BY EUNICE PONCE, MIREIDY FERNANDEZ AND SANDRA MARQUEZ GARCIA

 Scores of young protesters played a cat-and-mouse game with Hialeah police early
 today,crowding streets and throwing rocks before moving away when officers used
 tear gas to disperse them.

 Youths throwing rocks disrupted a peaceful protest along West 49th Street at 12th
 Avenue about 12:30 p.m., and police in riot gear moved in to clear the area.

 But the protest kept moving to different locations, as teenagers waved flags, threw
 rocks and gunned their cars through store parking lots and over medians and curbs.

 At 1:45 a.m., the crowd was concentrated at 49th Street and Fourth Avenue and
 police fired tear gas. But protesters, driving cars, dump trucks and tow trucks,
 just moved their vehicles farther off and stopped.

 Shortly afterward, the crowd began thinning out.

 Hialeah, America's most heavily populated Cuban city, had emerged from the
 weekend nearly unscathed by the episodes of tear gas, bonfires and major arrests
 that rocked Miami in the aftermath of the federal raid to reunite Elian Gonzalez with
 his father.

 On Saturday, a peaceful bumper-to-bumper caravan comprising more than 1,000
 mostly teenage protesters packed 49th Street, Hialeah's busiest shopping boulevard.
 The group waved Cuban and American flags in a carnival-like show of support for
 the departed Cuban rafter boy.

 Hialeah Police that day arrested four people. There were no reports of property
 damage -- and the only known injury occurred when a young man fell off the
 back of a pickup truck, police said.

 This weekend, Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez did not make an appearance.
 Instead, he assumed an unusually low profile, staying out of the public eye
 and waiting until after 5 p.m. Monday to issue a statement condemning the raid.

 ''As a freeman, I condemn the excessive force and brutal aggression that took
 place when negotiations were still taking place,'' Martinez spokesman Jose
 Caragol paraphrased the statement, issued in Spanish. ''It was an abuse by the
 federal government.''

 Martinez also announced that all non-emergency city employees were free to
 take the day off today in observance of the work stoppage -- as long as they used
 an accumulated sick day or vacation day.

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald