By Sue Anne Pressley and April Witt
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday , April 23, 2000 ; A01

MIAMI, April 22 –– Angry and disheartened protesters today swarmed through the Little Havana neighborhood where Elian
Gonzalez had lived, setting fires, breaking windows, throwing debris and threatening police officers who met them with shields,
batons and tear gas.

The scattered demonstrations began almost as soon as federal agents moved in during the predawn hours to seize the
6-year-old boy, continuing throughout the day and evening. But they were largely confined to a two-square-mile area
surrounding the house where the boy had stayed.

The city had tensed for an unpredictable night, with emotions still running high over the day's events, but by midnight Little
Havana was mostly quiet. Only groups of young people, waving flags in the balmy night, occasionally hopped out of honking
cars to chant. Streets were mostly empty except for police officers.

"It appears to be dying out some," said police Lt. Roy Brown. "We're pretty much telling people to go home and trying to keep
the streets open." Earlier in the evening, police had marched with visors down, holding shotguns fixed with tear gas canisters.
The tapping of their nightsticks on plastic body shields mixed with the cadence of steady horn-honking in cacophony.

This afternoon, three Miami city police officers were injured when they tried to arrest a demonstrator and were attacked from
behind by a second person wielding a baseball bat. Two of the officers suffered spinal injuries and were listed in serious
condition at a hospital. A 29-year-old Miami man arrested on an attempted murder charge was among 265 people police had
processed by 11 p.m., although they said more had been arrested.

Along Flagler Avenue, the main thoroughfare linking downtown Miami with Little Havana, windows were broken out of
businesses, trash bins were overturned, newspaper boxes were hurled into the streets, and a tall palm tree was uprooted and
thrown on its side. The smell of fires and tear gas permeated the air. Police closed a two-mile stretch of the usually busy street
to prevent more violence, a tactic that late tonight seemed to have worked: It was car-free. Elsewhere, only a few major
intersections were blocked.

The crowds threw rocks and chunks of concrete at police cruisers and firefighters assisting people who had fallen ill because of
the excitement or the tear gas. A police spokesman, Lt. Bill Schwartz, was chased and pummeled by protesters before he took
refuge in a cruiser that sped away.

Police said they spent most of the day tussling with protesters and taking verbal abuse.

"It was not our operation. We're getting the blame," said Miami police spokesman Delrish Moss, who confirmed that some
local officers were hit by pepper spray this morning as federal agents who had come to get Elian confronted the protesters.

By late afternoon, protesters had attempted to block two major roads leading to Miami International Airport, and a giant fire
made from old tires blazed on Flagler Avenue.

Diners fled Versailles restaurant, a Little Havana landmark, around dinner time, when police apparently tossed in canisters of
tear gas. There were no major injuries and no immediate explanation why the tear gas was used.

Later in the day, protesters turned their ire toward some of the news crews that had been covering the saga nonstop from a
settlement of blue-and-white tents across the street from the house of Elian's great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez, where the child had
been living for the past five months.

Protesters menaced a CNN news crew and tore down its tent, prompting riot police to come in and clear the street of
protesters. Miami police Lt. Carlos Alfaro urged members of the news media to pack up and leave Little Havana by sundown,
though he acknowledged that they had a First Amendment right to stay.

"We're not going to be able to ensure your safety if you choose to remain there," Alfaro said.

Although skirmishes continued to break out--many between people with opposing viewpoints, others between protesters and
police--there were few reports of serious injuries, Moss said. Bruises and bloody noses were common.

Leaders of Miami's Cuban exile community urged demonstrators to protest peacefully, blaming disorder on pro-Castro
sympathizers and so-called agents of the communist government. Ramon Saul Sanchez, the high-profile leader of the
Democracy Movement, which coordinated many of the recent street demonstrations, called for a work stoppage Tuesday to
protest the government's actions.

At an emotional news conference, top county and city officials harshly criticized the federal government for seizing Elian. Urging
Miamians to remain peaceful in expressing their outrage, Miami Mayor Joe Carollo said that should violence erupt, the only
winner would be "the tyrant, the criminal, the murderer, [Cuban President] Fidel Castro."

But the U.S. government was equally scorned today. It took only hours before T-shirts were produced bearing an Associated
Press photograph of an armed INS agent seizing Elian, emblazoned with the words "Federal Child Abuse." Throughout much
of the afternoon, protesters honked car horns, waved Cuban flags and chanted, "Libertad!" (liberty) and "Guerra!" (war).

