Herald Staff Report

 MARIEL, Cuba -- At the end of a concrete pier where 20 years ago thousands of desperate Cubans lined up to go into exile, hungry boys dangle bait into an ocean stinking of oil.

 There is no memorial at the docks in Mariel, nothing to commemorate the extraordinary exodus of 125,000 people to Florida, a surge of humanity that to this anniversary day is known only by the name of the harbor town that was the floodgate.

 It is not mentioned in classrooms around the city, or, for that matter, by school teachers anyplace else in Cuba.

 In Mariel, the boatlift is an embarrassment, like the pollution from its heavy industry.

 ``They might as well be ghosts,'' says Emetrio Garcia Martin, 56, who works at a Mariel pharmacy, about the thousands who left through the harbor here. ``I remember the faces, but I have forgotten the names. And who would want to know anyway? They were the riffraff, the prostitutes, the crazy ones.''

 Today, the energies of Mariel, a city that prides itself on its allegiance to Fidel, are focused not on the past, but the new free trade zone which offers sorely needed jobs but also fouls the air and daubs everything in beige grit.

 Second only to the capital city as the most important port of commerce on Cuba's northern coast, Mariel is home to many retired military and their families. Armed guards prowl the perimeter of the naval installation, power plant, scrap metal works, oil storage facility and other enterprises ringed with chain-link fences.

 ``Today the Revolution is Much Bigger, More Solid and Indestructible Than Ever!''  reads one of dozens of huge signs that dominate the landscape.

 Today in Mariel, say most of its denizens, the boatlift is best left alone.

 ``Here we are with Fidel,'' declares a woman at the bus station used by workers commuting from Havana, 25 miles to the east. She asked not to be named.

 ``Don't ask me about those days,'' says Vladimir Abrue, his work clothes soiled with dust from his job at Cuba's biggest cement plant, managed by the Mexican firm Cementos Mexicanos S.A.

 ``I never think about those people. They were not from Mariel, anyway. They just used this place to go to Miami.''

 REGRET AND GUILT

 Still, among some older people -- especially those rare souls who have always called this transient port home -- there is a philosophical recollection, often tempered by regret and guilt.

 ``I felt bad for them,'' said Vicente Cubillas, 58, a mechanic whose tiny roadside tire repair shop is decorated with framed photos of guerrilla heroes. ``They were terrified of people throwing stones at them or beating them up.''

 He said members of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution -- pro-Fidel stalwarts who keep watch on each block -- were given the green light at one point to rough up the emigres.

 ``I regret that,'' Cubillas said. ``It did not look good for the revolution. Those attacks did a lot to discredit all the good work we did [in getting rid of dictator Fulgencio Batista]. It was a low point for Cuba.''

 Antonio Delahoza, and his wife, Amalia, recall the families camping out in the marshlands around the harbor and under trees in the small park next to the waterfront.

 A bronze bust by the water's edge commemorates the first solo flight from Key West to Mariel done in 1913 by daredevil Cuban aviation pioneer Agustin Parla.

 `PREFER TO FORGET'

 ``A lot of people will tell you they don't remember,'' said Delahoza, a graying former construction worker. ``Those were sad days. People would prefer to forget. The way things worked out for our nation, some of them might wish they had gotten on a boat, too. But here, most of us are loyal, believing in the future.''

 Except for an occasional bitter mention by President Fidel Castro, the boatlift has been mostly obliterated from official memory in Cuba. The anniversary has not spawned conferences. Cuban television has not revisited Mariel. Even the Peruvian Embassy building on Havana's Fifth Avenue where the sorry saga began has been razed, the ultramodern Novotel Miramar Hotel rising in its place to snare the tourist dollar.

 ``It is not part of the curriculum,'' says a former Education Ministry official. ``In school, they focus on what's happening now. Mariel, Grenada, Angola -- those were current events. But when it is over, it is over . . .

 ``After 10 years, if something is favorable to the revolution, maybe they'll say something about it in a textbook. But the [Communist] Party wants to look forward, forward, not back at these kind of things.''

 HISTORY ASIDE

 Many of the 41,000 citizens of Mariel cite the need to put history aside and get on with life, as they shrug off the memory of those five months in 1980 when, as one man put it, ``we flushed the toilet.''

 One woman said her uncle told her one of his friends was a Marielito. ``He says it was a kind of madness. People went, just like that. That friend returned for a visit a few months ago wearing gold chains, like the mafia. It was disgusting!''

 For all the Fidelista loyalty, for all the sober perspective on history, there are those who say it could happen again.

 In a street near the provincial Academy of Nautical Sports, Marta Riba Peraza and a young man who identified himself only as Vicente watched two windsurfers clad in black and fuchsia body suits head out into the glittering water of Mariel Bay.

 ``Do you see that?'' Riba asked. ``Do you know that sometimes one of those [windsurfers] just keeps going? They say that from here to Key West it is 18 hours if you go that way. People have done it. It is true!''

 Her friend watched the brightly colored sails until they vanished in the surreal swirl of dust from the cement plant. ``If you complain about pollution here,'' he said, ``you can make an enemy.

 `I WOULD GO'

 ``If they gave the word today,'' he said, referring to Cuban government assurances in 1980 that those who wanted to go could do so unmolested, ``I would go.''

 He explained he had lost an opportunity to go to a government-run school for those who want to work in the tourist industry: a fiercely competitive job market where workers have access to dollars. He is ``making do,'' he says, using a term for those in Cuba who scavenge or steal to survive.

 ``Many call them traitors,'' he said of those long gone.

 ``But they may have had good sense. They are probably rich today, unlike me.''

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald