BY ENRIQUE FERNANDEZ

When the organizers of Calle Ocho -- the massive street festival that organizers predict will draw 1.4 million revelers on its 30th anniversary Sunday -- were tossing around ideas for a cultural event on Southwest Eighth Street, somebody proposed holding a bicycle race.

But members of the Kiwanis Club of Little Havana, a service club made up exclusively of Cuban Americans, weren't looking to create competition. They were looking to promote inclusion.

''The idea was to bring people together,'' says Leslie Pantin, then Kiwanis Club president, who is credited with being the father of the street festival.

A packed mass of partygoers will salsa, merengue, or just slowly elbow their way down Little Havana's main drag on Sunday, stopping to listen to a smorgasbord of music, from Puerto Rican salsa diva La India to Miami-bred rapper Pitbull; to munch on seafood paella or arepas; and to grab free samples of everything from Lipton's mango cream tea to free AT&T phone cards. There will be energy drinks, beer promoted by major breweries and even full-service bars. A one-block walk at peak hours might take an hour.

In the end, it's not just a day of Latin cultural immersion for the mostly Hispanic revelers. It's one of the nation's biggest Hispanic marketing events, as every corporation that targets Spanish-speaking communities, the advertising agencies that fashion those pitches, and the Spanish-language media that deliver them descend on Miami to market with unabashed zeal.

Sunday's festival is a far cry from the event that the Kiwanis Club conceived in 1978 as a bridge-builder -- not a marketing festival. A group member suggested the notion of an ethnic street fair like the Italian ones he had seen in Philadelphia.

''We Cuban Americans were opening our house to the other communities -- Anglo-Saxons, African Americans, Jewish Americans,'' says veteran newsman Gustavo Godoy, now publisher of Vista magazine, who in 1978 was editor of Hispanic news for Channel 4, then an NBC affiliate.

It wasn't even called Calle Ocho. ''It was the Anglos who insisted on calling it that,'' recalls Pantin, now president of Pantin/Beber Silverstein Public Relations. "We called it Open House 8: An Invitation to Southwest Eighth Street. We were very concerned about language issues, which is why we also dismissed producing a Latin music concert.''

The street fair grew, quite literally from the moment it opened. ''In '78, we had rented the trams that used to run up and down Lincoln Road,'' Pantin recalls, ``but an hour into the fair, we had to send them back because the street was too crowded.''

The next day, Pantin recalls with pride, a Miami Herald headline proclaimed that 100,000 people attended the 15-block fair. The organizers had expected 10,000.

And it kept growing. The Kiwanis' partner that first year was The Miami Herald, and the newspaper and the service club shared the fair's $14,000 loss. The following year, in spite of the initial deficit, other media companies wanted to get into the act, and Miami's growing Hispanic radio and TV outlets became Calle Ocho sponsors.

In 1983, the Kiwanians declared that the crowd had surpassed one million. And in 1998, taking advantage of the critical mass, they broke the Guinness conga line record with 119,986 hipswaying dancers -- more than the total number of visitors at the first festival.

Today, the party covers 23 blocks, from Southwest Fourth to 27th avenues, which is as far as the historic neighborhood known as Little Havana runs. This year, organizers will try to break that conga record and set another for the most people playing dominoes at once.

''In the first years, it was not a marketing event,'' says Godoy, who in 1981 was news director for SIN -- which would become the Univisión TV network. 'The Cuban community had been here for 18 years in '78. And we had overcome the prejudices we first encountered, like housing ads that read, `No minors, dogs or Cubans allowed.' ''

So it was time to throw a party.

He suggested to the local affiliate, Channel 23, that it revive the Spanish and Cuban carnival custom of a parade of Gigantes y Cabezones (giants and big heads). Huge big-headed figures representing stars like Celia Cruz and local TV personalities like news anchor Guillermo Benítez walked up and down the street.

The original fair included art, although Pantin says the definition was broad: ``In the '70s, macramé was art.''

And of course, there was the music. Carlos Oliva, a veteran Miami musician credited with inventing the ''Miami sound,'' was the Kiwanis member in charge of that.

"In the beginning, any Hialeah barber who could scratch a güiro -- the ridged gourd used as percussion in salsa -- could play Calle Ocho.''

Oliva recalls that Carlos Vives, then known only as a telenovela leading man, would play the festival ''with a little rock combo.'' Oliva himself always played the festival -- including this year -- with his group Los Sobrinos del Juez (The Judge's Nephews).