New signs appeared, scathing in their assessment of the nation's leaders: "Clinton, America's Disgrace," "Clinton, Servant of
Castro," and "Janet Reno, We Hate You."

"Today was a shameful day to be an American," said Cuban American janitor Alfonso Diaz, 43, an nearly lifelong resident of
Miami, as he stood amid a group of other protesters this afternoon. "What I saw was the U.S. government carrying out the
dirty work of a thug and a dictator named Fidel Castro . . . with no consideration for the well-being and future of Elian. What is
the federal government afraid of when it comes to Castro?"

Even people who believed Elian should be reunited with his father were dismayed by the way the boy was seized. "I just
believe the kid should go back," said Victor Gonzalez, a 38-year-old carpenter who arrived from Havana when he was 6. "But
they played dirty, picking him up at gunpoint."

Although much of Miami was transfixed by the Elian saga today, not everyone was of the same mind, or involved to the same
degree. A small plane flew overhead, trailing a banner that read: "Thank you, Janet Reno." At the Church of St. Michael the
Archangel on Flagler Avenue, women were decorating the altar with Easter flowers and a family played catch in a yard nearby,
not far from smoldering tires that filled the air with thick black smoke.

Edith Vazquez of Kendall narrowly escaped arrest in a confrontation with police who were trying to hurry the crowd along. As
her daughters yelled, "Don't take my mother!" Vazquez realized that she had entered a strange world, she said.

"I was just standing there," she said, claiming that police had hit her. "I've always been proud to live in this country. I travel
everywhere in Latin America, and every country is so anti-American, but I defend this country. This is not what this country is
supposed to be about."

Norma Clavelo, a Coral Gables homemaker, seemed to have no fear as she arrived in Little Havana this afternoon to be with
other Cuban Americans, she said.

"I'm not worried," she said. "I know my people. They are just very emotional."

As she spoke, a line of police cars two blocks long formed nearby. Two white buses filled quickly with arrested protesters,
who could be heard stamping their feet and shouting "Libertad!" as they rode off to jail.

VOICES ON ELIAN

"Elian Gonzalez is a child who needs to be cherished, who needs to have quiet time and private time, and to be with this father.
And that is what this case is all about -- the bond between a father and a son."

-- Attorney General Janet Reno

"I found no evidence in the brief time I spent with Elian that he was in any way terrorized, frightened, traumatized or otherwise
troubled. He seemed to be very happy to be back with his father."

-- Gregory Craig, attorney for Elian's father

It was "an Orwellian monstrosity that went on today . . . a Gestapo-style action. This is shameful. I hope the American people
realize what is going on."

-- Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.)

"Our federal government trampled on the rights of a loving, caring family. We had federal agents go in as if they were assaulting
a military bunker, where we only had decent, patriotic, hardworking, humble men, women and children."

-- Miami Mayor Joe Carollo

"They are together."

-- Myron Marlin, Justice Department spokesman

"I believe this issue should have been handled through a family court and with the family coming together."

-- Vice President Gore

"Ours is a nation of laws, not guns. Custody disputes are resolved in the calm of a courtroom, not in the terror of
middle-of-the-night raids."

-- Texas Gov. George W. Bush

"We are the owners of the streets in Miami until Elian comes home."

-- protester Santiago Portal

"He was screaming and crying, 'Don't take me!' I never thought they would do this to a kid. He's seen so much."

-- Marisleysis Gonzalez, Elian's cousin

"He was very tearful, very happy. This is a moment he'd waited for, for a very long time. And he's glad the boy is safe."

-- The Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, who was with the father after the raid.

"The law has been upheld, and that was the right thing to do."

-- President Clinton

"How does waving a machine gun at a 6-year-old demonstrate to anyone here or abroad that we respect and will defend the
principles of freedom?"

-- House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.)

"I am repulsed and outraged at the government's use of force to seize a boy in a family's home at the point of a gun. These are
the tactics of the Cuban government, not a free democracy."

-- Sen. Connie Mack (R-Fla.)

"It's disappointing that today, the day the boy is united with his father, that there are Republican leaders seeking to exploit the
situation . . . to gain some political advantage."

-- Joe Lockhart, White House spokesman

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