MIAMI · The Little Havana home that sheltered Elián González during his five months in Miami is still scarred from the swift raid in which armed federal agents stormed the house to reunite the boy with his father.

Elián's Miami relatives didn't repair the holes created five years ago today when authorities kicked in the bedroom door. It is a reminder to visitors that a Border Patrol officer confronted family friend Donato Dalrymple as he tried to hide in a closet with the boy, an image captured in a Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press photograph.

An enlarged version of the picture is part of the makeshift museum and shrine to Elián's tumultuous saga in the United States. It is joined by display cases full of Elián's toys, the clothes and costumes he wore, photo montages, and the race car bed the family said federal agents broke during the raid.

"Since this was a historic event, I thought it was necessary to have this as an homage to the community here, for all that they've done," said Delfín González, Elián's great-uncle who bought the home and made it into a museum.

González, 67, will never forget the throngs of people who camped out in front of the house as another of Elián's great-uncles, Lázaro González, and the boy's father, Juan Miguel González, waged an international custody battle. For months, the crowd prayed and demonstrated on Elián's behalf.

The morning of the raid, federal agents sprayed tear gas on or knocked down many of the demonstrators while rushing the home. Today, when some of those people come to the house, they break down crying, Delfín González said.

"They get depressed," he said. "They cry. They feel very close to what happened."

Sylvia Iriondo, president of Mothers Against Repression, is among those with painful memories. Iriondo, who was at the house when federal authorities took the boy away from his relatives, thinks of Elián often and laments the circumstances of his departure.

"I can still see his face, and I'm sure that everybody that was there and everybody that was caught in that probably feels the same way," Iriondo said. "We didn't want for the process of law not to happen, but we didn't want that process of law to be interrupted."

The early-morning raid was the climax of a battle that pitted the young Cuban castaway's U.S. relatives against Juan Miguel González. Their attorneys fought for months in state and federal courts, but momentum swung toward the father after a Miami-Dade circuit judge threw out a custody claim Lázaro Gonzalez had filed in Family Court, saying she had no power to hear the claim because it was an immigration matter that only the federal courts could decide.

Elián was 5 years old when he was found clinging to an inner tube in the ocean off Fort Lauderdale on Thanksgiving Day in 1999. Cuban exiles nicknamed him the "miracle child" for being among the survivors of a shipwreck that killed his mother and several others after they left Cuba.

After the raid, Elián went to live with his father at the Rosedale estate in the Cleveland Park section of northwest Washington. He returned to the island in June 2000, after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the custody case, letting stand a federal appeals court ruling that federal officials had the authority to determine that only the boy's father could speak for his son.

While Delfín González tends to the memory of Elián's time in Miami, the two other relatives who received the majority of media attention during the custody battle have gone on with their lives, more or less quietly.

His brother, Lázaro González, 54, who cared for the boy, is a bus body technician with Miami-Dade Transit.

Lázaro González and his family are plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit against six agents they say used excessive force during the raid. The case is on appeal before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

Lázaro González's daughter, Marisleysis, considered Elián's surrogate mother by those who wanted to keep the boy in the United States, runs a beauty salon in southwest Miami. According to public records, she married in 2003 and divorced a year later.

While her father has participated in the occasional news conference or Elián-related commemoration, Marisleysis González, who was hospitalized several times for stress-related ailments during the Elián saga, has shied away from the spotlight.

At Marisleysis Hair Design on a recent afternoon, she declined to comment as she colored the hair of a patron at her small shop.

"I really don't want to talk about it," she said before returning to work.

She has said little else publicly in the five years since the raid.

Last year, Marisleysis González told People magazine that she had suffered years of depression and abdominal problems as a result of the Elián conflict and had sought relief in acupuncture.

"I am dying to have him in front of me and see what he would do," she told the magazine. "In my heart I think he still loves me."

Delfín González said his niece's business is the fulfillment of a long-held dream for the 26-year-old.

"She always wanted to be a hairstylist or a teacher," he said.

But she doesn't like hanging around the home she shared with Elián, Delfín González said.

"Marisleysis doesn't come because she still feels all of this very deeply," he said.

Delfín González built himself an apartment in the back of the house and serves as tour guide to visitors. Some come from as far away as Japan and Australia, all wanting to know more about what happened. Reporters and documentary filmmakers also drop in sometimes and pepper him with questions.

While he can tell them about the fight to keep Elián in the United States, his knowledge about what's going on with the boy these days comes in snippets of information from neighbors, friends and relatives of friends. As far as he knows, Delfín González said, the Cuban government has his grandnephew's immediate family under a tight watch, with security officers escorting the boy to school and Juan Miguel González to work.

"[Elián's] like a prisoner," Delfín González said. "I take the news calmly, because I know what the system is like over there. At least the boy is alive. Where there's life, there's hope."

He hopes that maybe one day, when there's a change in Cuba, Elián can come back to the United States, perhaps for a visit.

"Cuba's not that far from here."

Madeline Baró Diaz can be reached at mbaro@sun-sentinel.com or 305-810-5007.