A day after coming ashore at Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, three Cuban migrants express joy at surviving the perilous journey to the United States. At the same time, they were sad over five comrades who died.

BY JERRY BERRIOS, HECTOR FLORIN AND JEANNETTE RIVERA-LYLES

Fearful of a communist government that targeted them for publicly opposing Fidel Castro, the group of Cuban migrants spent more than a month making purchases at different state-controlled auto shops to avoid suspicion about their intention to flee to the United States.

And even though it cost them the lives of five of their comrades -- four of whom died right in front of them in the merciless waves of the high sea -- the two men and one woman who survived the trip on Friday expressed no doubts and no regrets about their flight to freedom.

Their sunburned skin healing, their health and spirits recovering, the three survivors remained at Fort Lauderdale's Holy Cross Hospital Friday.

It was one day after being swept ashore in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea following a week of floating on rafts made of the same material they were so careful to purchase.

''It was terrible, but it was worth it,'' William Villavicencio-Pérez, the survivor who masterminded the fateful trip. But, he said, ``If I had to do it again, I would.''

The U.S. Coast Guard suspended search efforts just before noon Friday for the only unaccounted Cuban migrant in the group. Survivors said four others drowned along the way.

BOUND FOR KROME

Villavicencio-Pérez, 31, and Carlos Lázaro Bringuier-Hernández, 38, may be released from Holy Cross on Monday. Milena Isabel González-Martinez, 37, likely will stay longer.

Upon their release, U.S. Border Patrol agents will interview them and determine their immigration status, senior agent Lázaro Guzmán said. The three will then be sent to Krome detention center in West Miami-Dade County.

On Friday, the survivors and Cuban dissident leaders who oppose Castro's regime shed light on the trip's motives.

Documents retrieved from the voyage included Antonio Pantoja-Rodríguez's sentencing papers for expressing ''enemy propaganda'' in 1990 at the age of 22. He spent four years in prison.

Pantoja-Rodríguez, of Centro Havana, is one of those who perished on the trip.

''He had reached a point of total desperation,'' Juana González Nieves, 40, said in Cuba of her husband of six years. ``He did not, could not, go back to jail.''

Villavicencio-Pérez on Friday talked about handing out human rights pamphlets. He kept plans of his latest voyage secret; he told his mother, wife and 13-year-old son -- a budding kayaker -- he was leaving, but not when, to avoid word from spilling out on the streets in his Arroyo Naranjo neighborhood.

Villavicencio-Pérez and Pantoja-Rodríguez were members of the same dissident group, the civic movement of Jan. 6. Both were constant government targets.

''I was suffering. I had no reason to live,'' Villavicencio-Pérez said. ``I'd prefer to go to jail because I don't believe in Fidel.''

TRIP DELAYED

Plans were in place to leave March 15, but bad weather postponed the trip until March 18.

On March 17, the group of eight made their way to a hillside area barely a mile from Playa Jibacoa, where they departed. They carried a bag with the deflated tires, an air pump, water and food, including crackers, ham, bread.

At darkness, the group walked toward the beach.

''Whoever doesn't want to come, don't come,'' Villavicencio-Pérez said he told the group. No one left.

At the start of the journey, the water was calm. But by the second day, two men had drowned. Much of their food washed away after a tire overturned. They ate sugar.

The male survivors said boats passed by, and planes flew overhead. Pleas for help went ignored or unheard, they said. A Coast Guard official said the migrants endured the whole trip on the tires.

Later in the journey, two more men drowned. An unidentified fifth man washed away with the current.

By late Wednesday night, the three survivors saw flickers of light.

''Something told me I would live, that I would survive,'' said González-Martinez, mother of 14-year-old twins still in Cuba.

But González-Martinez's husband, Nerisbel Suárez-Galán, died the second day of the voyage. Angel Mantecón Guevara and Juan Tamayo Muñoz also died.

Although Cuban media hasn't reported the rafters' arrival, scores of people on the island have been catching Miami's TV and radio newscasts with illegal antennas.

HEAT ON

Cuban dissident Iovani Aguilar said dissenters have been feeling heat on a daily basis since last year when Castro sentenced 75 people, many of them journalists, to prison.

''There's been a wave of repression, and people are afraid. Some are terrorized,'' Aguilar said. ``They don't only go after you, they go after your friends, your relatives, and your children.''

Cuban family members have received telephone calls from their South Florida relatives. René Hernández of Coral Gables called his daughter -- Bringuier-Hernández's wife -- in Cuba with the news. Hernández said he taped a newscast with Bringuier-Hernández's voice and played it over the phone. Maria Luisa Hernández wept, Hernández said.

At her home in Havana's El Vedado neighborhood, Glenis Faure Fonseca, wife of Fernando Aguilera Vargas, another of the men lost at sea, mourned with her three children, ages 13 to 20.

''I begged him, pleaded with him not to leave us,'' she said in a telephone interview, her voice hoarse from crying. ``He would not hear it.''

Asked what their immediate desires are if they stay in the United States, each of the survivors said they wanted to find a job.

And reunite with their families.