JUAN O. TAMAYO

 A Democratic U.S. president loosens the embargo on Cuba. Havana, its economy in tatters, welcomes visiting exiles and their dollars but finds that both, in the end, fuel domestic discontent.

 President Clinton, circa 2000? No -- President Carter in 1980, when Cuban President Fidel Castro relieved the escalating pressures on his regime by opening the port of Mariel to a chaotic exodus of 125,000 refugees.

 Although historical comparisons are never perfect, Cuba analysts say some of the parallels between 1980 and today are so close that they merit a new look at the lessons of Mariel before a recurrence suddenly erupts.

 Today, as when the Mariel drama began 20 years ago this month, Castro is again raising the specter of a migration crisis, charging at every turn that Washington's embrace of illegal Cuban migrants who reach U.S. shores could provoke another mass exodus.

 As long as Washington continues to welcome Cubans ``there will be tens of thousands willing to risk their lives in the . . . ocean,'' said a March 14 editorial in the Communist Party newspaper Granma known to have been written by Castro himself.

 The analysts say that while much has changed since 1980 -- especially the end of the Cold War and Soviet subsidies to Cuba estimated at $4-$6 billion a year -- the parallels between 1980 and today are nevertheless eerily close.

 ECONOMICS

 In 1980, Cuba's economy stood at the bottom of a five-year slide, shrinking by 3 percent that year as world sugar prices plummeted and Havana began tinkered with mild reforms, such as using capitalist accounting methods in some government enterprises.

 A 1979 report by the Cuban Communist Party's Central Committee said the reforms had proven disruptive and ineffective and predicted ``a time of skinny cows -- a Cuban euphemism for a period of belt-tightening.

 Today, the Cuban economy has been growing since 1994 -- it claimed a 6.2 percent growth last year. However, it remains mired at 1988 levels because the incremental increases of the last few years cannot compensate for the 35 percent collapse it suffered after Moscow cut its subsidies in 1991.

 ``For most of us, we are living no better than we were a decade ago. And we're progressively more tired of the constant struggle to feed our children, dissident Havana economist Oscar Espinosa wrote recently.

 And when Castro has felt his economy pinching, he has unleashed mass migrations -- the Freedom Flights that brought 300,000 refugees to South Florida from 1966 to 1971, Mariel in 1980 and the 1994 crisis in which up to 35,000 balseros fled aboard flimsy rafts.

 ``There is a clear correlation between the years when Cuba has economic problems and the years Castro allow mass migrations,, said Juan Carlos Espinosa, assistant director of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies at the University of Miami

 ``For Castro, migration is an escape valve to release domestic pressures on his regime," said Espinosa, who has tracked the links between Cuba's economic swings, migration crises and U.S.-Cuba immigration agreements.

 Another echo of 1980 involves U.S. policy and its effect on the Cuban populace.

 Just as he did 20 years ago, Castro today faces a U.S. government bent on easing sanctions on Cuba and promoting more visits to the island by exiles and U.S. citizens in hopes of paving the way for a peaceful transition to democracy.

 Today, the visits are promoted by Clinton's ``people-to-people policy. Cuban government officials say 146,000 U.S. residents visited the island last year, 124,000 of them Cuban-Americans and the rest from a variety of groups; these include U.S. tourists ignoring the travel embargo and groups such as baseball teams and businessmen's organizations.

 Before, it was the Carter and Castro decisions to allow some 100,000 exiles to return to Cuba, in the year before the Mariel crisis erupted, for the first time since Castro seized power in 1959.

 RETURN OF EXILES

 Historians now agree that the return of those exiles, usually loaded with gifts for relatives and tales of the good life in the United States, fueled massive Cuban discontent with their socialist austerity.

 Castro himself acknowledged the growing dissatisfaction in a videotaped speech secretly distributed in late 1979 to top government and Communist Party officials and obtained later by the U.S. government.

 ``Why has discontent grown? he asked. ``Perhaps in a certain way we have been needing an enemy, because when we have a clearly defined enemy engaged in hard-fought combat we're more united, energetic and stimulated.

 Today, Cubans' image of a U.S. ``enemy remorselessly struggling to topple Castro is again fading, with tens of thousands of Americans and even members of the U.S. Congress increasingly traveling to the island.

 ``For a Cuban doctor who makes 20 dollars and rides a bike to work, meeting an American doctor can really shake his belief in the revolution,'' said Michael Kozak, former head of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana.

 Moreover, those Cubans who live and eat well these days owe it largely to the estimated $400 to $600 million sent to them annually by relatives abroad, as well as jobs in the dollarized sectors of the economy such as tourism.

 Those remittances are again creating rich and poor classes in once-egalitarian Cuba, and a government crackdown on dissidents over the past year indicates that discontent with the Castro regime is on the rise, analysts say.

 `GROWING DISCONTENT'

 ``The growing discontent can be felt everywhere, but the proof is the worst government tightening of political and social controls in the past decade, said Havana human rights activist Elizardo Sanchez.

 Another immigration crisis like Mariel is far from inevitable, analysts say.

 The 20,000 visas a year that the United States has been handing out to Cubans since the 1994 balsero crisis amount to one Mariel every 6-7 years, effectively relieving some of the domestic pressures on Castro.

 And while foreign experts say they doubt Cuba's claim of 6.2 percent growth in its Gross Domestic Product in 1999, its economy may be growing just enough to keep pace with mounting popular frustrations

 But there is a final lesson perhaps in the words of Castro himself. His recent, barely veiled threats of another migration crisis unless Washington does more to discourage illegal Cuban migration have stirred up memories of similar Castro threats just before the Mariel crisis erupted.

 ``That is another lesson of Mariel, said Espinosa, ``that those who say Castro is unpredictable have not been paying attention to what he says.

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald