WHEN the consular official of certain embassies -- say Mexican, Costa Rican, Venezuelan, Argentine, American, or Peruvian -- ``bumps'' into the passport of a Cuban who resides outside of Cuba, there begins an apparently endless Kafkaesque cycle. It's as if the measles, mumps, or dengue fever has arrived, and the official has a hidden placard that reads: Cuban, no entry.

A friend was traveling in Argentina with papers from Venezuela, where he had lived for years. One time in Buenos Aires, he went to show his Cuban passport as identification. The Argentine accompanying him, almost grabbing the passport from his hand, scolded:

``But, che, what are you thinking? Don't be a [moron] and ever show that again. You're putting yourself in a compromised postion, and me, too.''

If by chance or well-placed string-pulling the Cuban living outside Cuba manages to obtain a visa for business or tourist travel outside his country of residence, the cycle of absurdity doesn't end. At the airport, suitcase on scale, you hand over your passport and ticket to the ticket agent, who looks at the documents, and, startled, reviews the booklet's pages one by one and then tells you to wait while he goes to the systems department (you never know what system he's talking about). Then you're kept anxious for 15 or 20 minutes until the employee returns from who knows where and begrudgingly hands you a boarding pass.

But the story doesn't end there. Arriving at the country of destination, you are escorted from the Customs line; put in a hard chair or brightly lit office; asked again to show documents, foreign-residency certificate, rent receipts, and tax returns; and you are submitted to an interrogation more police-like than friendly. In that precise moment, you feel that your human rights -- wrested from you, returned, and pockmarked -- have been turned into railroad sand.

The implicit excuse of consular and customs officials is that the Cuban who applies for a visa at an embassy has no intention other than to stay illegally in the destination country (Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, United States, or the utopian nation of Hereistay). Irrelevant are official invitations to cultural events, universities, ecological congresses, or simply to visit a friend's home to eat fried eggs and discuss boleros, dancing, women, and politics.

Come back another day. We're very sorry, but you don't qualify. . .

And if the official is American, he'll stamp the last page of your passport with the inscription ``U.S. Consulate Application Received,'' as if announcing to all neighboring embassies that the bearer cannot at the moment enter the United States. In short, no one takes the trouble to read the documents that you present, which have been asked for.

Unless he has obtained U.S. residency, the Cuban who lives outside Cuba for one reason or other -- and there are tons -- has nowhere to go. To the Cuban government, he's a traitor, a gusano [worm], a sell-out, a pro-imperialist. To others he's a Castro agent trying to infiltrate and crack national security. To certain nostalgic leftists, he is a sell-out who has abandoned paradise; and for others who have relaxed in the seven-colored waters of Varadero, he's an idiot for having abandoned such still water.

Moreover, Cubans aren't the only ones who stay. Nicaraguans, Mexicans, Colombians, Poles, Guatemalans, and Haitians illegally remain in many countries until they solve their problem or are deported. And the Cubans staying illegally -- or arriving by rafts, inner tubes, or Kon Tikis in the case of the United States -- aren't necessarily the most troublesome of people. Such Cubans do exist. Then again, you have the forceful and hard-working Cuban community in the United States roundly giving lie to the interminable campaigns of the government in Havana, and to those who think that Cuban is a synonym for problematic and third class.

Prejudice, once again, shows its dirty face. As long as officials don't intelligently judge each person individually, carrying a Cuban passport will continue to be a ballast, a fate of unforeseen ignominy imposed in part by 40 years of political nonsense and in other part by consular intolerance.