---I was trounced before when I thought elian should be allowed to stay here until he was 18, when he could decide whether or not he wanted to go back to cuba. Basically, at the time, I played "what if". If elians mother had been seriously hurt, what would her last words have been regardings her son? "please send my son back to cuba, it's so nice there" Or "please make sure my son gets to remain in the US, we risked our lives to get here". So check out part of the wonderful "culture" elian has to go back to, if ordered back to cuba. Ya, send him back, or if you think he should go back, then I guess child molestation is OK, too..

-- zog (zzoggy@yahoo.com), February 04, 2000

Answers

Zog, you are a brainwashed idiot, so I will spell it out for you.

The kid is a M-I-N-O-R who arrived here I-L-L-E-G-A-L-L-Y. His F-A-T-H-E-R and G-R-A-N-D-P-A-R-E-N-T-S want him back in his H-O-M-E C-O-U-N-T-R-Y. Their C-U-L-T-U-R-E may be D-I-F-F-E-R-E-N-T from ours. Nothing you say can C-H-A-N-G-E these F-A-C-T-S. Now put your brain on the nightstand and go back to bed.

-- Elian is an alien (@ .), February 04, 2000.

Lighten up. I agree it's bizarre to read about, but it sounds like the kind of harmless teasing that grammas all over the world engage in. Remember when you were young & the old people use to pinch your cheeks? And yeah, they inspected his goods, but grammas are an intrusive lot generally. In no way does it qualify as molesting.

BTW I strongly believe Elian should stay in Miami. (I'm the one who suggested trading him for Castro.)

-- my gramma (was@strange.too), February 04, 2000.

Repeat after me:

Suppose there was a boy who was taken by his mother away from Georgia where his father still lived. While they are crossing the frozen Potomac river with some friends on the ice and rocks, his mother slips and falls into the water. She asks their friends to make sure that the boy gets to Maryland safely and to find his father's relatives who already live there.

Now suppose that this occurs in 1858 and the slave master from whom the boy and the mother escaped commands the state of Maryland to return the boy to the plantation. The boy's father who is a slave demands that the boy return to slavery so that he can be at his side.

Would you send this boy back?

Are you still willing to send Elian back?

If you are, then you're either an idiot or an asshole.

-- nothere nothere (notherethere@hotmail.com), February 04, 2000.

Just a quick note. Even in Canada the media won't let go of this, it must be the only story they can hang their hat on. You know they have given more air time to this story than y2k. No wonder no one is listening to the news anymore. I receive much more info on the net then any of the formal news carriers. Stats are showing that viewers are droping like flies, and I can sure see why. TVeee is dead and the advertisers are waking up to it. The big broadcasters have a very short life span. northern blizzard

-- north blizzard (north@blizzard.com), February 04, 2000.

One day, Child Protective Services knocked on my door. They told me I was too poor to care for my children. I could not afford to take them to Disneyworld more than once every five years. I could not afford to buy them the latest fashions, they wore clothes off the sale rack. I could not afford to buy Ding Dongs, Doritos and Dr. Pepper more than occassionally. I was abusive to them because I taught them my cultic christian values and homeschooled them rather than sent them to progressive public schools. The state felt they could care for them better than my husband and I could. So they took them away against my will and gave them to some distant relative who had made these charges out of spite.

This is fought often in America, especially by homeschoolers. Keeping Elian here will set a BAD precedent for parents of minor children who raise their children in a manner the state does not approve of. Sadly, he may have to go back to an oppressive country but what if I am labeled oppressive at some point in the future and they have established a policy by keeping Elian?

-- Just Curious (jnmpow@flash.net), February 04, 2000.

Nothere, if someone wanted to take your child away from you would you let them?

-- Butt Nugget (catsbutt@umailme.com), February 04, 2000.

Nugget, Sometimes it's not a matter of letting them.

-- Just Curious (jnmpow@flash.net), February 04, 2000.

So, if the mother had lived, they could both stay and add to to rolls of illegals? But, now that she's dead he can stay?

bleeding heart liberals!

-- hohoho (humorme@hillarious.com), February 04, 2000.

http://www.foxnews.com/fn99/national/020300/cubaboy.sml

Elian Case Takes Bitter Turn Over Physical Contact

4:42 p.m. ET (2142 GMT) February 3, 2000

MIAMI  A war of words over Cuban boatwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez took a bitter new turn Thursday as his Miami relatives reacted angrily to a grandmother's account of how she bit the boy's tongue and looked at his private parts during their meeting last week.

The relatives said in a statement they were "shocked and disturbed ... very upset that the grandmothers used their precious moments with Elian to treat him this way."

The accusations, the latest in a highly politicized two-month custody battle, erupted over what went on during the meeting in Miami last week between 6-year-old Elian and his grandmothers from Cuba. They were visiting the United States to press their case for him to be returned to his father in Cuba.

The different interpretations of the incident, viewed in Cuba as affectionate teasing rather than abuse, underscored the angry divide between a family feuding on both sides of the Florida Straits for custody of the motherless child.

Paternal grandmother Mariela Quintana, describing the meeting with Elian on Cuban state television, said the boy was sad and timid at the start of the meeting at the home of a Miami nun. Quintana said that in an effort to get Elian to warm up to them, she teased by boy by biting his tongue and unzipped his pants to "see if it's grown."

The episode raised no eyebrows among Cubans who watched the program Tuesday. In Cuba, mothers and grandmothers often tease their young sons and grandsons in this fashion and such actions are considered normal gestures of endearment.

But the clip from the program, shown on local television networks Wednesday, provoked a very different reaction in Miami, where many Cubans have quickly adapted to American ways. Elian's relatives in Miami have fought to keep the boy in the United States since he was picked up at sea Nov. 25, 1999, after a disastrous voyage in which his mother and 10 other people died.

A spokesman for the relatives, Armando Gutierrez, said the family was angry. "Instead of kissing him and hugging him they are biting his tongue and taking his thing out? It's left me dumbstruck."

Ninoska Perez, a spokeswoman for the Cuban American National Foundation that backs the Miami family's efforts to keep him, called the incident "very disturbing."

"I cannot understand that kind of behavior from a grandmother with a 6-year-old child and in this country that's understood as child molesting," she said.

But to some observers in Miami the different views of the incident did look like a case of crossed cultural wires.

Uva de Aragon, a Cuban-born historian at Florida International University, said she did not believe that the incident was a case of abuse but probably reflected different cultural values, particularly since the grandmothers are from a provincial town and are not especially sophisticated.

"It would never occur to me to do this (behave in this way) but I can understand where they are coming from," she said. But de Aragon added that her American-born daughters would probably be "flabbergasted" by the incident.

Quintana's account of the incident came after the grandmothers were asked by a child psychologist on a Cuban television to describe how Elian cheered up in their company.

"We'd joked at the beginning about how he'd lost his tongue, so I got his tongue out of his mouth and I bit it, I started teasing him, I even opened his fly, I said, 'Let me look' ... at his parts ... 'Let's see if it's grown,' you know, teasing him to cheer him up. Because at that moment, we felt so much pain," Quintana said.

As the Miami relatives fumed about the grandmothers' role in the meeting, Cuban President Fidel Castro's government, which has turned Elian's father's cause into a national crusade, heaped scorn on the nun, Jeanne O'Laughlin, who hosted the reunion and then came out in favor of the child staying in Miami.

The Miami relatives have taken their case to federal court in an effort to stall an Immigration and Naturalization Service ruling Elian should be sent back to Cuba.

-- bizarro (leave@my.things.alone), February 04, 2000.

Send him back to Cuba with a restraining order against his Grandmothers.

-- sheesh (poor@kid.really), February 04, 2000.

The Coming of Elian

-- Die Fledermaus (shadow@alliance.org), February 04, 2000.

I k-n-o-w e-x-a-c-t-l-y w-h-o t-h-e i-d-i-o-t i-s. I-t a-i-n-'t Z-o-g.

The kid arrived here with the intent of requesting asylum from an opressive government. Granted, the government we have is nearly as bad, but it's better than that in Cuba.

I've been undecided on what I thought they should do about the kid ever since the press blew it out of proportion. I now think he should be kept here as a ward of the state until he's 18 then the kid can make his own decision what to do.

After reading this from Zog's link I was able to make a quick decision: "Paternal grandmother Mariela Quintana, describing the meeting with Elian on Cuban state television, said the boy was sad and timid at the start of the meeting at the home of a Miami nun. Quintana said that in an effort to get Elian to warm up to them, she teased by boy by biting his tongue and unzipped his pants to "see if it's grown."

Child molesters belong in prison. Maybe that's too good for them, it would be a lot cheaper to use the "lead between the eyes" treatment after they're convicted.

-- Powder (Powder47keg@aol.com), February 04, 2000.

Some people on this forum say they are tired of the media's coverage of the saga of this poor child, Elian Gonzalez. Yet THEY continually bring it up here, particularly Kyle, now zog.

However, since it IS here, let me say again what I've said before, as a mother and grandmother who loves freedom (and sees it eroding here!)

This is a little child. His mother lived with a man who had a record as a petty criminal, and who she helped support...he didn't work. He wasn't sent to a gulag due to his predatory lifestyle...he lived with Elian's mother! He convinced Elian's mother to suddenly go with him on a rickety boat that was so bad that it had to turn back once to the Cuban shore, where a more provident mother left her child and went back out with Elian's mother and this boy and her feckless boyfriend.

In Cuba, the parents lived quite near each other, were still friends, they shared Elian's custody and raising, and his father saw him daily. This woman decided so hastily to leave Cuba to be with her lover, not necessarily for "freedom" but to keep the relationship, and maybe to live in a country people much desire to live in due to $$$$ that although she had only shopped the day before for 2 weeks food, she left it there and went. She did not consult the child's other parent about whether he wished his son to remain in Cuba with him, or go with her. She essentially KIDNAPPED this child from his other parent. When an American parent does this, their photo and the child's go onto a postcard sent out weekly and in my mailbox saying, "Has anyone seen this child?" and sent out by [note the name!] Center for Missing and EXPLOITED Children." Apprehended, the kidnapping parent faces legal action in the USA.

Yet when a child from Cuba is abducted by one parent from the other, and that child happens to land in this country, we set ourselves up as mini-gods in deciding his fate, totally contrary to the laws of this nation about parental rights!!! Why? To satisfy a long-standing and ridiculous manner of relating to a failing Communist regime near our shores, and so that politicians here can "score" with their Castro-hating Miami constituents. Has anyone noticed that more sane, less rabid Cuban-born Miami residents have been marching to send Elian BACK to Cuba?!

This little, helpless child has become a political football and has been being manipulated by his distant relatives in Miami, the Cuban hard-case community, politicians, and even the press.

Now, as to the manner in which the one grandmother related to Elian during that difficult and forced and too-brief and unprivate visit they were "allowed"...if you have never taken a course in cultural anthropology, and/or never visited another country, particularly a Latin American one, then you really cannot understand or comment upon what you imagine, from our culture, to be "abusive" behavior on the part of the grandmother in question. She and Elian's father changed his diapers and still gave him baths, for pete's sake! She was trying to "break the ice" with a child who was plainly in cultural shock from his long separation and bizarre recent months here, and was doing what is common in her culture. It had no sexual overtones. She is not stupid enough to have done anything she would have considered fodder for the machine that is keeping him from her, had she known her innocent actions would be so misconstrued and used against her beloved grandchild returning to his hearth and home, his parents and four grandparents, and his OWN culture and nation.

Bigotry and prejudice and judgmentalism of this ravaged family are unwarranted by the uninformed and uncaring. Let us be careful how we use this precious gift of the internet!

This issue has upset me when I see it used here as it is elsewhere...a football, but in this case, one with which to verbally "play." We could better use our time to help this child get home, like ET, than in writing such harangues here.

Off soapbox...for now.

-- Elaine Seavey (Gods1sheep@aol.com), February 04, 2000.

Zog, et.al.

Although the bleeding heart liberals seem to think so, the answer to political oppression, famine, and all the other of the world's problems is NOT an never has been to ship everyone to the United States.

There are ways of getting into countries legally. Those who chose to try illegal means should be deported.

An analogy: There are ways to get food legally (purchase, grow your own, etc.) There are also ways to get food illegally (steal). What if the theif, caught in the midst of stealing food were rewarded ("...you look hungry, c'mon, have some more").

Allowing an illegal practice legitimizes it and sends an incorrect message.

-- No Polly (nopolly@hotmail.com), February 04, 2000.

I'll support Elian returning to Cuba when his loving daddy comes to Miami to collect him, & not a second before.

WHY hasn't that happened yet?

Does anyone believe it ever will?

-- you all know (that@it.won't), February 04, 2000.

Ms. Seavey, that was a beautiful post. Very eloquent.

-- Die Fledermaus (shadow@alliance.org), February 04, 2000.

Seriously, everyone. Stop writing long-winded nice-sounding speeches, even eloquent ones, & answer my question:

WHY hasn't Elian's daddy come to Miami to collect him?

-- come on guys how (hard@is.this), February 04, 2000.

Yessuh Massuh!

Please make them bad-ole Yankees bring my boy back to me.

I'm so lonely on the plantation with just you and the Missus and the othuh slaves.

____

The boy stays.

Oh and Butt Fu((er! If anyone took my kid from me, I'd find them and blow their fu((ing brains out. Of course, you haven't paid any attention to the claims of the family (which have precedent) that it was Juan Gonzalez himself who called his relatives in Miami to tell them that the boy and his mother were on their way and to take care of them when they arrived.

I wonder why HE hasn't made the trip to Miami and why the grandmothers were constantly watched by their Cuban puppetmasters during their entire trip. Hmmmmmmmmmmm... Let me see. Is it because Castro is a murderous Communist dictator?

Oh yeah, now I remember.

-- nothere nothere (notherethere@hotmail.com), February 04, 2000.

I believe the INS always makes the delivery. Do you think they call Juarez every time they find some 16 year-old working in the fields up in Kansas? Hell, no. They put him in a van and haul him back over. Same with the kids who come up the drainpipes in Nogales. They just drive 'em back.

-- Die Fledermaus (shadow@alliance.org), February 04, 2000.

Hey Flayedtherat!

The INS rules for Cubans and Mexicans are different. Or do you think that all Latino countries are alike since all Latinos look alike?

And No Polly!

How did your parents get to the U.S.? Are you sure it was legal?

Frankly, I don't care HOW people get here as long as they yearn to breathe free and want to work.

What are you people afraid of?

-- nothere nothere (notherethere@hotmail.com), February 04, 2000.

oh come on now: what I wrote was NOT a long-winded speech, but was a factual recounting of all that has been reported in many media sources. It was my hope that enough answers could be found here to stop the pettiness of comments surrounding the issue of this poor child.

Elian's father doesn't owe you or anyone else an explanation of why he did not choose to come here, but instead, sent the child's not ONE but TWO grandmothers. However, he did say that (1) he feared the Miami Cuban mafia, and (2) he feared his own temper, due to his extreme distress over the kidnap of his child by distant relatives, might cause him to commit an act of violence, which would cost him his child (and I add, his freedom!) Why on earth would anyone NOT understand this? If you are a father, or a mother, you can readily understand it. If you have ever lost a child you would!

It is SO easy to be an armchair....what's the use. You either get it, or you don't get it.

And about the comparison of Cuba to the condition of the black slaves in America: give me a break, guys! Elian's father has a nice little house, a good job, and gave him a great birthday party last year, complete with clown. He has a dog and a parrot, and a cousin who is like a sister to him, shown in the videos together.

Also, in my last position in a military-related association, I had the privilege of working with some very special Russians, including the captain who saved our East Coast from a Chernobyl when he sank his nuclear sub off the Bahamas, after it was rammed illegally (our rules) by an American captain. He went to jail in Russia for that act, until Glasnost. The American agent who befriended him and co-wrote a book entitled "Hostile Waters" about the incident, is also a friend of mine. These people have suffered much, much more in Russia than anyone suffers today in Cuba, including from a harsh climate without fuel to heat, etc. Yet they prefer to remain in their motherland, their own culture, among their close relatives, than come to America, where they would be welcomed with open arms for their bravery. So when you pontificate about how "terrible" it is to live in Cuba, know that it is mainly the almight $$$$ that impels many Cubans to come here. I could tell you a story about trying to help a family who came to Boston....but I won't.

-- Elaine Seavey (Gods1sheep@aol.com), February 04, 2000.

For the record Elaine, I didn't think it was long-winded at all, just misguided.

Answer me this question: "Who is to blame for Elian being separated from his father?"

is it: a) Elian's relatives in Miami who maintain that Juan would like to live in the U.S. with Elian and his new wife and child?

b) Elian's father who is "afraid" to come to Miami?

c) The U.S. Government which is trying to send him back?

d) Fidel Castro who forbids the free movement of the slaves of Cuba off of his plantation?

