BY OSCAR CORRAL

The mayor of Miami and a rising star of Broadway were educated there, as was the former CEO of Coca-Cola, not to mention the world's longest ruling dictator.

Belen Jesuit Preparatory School in West Dade, founded in Cuba in 1854 and billed as the South Florida school with the oldest history, celebrates its 150th anniversary this week.

Like hundreds of thousands of Cuban Americans who have made Florida their home, the all-male private school will mark this milestone in exile.

But also like many of the Cubans who thought they were coming to Miami only temporarily to wait out the fall of Fidel Castro -- himself a Belen alumnus -- the school has seen immense success during its 43 years in South Florida.

Flush with endowments from alumni like Roberto Goizueta, the late CEO of Coca Cola, and other benefactors, the school has grown from a scruffy flat in a downtown church to a 30-acre campus with its own theater, gym, observatory, art gallery and chapel.

''It's the pride and joy of the Cuban-American community in Miami,'' said former Belen student Carlos Saladrigas, chairman of Premier American Bank, who has pledged more than $1 million to the school.

``It instills that philosophy that tells you you have a moral responsibility to take to the max the gift you've been given by God for the betterment of the world around you.''

This week, Belen marks its anniversary with several events, including a celebration Mass that took place Tuesday morning and a torch relay scheduled for Saturday from downtown Miami to its campus at 500 SW 127 Ave.

CORRIDORS OF POWER

One doesn't have to wander too far along South Florida's corridors of power to bump into the school's alumni: Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, nicknamed ''Wolfie'' in high school and photographed for the yearbook with a mustache and long hair; Braulio Baez, chairman of Florida's Public Service Commission, which regulates the state's utilities; Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation.

But the school's graduates also pop up in unlikely places. For example, Broadway star Raul Esparza, who graduated in 1988, had the lead role as the emcee on Broadway's Cabaret a couple of years ago. And Anthony Laurencio, class of 1992, is lead keyboardist and backup guitarist for the Grammy-winning Latin rock band, Bacilos.

Esparza today hardly recognizes the school's campus, which has doubled in size since he graduated, adding an indoor gym and a performing arts center.

''Belen is definitely the place where I began to believe that I could do anything I wanted to do in this life,'' Esparza said. ``Of course, when I was there, we were nailing light bulbs to a board and pretending we had a stage.''

To many graduates, Belen is a source of pride, an institution that changed them for the better, bred competition and set them on paths of leadership.

''It set a high standard and bar to reach,'' Mayor Diaz said in a recent interview. ``It instilled in me a set of values that I still hold near and dear with respect to giving back, working on behalf of the community.''

But it had to claw its way back to success after leaving Cuba.

In 1854, the Real Colegio de Belen opened its doors to 40 students for the first time in Havana after Queen Isabel II of Spain issued its royal charter. Officially signed over to Jesuit priests in 1898, Belen steadily grew.

By the time 80 communist soldiers occupied the school's campus for Castro in January 1961, it had 60 acres with 1,200 students. On Sept. 17 of that year, 26 Jesuit priests -- expelled by Castro -- boarded the Covadonga ship and headed for Miami.

The Jesuits immediately opened a small campus for fewer than 200 students on the fourth floor of the Centro Hispano Católico at the Gesu Church, in downtown.

The following year, they moved to a warehouse on the corner of Southwest Eighth Street and Seventh Avenue.

''They were pretty decrepit, limited facilities, small classrooms with no windows,'' Diaz recalled. ``We used to do phys-ed and practice sports in what we used to call the dust bowl, which was basically a big pile of dirt out back.''

The school has evolved from those days. With tuition having doubled in the last 10 years, from about $400 a month to more than $800, the school has become harder for many to afford.

To make Belen more widely available, administrators say one out of every four students receives some of the $600,000 a year doled out in financial aid.

''We are so convinced that what we have here is a good thing, that we want to be able to offer it to anybody and everybody,'' said the Rev. Guillermo ''Willie'' García-Tuñón, a Belen alumnus and Jesuit priest who now teaches at the school.

MOLDED BY MIAMI

Belen has also been molded by Miami's unique demographics. What used to be a school of Cuban Americans now comprises about 1,000 students from 27 different countries, most of them Latin American, European and Cuban American, García-Tuñón said.

Strict rules remain the norm. It was not unusual during the 1980s and 1990s for a paddle-wielding disciplinarian to spank students for having their shirts untucked, having hair too long or short, missing a belt or wearing the wrong type of shoes. Those rules are no longer enforced with a wood paddle.

Likewise, academic toughness is still Belen's trademark. Every year, from 6th to 12th grade, the classes tend to shrink as students either flunk out or leave because they can't keep up with the academics. García-Tuñón said 100 percent of graduating classes go on to college.

''It's a place where men throw shoulders and elbows against each other to try to make it to the top to distinguish themselves,'' CANF director Garcia said.

Of course, not all Belen alumni have brought prestige to themselves. Former Miami Commissioner Humberto Hernandez, who was removed from office and served several years in prison for mortgage and voter fraud, was in the class of 1980. Hernandez's yearbook quote: "I'll talk my way out of it.''

Ironically, the judge who sentenced Hernandez for voter fraud, calling his actions ''unconscionable,'' is Belen alumnus Roberto Pineiro.

Hernandez says he resents any association between his past mistakes and his Belen education.

''I think it would be ludicrous to say that they taught me or any other students to skirt around the law,'' Hernandez said in a recent interview.

The school is also a place where ruthless humor and lifelong friendships among the students are standard.

''The only friends that I really truly have came from that point in my life,'' said Baez of the Public Service Commission. ``The relationships are based on ridicule, and it creates, one would hope, a thick skin.

''I always joke around it's like the shovel test,'' Baez explained. ``God forbid, if you ever kill someone, who is going to show up with the shovel? These are people you trust with your life.''