Soon, major national corporations set up stages with bigger and bigger stars, like salsa queen Celia Cruz and Tito Puente. And as the fair's attendance evolved from Cubans to other nationalities, music from all corners of Latin America was played -- Dominican merengue bands, Mexican grupero music and Central American crooners -- most under corporate sponsorship.

How did a neighborhood street party evolve into a huge marketing event?

It was the selling skills of the Kiwanians, who, coming from the entrepreneurial classes that constituted the first wave of Cuban exiles, did what came naturally. They went looking for sponsors for their fledgling fair and wound up, 30 years later, placing hundreds of thousands of target customers in front of eager marketers.

Their motivation in raising money from so many corporate sponsors -- this year's projected impact is $35 million, according to Kiwanis President Ricardo González -- was community-oriented.

Pantin says the sponsors have made the festival ''a fundraiser for the Kiwanis so we can invest in parks, scholarships and not just in Little Havana. We have projects all over South Florida.'' The event raises about $100,000 a year for the group's scholarship program.

EARLY PROMOTERS

The former club president recalls that he and his fellow Kiwanians, promoting the event three decades ago, wandered from one Manhattan advertising agency to another, lugging the big multiple-projector machinery used for presentations before there were laptop computers.

One New York agency that took the bait was the Bravo Group, the Hispanic division of Young & Rubicam/WPP London. Its chairman, Daisy Expósito, today partner, chairman and chief executive officer of d expósito & partners, was impressed by the magnitude of the event. She recalls standing on the roof of a fast-food restaurant and tossing T-shirts to the crowd below.

''I became afraid when I realized there were about a thousand people down there clamoring for T-shirts,'' Expósito says.

Florida International University sociology professor Lisandro Pérez, who was the founding director of the school's Cuban Research Institute, says the Kiwanis influence accounts for Calle Ocho's success as a marketing event.

''[The Kiwanis Club] came from the Cuban exiles, people who were already experienced in buying and selling,'' Pérez says. "In other cities, it might be community activists.''

Although the street fair began as the Cuban-American community's ''open house'' party for its non-Cuban neighbors, today, Pantin says, ''it's more of a Latin American event.'' This reflects the evolution of the neighborhood.

In 1978, when the street festival began, the neighborhood was almost exclusively Cuban. Exiles settled in the city's Southwest -- la sawesera in Miami Spanglish -- because rents were cheap there. They developed the neighborhood, and businesses whose names echoed the famous shops, restaurants and bakeries in the island dotted the strip.

As many Cubans moved out when their situation improved, other Latin Americans took their place. So instead of mainly Cuban-clientele restaurants like Casablanca, El Bodegón and Centro Vasco, now there are Nicaraguan, Mexican and Colombian restaurants.

One of the few surviving white-tablecloth Cuban restaurants on the strip of Southwest Eighth Street that is the core of Little Havana is Casa Juancho.

José Alberto Rodríguez, who has managed Casa Juancho for mogul Felipe Vals (owner of Versailles and the La Carreta chain) since 1990, frowns and shrugs when the subject turns to the street's lack of other lively upmarket spots.

''We're alone,'' he says wistfully.

Thanks to a faithful, mostly Cuban-American, clientele, Casa Juancho remains a viable business. And its involvement in Calle Ocho is stronger than ever. As in other years, Casa Juancho is the fair's hospitality center for the Univisión network. In addition, this year its parking lot will do the same for corporate sponsor Rémy Martin.

To accommodate the diversity of visitors to Calle Ocho, the Kiwanians have divided the strip into differently themed sections. ''We've done this for the past couple of years,'' says club president González.

The stages in one section will play nothing but traditional tropical music, like salsa and merengue, not unlike what was playing at the original Open House 8 back in '78. Other sections will be devoted to reggaeton, urban music and other international sounds.

FOR KIDS, ADULTS

And there will be a family-friendly zone. ''From Fourth to Eighth avenues, there will be no alcohol,'' González says. 'We'll have rides, face painting, clowns, kids' music. Families can come with small kids.''

As always, marketing will be everywhere. ''Chrysler is launching a new car here, and Budweiser is flying in all their executives from St. Louis,'' González says. ``It's the signature event of Miami, and people plan vacations around it.''

In spite of her career's investment in Calle Ocho's marketing success, Expósito, the advertising executive, regrets that a more pure cultural aspect never took hold, and she would complain about it, in vain, to the street festival's organizers.

''Calle Ocho is what it is,'' Expósito says -- ''a great marketing event.'' But, she adds, "with a lot of fun.''