Mariel raised the profile of Cubans in local public office, who were forced to deal with a massive crisis demanding quick but sound decisions and sensitivity to the community's needs.

By ELAINE DE VALLE

As the first wave of more than 125,000 Cuban refugees suddenly headed for South Florida, Miami Assistant City Manager Cesar Odio found himself thrust into a new role as he tried to keep the city together and Cuban exiles calm.
 
He had been on the job barely four months, but because then-City Manager Joseph Grassie was away on business, Odio found himself front and center in one of the biggest crises ever to hit the region, as a human shepherd for the refugees, setting up their tent city homes, getting them fed.

Almost six years later, he became Miami city manager, catapulted into that post thanks in part to his steely nerves during the Mariel exodus.

''I felt that I had an obligation to help my people out. I knew my people. This was a Cuban thing,'' said Odio, whose parents spent 10 and seven years, respectively, in Cuban prisons. ``Every turn that I took was with one thing in mind: Let's get this problem solved.''

The exodus came with plenty of problems: The Mariel boatlift brought about 2,000 or 2,500 criminals and, perhaps, 500 mentally ill people. There were language barriers and a housing shortage. But there was plenty of good: a wave of talented artists -- painters, sculptors, poets and playwrights often celebrated at art shows and literary fairs.

The events also ushered in some new Cuban American political, civic and community leaders: Odio and former assistant county manager Sergio Pereira are joined by former Miami Mayor Maurice Ferre; Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez; educator Eduardo Padrón, who at the time was president of just one Miami Dade College campus, where he started a program to retrain the refugees.

Odio said he wasn't thinking about his future at the time. ''I wasn't looking for power at all. I guess my life took the turn to be able to help out and then in 1986 they appointed me [city] manager, but I wasn't looking for power,'' Odio told The Herald.

Odio ran the city's refugee assistance program for two years and opened camps at the Orange Bowl and under the Interstate 95 overpass in downtown Miami.

TRIAL BY FIRE

The tasks at the city's refugee assistance program gave Odio, and others, a trial-by-fire crash course on crisis management -- a lesson that was helpful throughout the rest of their lives.

''You don't read that in books. You don't learn that in university,'' said Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez, who was a second-term city councilman during Mariel.

''You gotta be calm. You gotta be cool. You gotta be collected,'' Martinez said. ``You gotta make sound decisions. Sometimes those are not the most popular decisions.''

He remembers the first sign of trouble -- a telephone call from a police major.

''He called me to let me know we had people protesting on West 29th Street and Eighth Avenue and blocking intersections. Somebody needed to come out,'' Martinez recalled. 'I told him to call the mayor. He said, `I can't find him. You're the only one that has answered the phone.' ''

`I JUST TOOK CHARGE'

Martinez doesn't know where then-Mayor Dale Bennett had disappeared to. ''But nobody wanted to face the issue,'' he told The Herald. ``I just took charge and did what needed to be done, and that was it.''

He went out to the corner of West 29th Street and Eighth Avenue, where a crowd had gathered to demonstrate and demand that the Mariel refugees be allowed to come.

''I asked people to follow the rules and not disrupt the traffic,'' he said.

But Odio, who would later go to prison for obstructing a federal probe of corruption at Miami City Hall, and Martinez, who went on to be elected mayor of Hialeah in November 1981, don't think Mariel shaped them into leaders.

''There were very few elected officials at the time that were Hispanics or Cuban-Americans,'' Martinez told The Herald. ``We had to take the role and responsibility of dealing with the issues that resulted from the boatlift.''

Experts agree.

''It's not that they came out of that episode as leaders,'' said Juan Clark, a Miami Dade College professor of sociology who has studied Cuban immigration issues for years. ``Some of them already were exercising leadership functions. The only thing is that they took an additional responsibility and acted on something that was perceived as a very deeply felt need of the community.''

What the events of 1980 did was, perhaps, give them more confidence -- and give the community more confidence in them, Clark said.

''A crucial element of leadership is assuming responsibility when the need arises. That's when you distinguish between people who have leadership qualities and those who are simply followers,'' Clark said.

``You see the true leaders in moments of crisis. This is when those persons emerge.''

German Muñoz, chairman of the social studies department at the school's Wolfson campus, agreed.

STEPPING UP

''It is a matter of people measuring up to the challenge. The fact is that some of these people were in governmental positions already,'' Muñoz said.

``Whoever is big in government or the church, because of their function or position, have to step up.''

So people in a natural position to lead included Auxiliary Bishop Agustín Román, who was already considered the spiritual guide of the Cuban exile community, and Eduardo Padrón, who began a training program for the Marielitos -- as well as about 20,000 Haitian refugees who arrived that year -- when he was vice president of the Wolfson Campus.

EDUCATION A PRIORITY

Padrón, today the president of Miami Dade College, also shrugs it off as just part of the job.

''This institution did what it is supposed to do, which is to open doors of education to people,'' Padrón said. ``We knew that education was going to be very, very important in order for them to be able to successfully redirect their lives in the United States.''

He established a program to not only teach the refugees English, but also train them in with fast-track job skills so the refugees could get jobs.

``We saw this as an opportunity to provide the people who were coming in as new immigrants to Miami with an opportunity to become what you would call productive citizens, as opposed to becoming liabilities.''

On the first day refugees started arriving at camps at Tamiami Park and the Orange Bowl, they got fliers that let them know about the courses.

''To our satisfaction, a lot of these people immediately reacted very positively, and we were able to develop special programs for them as well as get some of them into regular programs,'' Padrón told The Herald.

He said thousands of refugees, probably tens of thousands, took courses at Miami Dade College.

''Many of whom today are leaders,'' Padron noted.