That's right! The correct answer is d) Fidel Castro who has been screwing his own people since 1960.

And I know an expatriate Cuban family whose members now live in PR, CA, and several other states in the Union. The same Union which abolished slavery in 1863. You know, it's the same place where slaves used to live in little huts provided to them by Massuh, and take care of some chickens for Massuh, and pick cotton for Massuh. Some of them even probably had dogs chase them through the fields and over rivers.

I don't know how the Russians came into this, except perhaps the missiles they housed in Cuba which almost gave us WWIII.

I'm not talking about material wealth. I'm talking about FREEDOM which also happens to be the best way to increase material wealth.

-- nothere nothere (notherethere@hotmail.com), February 04, 2000.

Nothere, I was responding to the poster calling himselt/herself "how hard is it now guys" when I mentioned long-windedness, as you called it.

But in response to your sincere statements and questions, here goes: I brought the Russians I personally know and admire into this discussion for a very valid reason which ought to be obvious. I tried to explain that they, who lived under a more repressive Communism in Russia, and two who were even jailed there, and who are still in danger from some old enemies who they angered (the sinking of the Russian sub caused this enmity)if they got back in power, and who suffer in a very cold climate without enough heating fuel, and who've had supply/food problems...NEVERTHELESS...CHOOSE to remain in their own country, because it is the land of their nativity, complete with both its good and its bad history. It is their culture, and their many relatives reside there still. SO...I maintain that Cuba hasn't any gulags, and it has a nice climate year-round, and although it has some supply shortages (thanks to our endless embargo causing the people to go without!), it is a much kinder place in which to live. So to paint it like an American pre-Civil War plantation is not a valid comparison, and asserting that Elian would be returning to "slavery" there.

Then about the matter of freedom being precious: indeed it is, and every day Americans are losing more and more and more of it right here! However, there are MANY repressive societies/governments throughout the world, and we aren't trying to liberate all their children and bring them to America, taken from the bosom of their parents! Also, everyone's idea of freedom is based upon experience of it or not as well. That is to say, if Elian's father is as free as can be in Cuba, having a good-paying job and a decent house for Latin America, and if the Pope got a little more religious freedom in his last visit, and so forth...then the only freedom not remaining is the freedom from totalitarian government. I ask: if everyone who believed in freedom LEFT a country, then who would be left there to fight for it? When Russia became free of Communism, and the Episcopal Cathedral was returned to its rightful owners and refurbished as a church, my friend the American agent and co-author of the book mentioned, was in the opening service of dedication in St. Petersburg, as was one of my church members from my Virginia church, who confirmed this. He has told me that it was absolutely amazing and moving to see the number of uniforms that came to that service, with tears of thanksgiving in their eyes for its return and the ability to again practice their faith! So what I am saying is that although a government may repress a people for a time, it is not forever, and that although they may prohibit some things, they cannot take away INNER freedom, which reasserts itself openly in such actions as sinking one's own sub, or returning to one's church and faith, to worship openly again.

Let us watch Cuba and see what happens there: I keep reading here that "it aint over until the fat lady sings," and neither is it over for Cuba's freedom either. Meanwhile, let us not for our own self- righteous sakes keep a child from his natural parent, whatever regime that father may live under.

And for those who said that the great-uncle said that Elian's father wanted to come here also, I remind them of the "acid test" on this forum: we don't take the "friend of a friend" stories seriously, do we? With this man's interest in fostering his own and his Miami Cuban friends' aims, who knows if that is even remotely true? I rather doubt it for several reasons. And as an aside, even if that were true, doesn't it tell you something about the mericless nature of this great-uncle if he would endanger Elian's father by repeating this for all the world to hear? Ye gods!!

Die Fliedermaus, thank you for your kind words.

-- Elaine Seavey (Gods1sheep@aol.com), February 04, 2000.

Possible (likely) explanation for the Grandmothers coming to the US and not the father: They were allowed to come because their son was still in Cuba, therefore it was likely that they would return. If the son (Elian's dad) came over and the Grandmothers stayed behind, there would be less risk in staying in the US. The govt would be less likely to punish old women for the actions of their adult son. It happened in East Germany a lot....

