By Sue Anne Pressley and April Witt
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday , April 14, 2000 ; A10

MIAMI, April 13 –– Helicopters buzzed overhead, drivers blasted car horns and grandmothers banged on pots and pans. Outside the modest white house in Little Havana, where Elian Gonzalez has spent the past 4 1/2 months and where, it was feared, federal marshals might come to get the boy, the crowd was uneasy today--and ever growing.

Paramedics worked to revive those who fainted from the sticky heat and intense emotion. Bands of people marched through the surrounding streets, singing the Cuban national anthem. Prayer circles quietly formed in one area; chanters shouted "Libertad!" in another. Although it was largely well-behaved, an air of defiance and anti-government fervor seemed to suffuse the crowd, as supporters waited on edge for the next step in the long-running and complicated showdown with federal officials.

"I will try to stop them," said retired waiter Jesus La Rosa. "Cubans respect the law, but we are like bees. We are very nice and make honey. But if you push the bee, we will sting. They are pushing us."

By late afternoon, the crowd swelled to thousands of people--clogging the major intersections of this largely Cuban American community and prompting police to reinforce barricades and enlarge a buffer zone around the house. Only a few of the officers wore flak jackets, and although they stood at attention, eyeing the crowd carefully, they did not seem overly  orried--not yet. No violence or arrests were reported.

"Obviously, things have come to a head," said Lt. Bill Schwartz, a spokesman for the Miami police department. "If the federal government does come in, if that should happen, we can expect more passion in the crowd, but we are comfortable that we will be able to do crowd control."

A life-size effigy of Cuban President Fidel Castro swung from a light pole a half-block from the house. Overhead, a small plane flew back and forth, trailing a banner that said, in Spanish, "Elian, Miami and God Love You." Protesters craned to get a glimpse of the celebrities who came to have a say--among them, singer Gloria Estefan and actor Andy Garcia, both Cuban Americans, who visited with Elian inside and exhorted the crowd outside to remain calm.

"We want no violence. We are a peaceful community," Estefan said, after Elian's Miami relatives had defied an Immigration and Naturalization Service order to surrender the boy to federal authorities at 2 p.m. "We urge every Cuban American to join us in the effort."

At times, it seemed the protesters were attempting to answer that call. Norman del Valle, vice president of the anti-Castro Democracy Movement, said that the Latin Chamber of Commerce shortly after noon today asked its member businesses to close their doors so that workers could pour out into the streets and swell the crowds.

"We are very charged emotionally," said del Valle, owner of a hurricane-shutter company, as he paused in shouting through a bullhorn. But, he added, "We have to be watching the crowd all the time. We have infiltrators from the Castro government. They will try to excite the crowd and get them to do something violent."

Eager for good news in what had largely been a grim week, the protesters were heartened by the afternoon development in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; a judge granted an injunction that does not prevent the boy's reunion with his Cuban father waiting in Washington but does prohibit his immediate return to Cuba. Augustina Roman, 70, a grandmother of eight, viewed the victory as nothing less than God-sent.

"This is a miracle. We prayed. This is a miracle," she said, looking heavenward and waving her hands at the sky.

Others were hardly ready to celebrate. For a group of Bay of Pigs survivors, wearing navy-blue hats that said in Spanish, Assault Brigade 2506, the Elian saga stirred memories of a government betrayal nearly 40 years ago.

"I feel ashamed of the United States," said businessman Eli Cesar, 63, who was captured during the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and spent 22 months imprisoned in Cuba. "I love everything of this country. I always did. [But] this is the third time the United States has double-crossed the freedom fighters--the first time with Kennedy, then with [President] Carter, who gave Nicaragua to the Sandinistas, now Clinton."

Special correspondent Catharine Skipp contributed to this report.

                                 © 2000 The Washington Post Company