By Karen DeYoung
                  Washington Post Staff Writer
                  Sunday, January 23, 2000; Page A01

                  NEW YORK, Jan. 22—The grandmothers are tired. Over the past two
                  days, with little sleep, they have left the Cuban coastal town where they
                  have spent virtually all their lives. They have faced walls of cameras and
                  met with senior officials in the capital of the most powerful country in the
                  world. They have taken their first airplane ride and worn their first winter
                  coats. They are cold all the time.

                  And they are angry.

                  "Every day that passes is worse," says Mariela Gonzalez, whose son is the
                  father of Elian Gonzalez. "When he talks to his father and to us, he cries,"
                  she says of her 6-year-old grandson. "He tells us he is crazy with longing to
                  come back to Cuba."

                  Raquel Rodriguez, whose only child, Elian's mother, died at sea attempting
                  to reach Florida with the boy, says she doesn't know how President
                  Clinton "can permit this." "It looks like there is not the political courage,"
                  she says, to enforce the Immigration and Naturalization Service's ruling that
                  relatives keeping the child in Miami should return him to his Cuban father.

                  Aboard a chartered aircraft flying back here this afternoon from a meeting
                  in Washington with Attorney General Janet Reno and INS Commissioner
                  Doris Meissner, the grandmothers were quick to say in their native Spanish
                  that they have been treated with great kindness and sympathy since they
                  arrived in this country on Friday to plead for Elian's return.

                  In their more than hour-long meeting today, Rodriguez told a reporter,
                  Reno "listened to us, she was very friendly. She asked the same things you
                  asked."

                  "But she didn't say anything" to make them optimistic that Elian would soon
                  be home, she added.

                  Like everyone else, they said, Reno asked about the relationship between
                  Elian's mother, Elizabet, and the man she lived with, Lazaro Munero.
                  Munero owned the small boat aboard which his parents, Elizabet, Elian
                  and eight other people secretly left Cuba on Nov. 21. Two days after it
                  capsized, only Elian and two adults were left alive.

                  Mariela Gonzalez's brother-in-law in Miami, Lazaro Gonzalez, has said in
                  federal court papers that Elian deserves political asylum in this country
                  because both Munero and Elizabet were fleeing persecution from the
                  Cuban government--persecution he has said Elian is sure to suffer if he
                  returns.

                  "That's the biggest lie I ever heard," Rodriguez said. Munero, she said,
                  "was a violent person . . . a crook. He never even had a job. She
                  supported him." Her daughter, she said, "was a militant" supporter of
                  Cuba's communist government. "She was secretary of the Youth
                  Movement in Cardenas," the town where they all live.

                  Elizabet, Rodriguez said in the vernacular of the Communist Party, "was
                  part of the vanguard . . . these people in Miami talking about her, they
                  didn't even know her."

                  No outsider can ever really know what goes on inside a family. But
                  Rodriguez said she is convinced that her 30-year-old daughter's departure
                  was a last-minute decision. She had done the biweekly grocery shopping
                  the day before she disappeared, and "in Cuba, you don't spend that kind
                  of money on food if you're going to leave."

                  Despite their fatigue, the two women become animated, and agitated,
                  when they talk about these things. As the voice of one rises, the other
                  begins talking rapidly until they are interrupting each other in their
                  eagerness to explain. Lazaro Gonzalez, they say, has as much as told them
                  that the matter of Elian's fate is now out of his hands; that the militant
                  anti-Castro, Cuban American "mafia" is running the show in Miami. Elian,
                  they insist, is "nothing more than a checkbook" to Lazaro Gonzalez.

                  "They have made a business out of the child," Rodriguez said.

                  The view of Miami from Cuba, at least in the eyes of the Gonzalez family,
                  is no less horrific than the view of Cuba from Miami. Struggling to answer
                  a question many Americans have asked throughout the international
                  tug-of-war over her grandson--why Elian's loving, distraught father hasn't
                  rushed to his side in Miami--Mariela Gonzalez says only that "they would
                  kill him."

                  "There are lots of good Cubans and lots of good Americans," she explains,
                  "but there are lots of bad Cubans there."

                  Besides, she says, "I am here, the grandmother. I am here for him."

                  While they have said in other interviews that they will never go to Miami,
                  Rodriguez seems unsure. "It depends on the circumstances," she says. "I
                  would have to think about it."

                  The grandmothers say no one from their side has been able to talk to Elian
                  for the past four days. "They must have disconnected the telephone,"
                  Rodriguez says. "It just rings and rings."

                  But as much as seeing Elian, and taking him home, she says, "what we
                  want is to express to the people of the United States that we speak freely.
                  We are not under pressure, and what we say is the truth."

                  The plane approaches New York, with their National Council of Churches
                  sponsors aboard. NCC, an umbrella group representing mainline U.S.
                  Protestant churches, has a long history of involvement in Cuba--and
                  support for normalized relations between its government and
                  Washington--in association with its counterpart on the island, the Cuban
                  Council of Churches. The sponsors are eager for them to look down at the
                  Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and the World Trade Center towers.

                  "That's the Empire State Building," says Oscar Bolioli, coordinator of the
                  NCC's Latin America programs. The women gaze out the window wearily
                  and with some puzzlement. "You know, where King Kong was," he says.
                  They laugh and nod their heads in recognition.

                  NCC General Secretary Bob Edgar, who says he paid for the chartered
                  plane with his own American Express card, hands over copies of a letter
                  the women gave to Reno. "For us," it says, "the significance of returning
                  Elian to his family will honor his mother's memory, return the family to
                  normality and, more importantly, return Elian to normal life with his father,
                  brother, family, friends at school, his toys, dog and parrot."

                  While they are grateful for the INS ruling, they say in the letter, "we have
                  felt frustrated over delays. . . . We have only Sunday to see Elian, and we
                  not only want to see him, but we also want to return with him to Cuba."

                  Later in the afternoon, the Justice Department released a statement from
                  Reno and Meissner. The grandmothers, it said, made "a very
                  compassionate and heartfelt plea to be reunited with their grandson. They
                  asked when Elian could return. . . . We explained that this matter is now in
                  federal court, but that we will seek resolution as expeditiously as possible."

                  Their flight back to Cuba, the grandmothers say as the plane touches down
                  in New Jersey and they prepare to head toward New York, is booked for
                  Monday.

                  Following is a translation of the letter Elian Gonzalez's grandmothers gave
                  to Attorney General Janet Reno yesterday:

                  To Janet Reno:

                  The retention of Elian in the United States adds to the tragedy of the family
                  over the loss of Elizabeth. For us, the significance of returning Elian to his
                  family will honor his mother's memory, return the family to normality and,
                  more importantly, return Elian to normal life with his father, brother, family,
                  friends at school, his toys, dog and parrot.

                  We are grateful to you for affirming Juan Miguel's paternity rights, but we
                  have felt frustrated over delays in complying with this right. We ask that
                  you return Elian to his immediate family and not to his distant family, where
                  there had not been a previous relationship. This is the reason for our being
                  here, and we thank you for this interview.

                  We only have Sunday to see Elian, and we not only want to see him, but
                  we also want to return with him to Cuba.

                  Sincerely,

                  Mariela Gonzalez

                  Raquel Rodriguez

                  Staff writer Stephen Barr contributed to this report.

                           © Copyright 2000 The Washington Post Company