Speaking of East Germany, have we forgotten our recent history so soon? If this incident had occurred 15 years ago and had it occurred over the east-west German border instead of the waters between Florida and Cuba, could anyone imagine being in favor of sending the kid back to east Germany? Why not? East Germany was the "model" of the iron curtain countries. Life was better there than in many other countries in the world, including probably Cuba. Could it be because East Germany was a tyranical dictatorship that suppressed individual freedom? Even if escapees were materially worse off in the west, they virtually unanimously decided that life in a free country was far better than a full belly under oppression.

So what's different about this situation today? Isn't Fidel Castro just a big Teddy bear with a beard who smokes a stogie? Isn't Cuba just like here? NONONONONONONONONONONONO! If the Cuban state was confident it could win this contest in the ideological arena, it would not have hesitated to allow Juan to come to the US to bring his son back. No one here would have stopped him if he came to get his son and return to Cuba. Why haven't they allowed this? Because if they did, Juan Gonzales would disappear and never come back, and the Cuban state would lose some major propaganda face.

Don't blame the free Cuban community of Miami for this mess. Blame Fidel Castro who is ultimately responsible for creating that community and causing more people every year to flee his country and join it. Blame Castro for a system that makes people run for freedom and keeps a father away from his son out of fear.

-- rob minor (rbminor@hotmail.com), February 04, 2000.

Elain, the longer you plead your case, the weaker it gets. The kid's father "...feared his own temper..." Nice. Very nice. Let's send the kid back to a repressive government AND a father with a violent temper.

If you were a lawyer I certainly wouldn't want you defending me in court.

BTW, WOULD you have sent the kid back to East Germany...? Yeah, I suppose you would. Very, very creepy.

-- and also a (bit@long.winded), February 04, 2000.

anyone up for hearts on yahoo?

-- Kyle (fordtbonly@aol.com), February 05, 2000.

Beautifully said, Elaine.

-- Jo Ann (MaJo@Michiana.com), February 05, 2000.

I'm with you on this, Elaine. It seems there are so many here that want the government to keep their noses out of peoples lives. So why can't we keep our noses out of this kid's life? Who made us judge, jury and executioner? Why not worry about the children living on the streets in THIS country? Our veterans? Our violent crime? No, we're perfect, aren't we?

-- Gia (laureltree7@hotmail.com), February 05, 2000.

Pulling out a tongue and biting it, and pulling out a penis and "examining it for growth" is assault, with sexually intimidating overtones.

And I thought my relatives were bad ...

That poor timid scared 6-yr old, as if he has not been through enough already.

-- abuse (in@any.culture), February 05, 2000.

Grandmothers fear Cuban boy was drugged for encounter

HAVANA, Feb. 3  Something odd happened on Jan. 26 when Elian Gonzalez finally saw his two grandmothers in Miami. The reunion fell flat, and the grandmothers were bewildered by what they say was a disturbingly different 6-year-old boy than the one they knew in Cuba. Now the women are saying they believe Elian was drugged.

THE INTERNATIONAL custody battle over Elian has led to bitter accusations by his relatives in Miami and his family in Cuba.

But everyone agrees on one thing  the center of attention during the visit was a small, fearful child. Everyone, however, has a different explanation for his behavior.

After spending 90 minutes with the boy, Elians grandmothers said they found a child they barely recognized. He has always been a bit of a devil, always getting into mischief. Full of fun. Playing tricks on his grandfather and his Uncle Tony, paternal grandmother Mariela Quintana told NBC News. Hes now frightened and introverted, withdrawn and silent. Hes not the grandson I knew.

Elian was found clinging to an inner tube in the waters off Florida on Thanksgiving Day. His mother and several others who were attempting to flee Cuba for the United States died when their boat sank. Elians relatives in Miami were given temporary custody of the boy, but quickly became embroiled in a legal battle with his family remaining in Cuba, including his father. The dispute turned Elian into a cause celebre in both countries, and only after intense haggling was an agreement reached to bring his grandmothers to the United States to see him.

Elians grandmothers now suspect the child may have been drugged or sedated before their visit. They said in interviews this week that he was lethargic and unresponsive.

We hugged and kissed him. He didnt respond, said his maternal grandmother, Raquel Rodriguez. We had to lead him to a chair. ... At first, he didnt recognize photos of his family and school friends. It took at least an hour before he began to respond and recognize his bicycle, his school bag, his friends and his cousin who he played with every day of his life.

To get a response from the boy, Mariela Quintana even engaged in what some view as inappropriate behavior. On national television, she described how she playfully bit her grandsons tongue and unzipped his pants during the meeting. LIMP ARMS AND RED EARS

The grandmothers also told NBC News they were concerned by the boys appearance because his arms were limp and his ears bright red. We examined him but he wasnt running a fever. We asked him if he went to a doctor and he told us that he had been given four injections. ... If he needed a doctor, how come his father doesnt know about it?

The grandmothers also find it inexplicable that Elian was carried into the meeting wrapped in a blanket.

Armando Gutierrez, a spokesman for the boys relatives in Miami, did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment on the grandmothers statements.

Elsa Gutierrez, a prominent child psychiatrist in Havana, sees the description fitting either a child under severe stress or one taking sedatives or anti-depressants. A 6-year-old doesnt forget family and friends in two months time. He knows who his father is. He wouldnt forget his best friends, she said.

Gutierrez suggests that the Miami family and even the psychologist treating him could be trying to erase his historic memory, telling him that his life is beginning now. That would add to the extreme stress hes already suffering as a result of the death of his mother.

She explains the red ears as a physiological reaction to either stress or medication.

Jeanne OLaughlin, the Dominican nun who offered her residence as a neutral location for the meeting, also sensed the childs fears but saw it in a political context. I do not think that child will be able to live without fear if he goes back, OLaughlin said the day after the meeting, when she announced she supported legislation that would make Elian an American citizen. AN AMERICAN NUNS VIEW

After intense lobbying by Rodriguez and Quintana late last week, the bill sponsored by Sen. Connie Mack, R-Fla., faces a tough battle.

OLaughlin also sensed fear on the part of the grandmothers during the reunion and attributed it to their manipulation by the government of Fidel Castro. She wrote in The New York Times: As I watched the grandmothers Cuban escort keep close telephone contact with Havana during and after the visit, I came to feel that the Cuban government was attempting to exert control over these events.

The Cuban escort she referred to is the Rev. Pablo Oden Marichal, president of the Cuban Council of Churches and a member of Parliament.

Marichal, interpreting events from Havanas perspective, told NBC News: Miamis not neutral and neither was Sister Jeanne. She was in charge and she broke all the ground rules that had been negotiated between the two governments, the Miami lawyers, the publicist and the two families.

The two sides had talked for five days before finally agreeing on how the grandmothers would be reunited with Elian.

Believe me, this was like the Middle East peace talks, said the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, the American minister who sponsored the grandmothers trip. Everything got negotiated out.

She believes that most of the important ground rules protecting the grandmothers had been violated, including their bottom line: No physical or visual contact with any Miami relative.

According to Campbell, it was OLaughlin who broke the agreement. Fearing the child would not walk up the stairs to the meeting, the nun had his Miami cousin bring him to his grandmothers. Instead of returning her to the first floor of the home where she was assigned to wait, the nun allowed Marisleysis Gonzalez to remain nearby. By Gonzalezs own account, she could overhear everything said between the grandmothers and Elian.

Campbell also feels the nun overstepped her role by trying to facilitate a family reconciliation between the grandmothers and the Miami relatives. It was understood that the family reunification was an adult matter to be dealt with by adults at another time and place. It beats me why Sister Jeanne ever thought they would all sit down to dinner together. ... It was clear that if these families are ever reconciled, this was not the moment for it. THE CELL PHONE INCIDENT

Another contradiction in the differing versions of what transpired concerns the cell phone incident. Campbell claims the use of cell phones was never raised during the negotiations, but someone told OLaughlin that cell phones constituted a security risk. As Elian was speaking with his father back in Cuba, a nun and a policeman confiscated the phone  claiming its use was prohibited.

It was never a secret that the grandmothers would be carrying cell phones. Earlier in the day, Cubas state media reported that Elians father planned to speak to the boy by cell phone during the reunion. Campbell believes officials from the Miami branch of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) are responsible for this confusion, charging they made a unilateral deal with the Miami family. The grandmothers were not purposely breaking the agreement, she said. They didnt know that agreement had ever been made.

Even Doris Meissner, the chief of the INS, reportedly complained that she had never been consulted or even informed that cell phones were to be banned.

There are at least half-dozen more issues under contention  from minor complaints about who was allowed into the house and who was made to wait in the driveway to more serious security issues. When the grandmothers left the nuns home, for instance, their motorcade was abruptly stopped to give time to clear the helicopter pad of hundreds people who allegedly had been allowed on the site by Miami police.

As both sides continue to hurl charges, we know the basics about the highly charged family meeting: Two grandmothers finally saw a little boy they feared was lost to them forever. A motherless child was finally held in the arms of two women hes known all his short life.

But the meeting ultimately has intensified the conflict between Elians relatives in Miami and his family in Cuba, and Washington and Havana, over where the boy should grow up. FATHERS LETTER TO RENO

In another development, Elians father has written to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno to reiterate that the boy should be returned to him in Cuba, and says that in the meantime his son should be moved to the home of another relation in Miami.

I am deeply concerned and anguished over the present condition of my 6-year-old son, Elian Gonzalez, unfairly and cruelly separated from our family for over two months, Juan Miguel Gonzalez wrote in a letter sent to foreign news agencies early Friday by the governments International Press Center.

The letter was dated Thursday and addressed to Reno and U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner, Doris Meissner.

Elian is staying with his paternal great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez, who is fighting to keep the boy with him in the United States. The boys father wants Elian to stay with Lazaros brother Manolo, who has said he supports the childs return to his father in Cuba.

Elian has been under constant harassment and pressure from politicians, journalists, lawyers, publicity agents and others unrelated to his family, Gonzalez wrote in the letter.

The boy has been forced to pose for TV cameras day and night with people he does not know and who are unscrupulously manipulating him, he wrote. That rude invasion of his privacy and disrespect for his childhood innocence should cease immediately and you should guarantee that such things do not happen again.

Gonzalez made his requests, as a father whose full and exclusive parental rights you have recognized.

In addition to returning the boy and moving him to Manolo Gonzalezs home until such repatriation takes place, Juan Miguel Gonzalez also demanded that an end be immediately put to harassment, manipulation, psychological pressures and the violation of my son Elians privacy.

He also asked for the names and backgrounds of any and all psychologists who are reportedly caring for the boy, as well as any treatment and medications prescribed.

-- Add more fuel to the fire (the@plot.thickens), February 05, 2000.

Enough, already. Other cultures act differently than ours (not that I am an expert). If the boy had come from some uncivilized (to our expectations) part of Africa, and was accustomed to going naked, The U.S. would be up in arms about doning Calvin Clien or other name brand, on his buttocks. That the Grandmother did those things, does NOT mean perversion, necessarily. Maybe, it is their culture. For instance, I was born in the South, many moons ago. It was not uncommon, for Mother's and Relatives to play with a baby, nipping (no pain) on the body of a beautiful child. The phrase was "they are so pretty, I could eat them up". Gladly to say, no teeth bites were ever seen, and no child ever vanished from someone actually "eating them up".

-- Bogus Trollop (F@milytradition.com), February 05, 2000.

That damn kid's lucky his grandma bit his tongue instead of his boomboom!

-- Calorie Counter (a mouthful@familyjewells.com), February 05, 2000.

CC...LMAO!

C'mon Elaine. Tell the story. It is obvious you love to hear yourself talk.

-- Kyle (fordtbonly@aol.com), February 05, 2000.

I don't buy "the cultural differences" argument in this molestation incident. This event may, indeed, have had a dark side.

These two women, the grandmothers, truly had the weight of not only the family back home in Cuba, and the involvement of different national governments on their backs, but the press of the world in their faces. A lot of elevated stress to say the least. Also they did not come across as the dumb peasants some of the media would have us believe.

However, having said this, IMHO, I think one of the grandmothers just lost it.

Perhaps Elian said to the women that he wanted to stay here in the U.S. Because the child might have said this, one of the grandmothers became irrate and bit his tongue for having said so. Perhaps she simultaneously grabbed his crotch to show him that she was the one in charge. Think about this possible explanation for her behavior.

Remember poor, beautiful JonBenet. No one wanted to hurt her either.

-- Grandmother's Ultimate Power Trip (CulturalDifferences@Bunchof.Bull), February 08, 2000.