By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

          MIAMI -- Elian Gonzalez's Miami relatives are outraged over his
          Cuban grandmother's account of how she playfully bit the
          6-year-old boy's tongue and unzipped his pants during their long-awaited
          reunion.

          "The family is shocked and disturbed," Armando Gutierrez, spokesman
          for the Miami relatives, said Friday. "That is not a Cuban custom."

          Through Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., Elian's Florida relatives requested a
          meeting with Attorney General Janet Reno next week to discuss
          unspecified new information about the case, Justice spokesman Carole
          Florman said. The request was being considered.

          In an interview on Cuban television Tuesday, Elian's paternal
          grandmother, Mariela Quintana, said she had "played jokes" with the boy
          during a U.S. government-ordered meeting Jan. 26 at the home of a
          Roman Catholic nun in Florida.

          Quintana said the boy was "reserved" at the start of the meeting, so she
          joked that he might have lost his tongue.

          "I took his tongue out of his mouth," she said, gesturing with her hand as
          if she was pulling her own tongue from her mouth. "I bit it."

          "I even opened up his zipper," she said, making an unzipping gesture. "I
          told him, 'Let me see, let me see ... if it has grown."'

          Meeting host Sister Jeanne O'Laughlin and Sister Lenore Esnard, who
          also was in the house during the meeting, were unaware of the exchange
          until Quintana's remarks were broadcast on Miami television, said Barry
          University spokeswoman Michele Morris. O'Laughlin is president of the
          school.

          In Cuba, few people found anything strange about Quintana's behavior,
          but the spokeswoman for the Spanish-language Telemundo affiliate in
          Miami said the station was flooded with calls from outraged viewers.

          "Everyone we have talked to, everyone who saw the tape, thought this
          was inappropriate behavior for grandmothers," said Maria Lewis,
          managing editor at Telemundo's WSCV-TV.

          Uva de Aragon, assistant director of the Cuban Research Institute at
          Florida International University, said Quintana's behavior might seem odd
          to people in the United States, but it was probably innocent.

          "The way the woman said it on national television shows it wasn't
          something perverted," de Aragon said. "She was joking with a little kid,
          trying to get him to respond, the same as if she were tickling him or trying
          to see his muscles."

          She said that most Hispanic cultures have a different concept of personal
          space and that the Cuban culture traditionally has been very
          male-oriented. Fathers, particularly in lower classes, often boast about
          the size of their sons' genitals, associating that with bravery and virility.

          Elian was rescued on Thanksgiving after clinging to an inner tube for two
          days following a shipwreck that killed his mother. The first-grader has
          been living in Miami with his great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez, and his U.S.
          relatives hope to keep him despite an immigration order to send him
          back.

          Officials from the Florida Department of Children and Families went to
          the home of Elian's relatives Friday night. They were at the house for
          more than an hour, but did not comment on the visit.

          His father back in Cuba, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, is pressing for his return.
          He wrote Reno on Thursday asking her to move the boy to the home of
          another Miami relative who is more sympathetic to his wishes.

          "I am deeply concerned and anguished over the present condition of my
          6-year-old son, Elian Gonzalez, unfairly and cruelly separated from our
          family for over two months," he said in a letter released to foreign news
          agencies by the Cuban government.

          Florman said the Justice Department was reviewing the letter.

                     Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company