BY ANA ACLE

 Outside the modest Little Havana home where Elian Gonzalez lives, tourists from
 as far away as Europe and as close as Pembroke Pines and Hialeah gather to
 ogle the house and catch a glimpse of the world's most famous 6-year-old boy.

 They take pictures of the small single-story stucco house with the icicle
 Christmas lights still dangling from the roof.

 ``It's become a huge issue,'' said Pedro Fernandez, a travel agent from Madrid
 who was interviewed while snapping a picture of Elian's house. ``I wanted to see
 for myself the place that has attracted so much public attention.''

 Fernandez had been watching the news in his Miami Beach hotel one day last
 week when he decided to ask the staff for directions to the house. At Elian's
 home, he took pictures with his wife, Belen.

 Mike Tuscanny of New York City also drove up to the house, where neighbors are
 fed up with motorists and media parking in front of their homes.

 More and more neighbors have blocked the swale areas in front of their homes,
 posting no-parking signs. But most people don't get out of their cars, they just
 drive by.

 ``I heard about it on the news, and I thought it would be a historic experience to
 see the house for myself,'' Tuscanny said.

 On Sunday, about 20 folks gathered -- some bearing gifts and cameras -- and
 waited in vain in the hot afternoon sun. Little Elian was not home, but the visitors
 did not know.

 The family had taken Elian to another relative's home to get some much-needed
 privacy, family spokesman Armando Gutierrez said.

 They deliberately lost a pursuing news-media van along the way, according to an
 NBC news photographer. And the family has asked the public to give the boy
 some breathing room.

 ``I've been asking people, mainly the media, all week to please give him some
 space,'' Gutierrez said. ``When the media turns on the cameras near the fence,
 then the public runs to the fence.''

 The media has documented Elian's every move -- day and night -- since he was
 found clinging to an inner tube Thanksgiving Day. They know when he leaves for
 school or when he falls ill. They know when relatives buy him new clothes.

 Media attention has prompted the tourists' curiosity -- an attraction oddly
 reminiscent of the time when tourists posed in front of the Gianni Versace
 mansion in South Beach after the designer's murder.

 NOTORIOUS EVENT

 Versace was fatally shot July 15, 1997, on the steps of his Ocean Drive mansion
 by serial killer Andrew Cunanan, who killed himself later in a houseboat along
 Collins Avenue.

 This time, the draw is a little boy who has barely spoken a word in public but has
 already made an unintentional mark in history.

 Although the family is asking the media to scale back its close coverage of Elian,
 it seems to understand why the issue is luring ordinary tourists.

 ``It's a natural reaction,'' said Delfin Gonzalez, one of Elian's great-uncles in
 Miami.

 Portable toilets accommodate the media horde and curious onlookers in front of
 the home. A vendor selling roasted peanuts and another iced drinks work the
 crowd on weekends.

 Postcards directed to the White House are passed around to everyone --
 including tourists -- by political activists. Publicity-seekers go to the house to
 express their views on camera. Police have kept metal barricades up, blocking
 part of the street.

 ON LUNCH BREAK

 ``We came out of curiosity and to show solidarity with the family,'' said Emanuel
 Rivera, who showed up with seven co-workers from downtown Miami during their
 lunch hour one day last week.

 On Sunday, Rafael Gonzalez of southwest Miami-Dade County took a photo of
 three friends posing in front of Elian's home, whose entrance is a small metal gate
 secured with a master lock that forms part of a chain-link fence around the house.

 ``We tried to come once before, but there were too many people,'' Gonzalez said.

 Little Havana residents Manuel Rodriguez and Guillermina Sanchez, along with
 Sanchez's daughter, go by the Elian household often. Sunday marked their fourth
 visit.

 ``We like to see the boy running around in the front yard, playing with his toys,''
 Rodriguez said. ``And we like to show our support.''

 ``I'd like to pat him on the head, but I haven't been able to,'' Sanchez said.

 Gilberto Nicado of Hialeah and his parents waited Sunday for the 6-year-old boy.
 ``I wanted to see him,'' said Nicado, a Mariel refugee. ``He's a boy who wants the
 same thing we do -- liberty.''

 EASY DIRECTIONS

 When asked how he found Elian's address, Nicado replied: ``I asked people on
 the street. You can ask for directions to China, and they'll give it to you.''

 Diana Gonzalez and her daughters, ages 3 and 5, from Pembroke Pines, brought
 gifts for Elian -- a blue ball and two Beanie Babies, Valentino the Bear and
 Spangle the American Bear. Valentino is white with a red heart on its chest, and
 Spangle is covered with the American flag in red, white and blue.

 ``My daughter wanted to give him the bears,'' Gonzalez said. ``We feel that
 [Miami] is his home and his mother died for this.''

 The girls entertained themselves with a new friend as they waited for Elian to
 show up, donning play nail polish and lipstick. But they never saw Elian.

 Lucila Rodriguez sat on a concrete block, as if it were a chair, across the street
 from the house. In her lap, a sealed box of Royal Dansk chocolate chip cookies --
 a gift for the boy. ``I didn't want to give him a toy, he has so many,'' she said.

 It's unlikely that the family will let Elian partake of the cookies, but Rodriguez
 insisted that the box has never been opened. Lazaro Gonzalez, Elian's
 great-uncle, has taken away from Elian chocolate bars and candy that strangers
 have given the boy.

 Herald staff writers Alfonso Chardy, Marika Lynch and Dominique Collins Berta
 contributed to this report.

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald