether he is to be shipped back to the, ranks of Fidel Castro's Young Pioneers.

The U.S. events of Elian's case hardly pass for news.-Miami's Cuban exile community, having tasted repression' first hand, has characteristically spared nothing to try to save a child from the grasp of El Maximo Lider-a pattern it has followed for more than 40 years. Equally predictable has been the American left, which is full of resentment towards the powerful conservative exiles and has sided with Fidel.

Bill Clinton has read the polls, which reflect a generally low public awareness about the horrors of totalitarian Cuba, and followed his cues; a liberal nun who said the child should stay was quickly brushed aside. In perpetual search of a legacy beyond Monica, Mr. Clinton is said to be intent on normalizing relations with Fidel. So what else is new?

Yet, there is news from Cuba that would enlighten Americans, if only it were reported.

The story, unfolding daily, is one of a growing dissident movement that is unnerving Fidel Castro. This peaceful opposition quite uncommon in the history of Latin American rebellion-includes vocal, independent journalists and a widening circle of dissatisfied proletarians who frequently discuss their hatred for the government and their hope of escape. Talk to Cubans privately, as a few enterprising reporters have done, and you'll find many whose only protest is the fact that they didn't make it out with Elian.

Little about Fidel's opposition has found its way into American living rooms on the evening news, however. Instead, network news hours have delighted in beaming shots from Havana of mass street demonstrations against the "kidnapping" of Elian. It is truly amazing that even with the privilege of hindsight on 70 years of Soviet totalitarian organization, American reporters and anchors-with a few exceptions, such as Fox News-could cover the mob on the malecon and never even suggest that orchestrating demonstrations by the party faithful has been a Communist specialty for generations.

Last week independent Cuban journalist Maria Elena Rodriguez filed a report with the Miami news service, Nueva Prensa Cubana, describing, the mechanics, of the roundup that produced the Cuban mothers' protest march. She also said young women were given pillows so they could pose as pregnant. If that story has hit the evening news stateside, I haven't seen it.

CNN, which has a bureau in Havana but doesn't give out its phone number, told me from Atlanta that it has not reported on Cubans who believe that Elian should stay in Miami because Cubans, being very family oriented people, are strongly in favor of the child's return to his father. Associated Press Television News, also in Havana, tells a similar story.

CNN says it filmed one man on the street in Havana who said Elian might be better off in Miami, but it also says that it is difficult to get such opinions on camera because of fear, whether "real or imagined. " That anyone thinks fear of persecution in Cuba might be "imagined" is puzzling. Moreover, if the fear factor is strong enough to silence citizens, one would expect that would be reported.

It may be that foreign news bureaus and visiting reporters simply do not have the resources that would allow them to get out and talk to Cubans. Yet, that is what National Public Radio's David Welna did when he went to Elian's hometown of Cardenas. Last Friday Mr. Welna reported 6n conversations with young men there who readily expressed their disgust with the government and their dreams of escape. One said that except for the responsibility of caring for his elderly mother he would try to flee. "I don't like this government. And I don't like the life here, nobody likes the life here," he said.

Another, a member of a dissident group, said, "I don't want to leave. I want the ones who have driven this country into such poverty to leave." Many in Cardenas, he said, privately believe that the best outcome would be for Elian's father to join him in Miami. "Why should he come back here? So that they can stop allowing him milk rations when he turns seven? So that he can be a fourth-class citizen? So that he can prepare for a career in the university and then have to work for tourists in order to survive? Is that why he should come back here?" the angry man asked.

This discontent reflects the bigger story, largely unreported, of why this small boy has become so important to the regime. It is a story of the pullulating dislike for Fidel Castro-which I heard over and over again during my visit to Cuba about a year ago- and his clever, manipulative attempts to hang on despite the revulsion he instills in his own people.

In the past year the old man has been steadily losing out to a groundswell of dissatisfaction as well as increasing pressure from former allies in Latin America and Spain to allow free speech. At the Havana Ibero American Summit in November, a number of visiting heads of state called on dissidents and boosted their cause. Shortly thereafter, when Castro was unable to attend the Seattle World Trade Organization meeting because he feared arrest for the 1996 downing of a plane belonging to Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue, his local image suffered again. More recently, he publicly attacked by name 13 dissidents, paradoxically giving them a kind of credibility that made things even worse for him. During November and December he jailed 260 political opponents and put over 200 under house arrest. More than a dozen of the most active leaders remain in prison.

Thus little Elian's rescue from the sea was pure serendipity for the Castro regime. What better way to reignite revolutionary fervor and simultaneously drown out the opposition than by playing on the fate of a child? Foreign reporters have done little to unmask this ploy. Although the staged demonstrations were more for internal consumption than for export, timid reporting has provided the extra bonus of U.S. popular support. The point worth reporting is that when it comes to politicizing Elian, Fidel wrote the book.

"It's so sad," that people go to the rallies, demanding that the child be returned, when those same people tell me privately that what they really want is to flee themselves, one independent journalist told me by phone. The only explanation for such schizophrenic behavior is that the regime forces their participation but in their hearts they long to be free. That story, along with hundreds of others, is still waiting to be told to Americans.