MIAMI, 5 (AP) - Angry calls came rolling in to a Spanish-language television station after viewers heard details of Elian Gonzalez's meeting with his grandmothers that went beyond playing with toys and stuffed animals.
Station officials said their audience ed the 6-year-old Cuban boy's Miami relatives on Friday in expressing outrage over one of the grandmother's s of how she playfully bit Elian's tongue and unzipped his pants during their long-awaited reunion.
``Everyone we have talked to ... thought this was inappropriate behavior for grandmothers,'' said Maria Lewis, managing editor at WSCV-TV.
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.'''
Armando Gutierrez, spokesman for Elian's Miami relatives, said the family was ``shocked and disturbed'' by the .
``That is not a Cuban custom,'' he said. ``I lived in Cuba until I was 11 and my grandmother, rest in peace, she never measured me that way.''
Sister Jeanne O'Laughlin, who arranged the meeting, and Sister Lenore Esnard, who also was in the house, 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 professed to finding anything strange about Quintana's behavior.
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 with relatives in Miami who hope to keep him despite an immigration order to send him back to his father in Cuba.
The relatives have requested a meeting with Attorney General Janet Reno next week to discuss unspecified new information about the case, said Carole Florman, a Justice Department spokeswoman.
She said the request was being considered.
She also said the Justice Department is reviewing a letter from Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, asking Reno to move his son to the home of another Miami relative who is more sympathetic to his wishes.
Gonzalez, who is pressing for his son's return, wrote that he is ``deeply concerned and anguished'' over Elian's condition.
AP-NY-02-05-00 0151EST
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