BY FRANCES ROBLES

 WASHINGTON -- The tables have turned on the Gonzalez family. These days
 it's Marisleysis, her father, Lazaro, and uncle Delfin who are fighting to see Elian,
 the boy they nurtured, fell in love with and didn't want to give back. So far, Juan
 Miguel Gonzalez is refusing to budge.

 ''We always said Juan Miguel could come to our house to see him,'' Lazaro said
 Sunday in Washington. ''And now we can't see Elian.''

 Marisleysis, her father, uncle and cousins held a news conference Easter morning
 at the Capitol, where they bashed the government for bashing down their door and
 whisking Elian away under the cloak of darkness.

 SEEKING RIGHTS

 Flanked by Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., attorney Roger Bernstein and representatives
 from the Cuban American National Foundation, they called for visitation rights and
 a congressional investigation into Saturday's raid.

 ''I demand to see Elian. I will not leave until I see this boy,'' said Marisleysis
 Gonzalez, the 21-year-old cousin described as his surrogate mother. ''With my
 truth, I'm going to get somewhere. With the truth, I'm going to get into every heart
 and every mind.''

 She and her father asked Americans to wonder: Why is Juan Miguel Gonzalez in
 seclusion? Why hasn't Elian been shown to the press?

 ''I need to see Elian,'' Marisleysis Gonzalez said during a 20-minute speech before
 reporters. ''I know he's not OK.''

 TURNED AWAY

 The Miami Gonzalezes were turned away again Sunday from the Andrews Air
 Force Base in Maryland, where Elian is hunkered down with his father, step-mother
 and baby brother. Smith said a colonel refused them entry, despite Smith's rank
 on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

 ''That's the way this family was treated by an air base, basically under my control,''
 Smith said. ''If you can believe that.''

 The family later attended services at the National Shrine of the Immaculate
 Conception, where its presence created a bizarre spectacle: seven photographers,
 three pews up, on their knees taking the family's pictures.

 At her news conference, Marisleysis was holding on to an Easter basket she had
 prepared for the boy. She took it to Andrews Air Force Base, but declined to leave
 it because she was afraid it would not be delivered to Elian.

 ARMED RAID

 Much of the entourage's news conference was devoted to the armed raid on the
 Little Havana home. A weeping Marisleysis Gonzalez, looking tired, told how
 she begged the agents not to use weapons as they trashed the house and roughed
 up the family while looking for Elian.

 ''We didn't know who they were,'' she said. ''God forbid -- we thought it was the
 Cuban government. There wasn't any bloodshed because my family decided to
 stand back and let justice be done like this.''

 She directly blamed Attorney General Janet Reno and President Clinton -- Reno
 for her lack of maternal instinct and Clinton for his hypocrisy as a father. The pair,
 she said, put the child's life at risk in an unnecessarily risky three-minute ''illegal''
 attack.

 ''You know what, Janet Reno?'' she said. ''Whether it was three minutes or 30
 seconds, you still don't know what a mother is.''

 Gonzalez's fatigue was obvious. She spoke for about 20 minutes, bouncing from
 subject to subject and back again. At one point, perhaps noticing that she was
 losing her audience, she directly addressed the reporters: ''Whoever doesn't want
 to listen to this, or is tired of listening to this: this could be your child.''

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald